When I first heard how many Vista variants there would be, I knew it would cause problems. What idiots at MS thought that would be a Good Idea?!
XP's variants - Home, Pro, Media - are simply named and clearly focused.

My first recommendation: Reduce and rename the Vista variants to Home, Professional and maybe Ultimate. All versions must include Aero. Simple works.

Second recommendation: Reduce the price dramatically. Vista is simply not a must-have product for most people (as the polls confirm), and given Vista's hardware requirements the cost to move to Vista is just too high for many potential users.

Third recommendation: Cut back on all the DRM/Activation nonsense as all it really does is seriously irritate the honest users and reduce the functionality of their computers compared to Win2000/XP.

Using Vista for a couple of months I feel the OS is designed in the best interest of MS not the user. UAC is a joke or a great way to sell more mice due to left mouse button failure. Vista can be fixed but I don't think MS has the vision or drive to do it. They have become too big and lazy.
I suggest they use virtualization for backwards compatibility and start over . Create small to medium team with a common vision. Please fix the following, MS if you embark on a redesign.

-Re-bootless security updates.

-Faster responses to security flaws. Months for patches? How about a weeks.

-Fix the Build process to speed up development. Builds of the OS should not takes days to compile and test.

-More work on security up front. XP patches are near 100 and that is after SP2.

-Boot time eliminated.

-Shutdown time eliminated.

-OS DVDs should be able to boot from a DVD in a safe mode like OS so I can recover needed files trashed.

-New browser from the ground up to OPEN STANDARDS. Not IE 6 with a horrible GUI and tabbed browsing.

-No more registry

-No more activation

-No more DLL hell

-Any feature added must be evaluated with security in mind. Is this feature worth the security risk to be added to my core OS?

-Secure defaults settings.

If an OS did all that I might actually wait in line at my compusa to buy a copy.

I installed Vista premium and lost several of my older software programs. I had to hunt out and find several new drivers for some of the software. My printer was networked with 2 XP computers. Now I need to get another printer for the Vista computer. Canon tells me its not their problem it up to Microsoft. I which I never installed Vista and stayed with XP.

Yes, the word is out that Vista is not much of an upgrade if you actually use your PC for anything besides web surfing or email. Several people I know are angry that Vista doesn't play well with older printers, cameras, and programs.

I wonder how this survey would have looked a couple months after Windows XP was released. Looking back now it is hard to believe there were ever people who did not want to go to XP right away. A new OS is a long process. I talk to people at least once a month that are just now ready to upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. In about 3 years the majority of users will be on Windows Vista, but even then there will be some that want to hold on to what they are comfortable with. There is no other reason that 5% would still be using Windows 98.

Quite honestly the biggest factor I have seen the bloody price. $400.00 for Ultimate? Are they high? The computer hardware market has progressed to the point one can buy a very good system for less than 1000.00. Looking at that, it is really difficult for the average computer user to think "Hey I NEED that". Lets face it. Until you CAN't operate XP with most products, people upgrade their OS becuase it is cool or they just WANT it. However with the pricing issues, It is hard to justify the purchase until it is an actual "Need".

Quite honestly the biggest factor I have seen is the bloody price. $400.00 for Ultimate? Are they high? The computer hardware market has progressed to the point one can buy a very good system for less than 1000.00. Looking at that, it is really difficult for the average computer user to think "Hey I NEED that". Lets face it. Until you CAN't operate XP with most products, people upgrade their OS becuase it is cool or they just WANT it. However with the pricing issues, It is hard to justify the purchase until it is an actual "Need".

They better fix f***ing Media Center if they intend for Vista to succeed. My Home Premium edition still will not configure Media Center WITH a Vista Certified Leadtek PVR-2000 TV capture card. Media Center was the only reason I purchased Home Premium. At this point, I wish I had not installed Vista.

Nice suggestions from Mike Larson :) But don't hold your breath waiting for Microsoft to implement those features... you would do better to give those suggestions to a Linux or other open-source developer.

As for Vista buzz: I know 2 people who each bought a new computer within the past 2 weeks, and they dislike Vista. One of them has already returned the computer and gone back to using his old XP setup. Also, whenever I am connected to the game server I frequent, and someone mentions 'Vista', someone will always type 'Vista sucks'. That is the kind of buzz I am hearing about Vista.

I just bought a notebook from my wife. Since it's not a high end model, I tried really hard to get XP instead of Vista. I could not. If I have the kind of issues other people I know have, I'm going to buy a copy of XP Home and zap Vista.

Wish my wife's old notebook had died a few months earlier. I'm sure not looking forward to supporting her on Vista.

I also wholeheartedly concur that Vista is all about Microsoft's bottom line, and nothing about the users. But with MS, that's hardly new.

When XP is no longer supported, my office machines will be either Linux or Apple. It's extremely unlikely that I will personally ever go to Vista.

Folk if you think $400.00 for Vista Ultimate is too much. Wait till you have to pay a bit over 600 bucks for it. Yup that's the retail price of Vista here in Mexico. At your average Office Max. The box says Made in USA (Puerto Rico), so with NAFTA I can't possibly explain the price hike.

It is no wonder the sales rep said he had only sold one Ultimate and one Business. Most sales had been the "verdes". Meaning the green Home Premium boxes. Even those were priced nearly as much as Vista Premium in the states.

Still waiting for HP to get around to writing a Vista device driver for my HP Laserjet 1000. "Soon" could be a long way off when measured in HP years. Four new computer purchases are on hold. None of them will be HP!

Has anyone here heard of Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor? It has plenty of really useful information.

After my recent -very- successful experiment with Ubuntu Linux, I'm going to continue to build a spare machine and see if Linix can indeed become a useful daily replacement for Vista. Which means I'm yet another user who is looking for the exit from the Microsoft arena.

My Thinkpad R51 with a 1.8 gig chip and one gig of ram makes it a mediocre Vista machine, but a downright snappy Linux machine.

In the background is the Mac alternative, which is more mainstream than Linux, but rather costly for the hardware.

To run Linux though, all I need is to use a spare hard drive, which plugs into my Thinkpad in about two minutes time.

Point is...there is a growing list of viable alternatives to Windows out there, and Microsoft really, really, needs to wake up to that. The rug is already beginning to move out from under their feet.

Mike, what you call for already exists. You can find it under the brand name Linux or BSD.

As a gamer, I read that upgrading to Vista lowers games performance because Vista requires so much hardware compared to Xp. Doesn't seem much reason at all to upgrade.

I see another parallel between the DVD to DVD-HD (or Blue Ray) and Windows Vista: All of these new and supposedly 'superior' offerings are infected with PUNISHING levels of DRM overhead and usability hassles.

My current analog monitor, 1600x1200, won't be "allowed" to view HD content in Vista, even though those HD DVD products don't exceed 1080p vertical resolution. Meanwhile, Vista consumes an enormous amount of CPU power to verify, dozens of times per second, that there's no "illegal" gadgets (such as my monitor) listening or watching to HD content.

Anyway, the only videos which I would even want to watch on my PC are those which I am creating there: For FINISHED movies, even *my* 24" monitor doesn't compete with the 50" Plasma in the living room. The PC doesn't replace the living room, not by a long shot.
- - - - -

By focusing Vista on DRM for delivering "entertainment", instead of computing, Microsoft appears to have created a really bad product. Obviously there will be Sales, because it's impossible to even FIND a non-Vista computer in any big-box store anymore. But no consumer in their right mind is happy with this choice, at least not now. Our monitors, printers, scanners, and basic operations are all compromised by the Vista DRM infection. And with current hardware, the penalty is painfully apparent whenever you turn the box on.

BTW, I own both Windows XP and Vista-- I'm posting this from the Vista Home Premium box. But 95% of the time (including RIGHT NOW) this box runs Linux Mandriva-2007. I only turn on Vista when I have to, it's very unpleasant to use.

It appears as though more people stay 'on the fence' willing to explore other options, which is good news to everyone, except Microsoft.

Why use Vista? Apps won't run.
Stick with XP or go to OSX if you want a real work horse. That includes OSX Server edition.

I don't think marketing can fix the problem. Marketing cannot hide the fact that Vista is largely a cosmetic upgrade from XP. Except for the Aero interface, all the other new Vista features are not compelling or must-have. You can get Search and widgets from third-parties for XP. You can use third-party replacement software for Media Center (eg, Hauppauge). You can make XP very secure by taking appropriate security measures. All the rest of Vista's new features are minor. Where is the value proposition in Vista???

How can marketing possibly overcome this?

I'm preparing to purchase my wife a new laptop. If I can't get it with XP, I will probably buy my first Mac for her. As a long time Windows tech, I don't see any reason to subject myself to the hassle of Vista when XP, Linux, and Apple seem to be better alternatives. Having run Vista for several months now, I haven't found any compelling reason to move to Vista, and plenty of reasons not to.

I have worked with Vista for the last 3 months. The performance is terrible, even with 2G or RAM and Readyboost and the whole DRM thing makes it impossible to watch HDTV. I personally like the U/I and other usability enhancements, but won't buy it for a production machine. I will stick with XP and MCE until the DRM issue goes away.

Doug G: Try Tech for Less web site for many laptops with xp on board. Including the excellent Lenovo brand at decent price reductions.

WOW! It sure costs a lot for what you get. I had ordered a new notebook with Vista Business, but I changed the order to XP Pro when I found out Serious Magic Ultra 2 wouldn't run on Vista.

WOW! What am I missing? Wow! I don't care! I'll get done what I need to get done without losing time trying to figure out how getting stuff done has changed...

WOW! After reading the other responses, my disappointment has disappeared!

Perhaps the percentage went up because those who planned to upgrade in December already had by March, leaving those who are taking a more measured approach. The next time those same people go to buy a new machine, they will get one with hardware specs that support the Vista OS that it comes with, and by then the the certified third party drivers will be more readily available.

Or they can get a Mac to show that they're contrarian and empowered. And then wish they had purchased a Vista box once the thrill of the pink colored case has worn off.

The article confirms my views about Vista. XP Pro works well for the basics that I use it for. I don't really feel like forking out all the extra $$$ for the OS and all of the new hardware I need just to get Vista running. I've been burned by MS more than once in the past and I have learned to wait for a couple of service packs to be released before I buy a new MS OS anyway. I might get Vista in late 2008 or early 2009 or maybe not at all. Linux keeps nagging me in the back of my mind. I already run OpenOffice exclusively on my Windows machine anyway.

I'm two months in on a Vista upgrade. Since its a Dell XPS Gen-2, I've not seen it crippingly slow. Its sluggish, and barely useable. (It has a 4/6 speed rating score). Not bad going for what was a $6k (USD) laptop. Thanks.

Aero switches off intermittently, and to be honest, after the initial "Wow - it looks like OS/x", I dont miss it.

If MS think that DRM is the thing thats going to sell Vista, it doesnt know its customers.

If Apple released OS/x for this machine, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

My next laptop will be a Mac.

---* Bill

All these posts make for interesting reading. If I were a manufacturer, preloading all my new models with Vista, I would be really concerned if MS is applying pressure to move away from XP preloads. Sounds like a sure way to kill your sales of the boxes, which is what THEY care about, not any MS strategy to move the world to Vista. I just thought of an analogy....Vista sounds like a car with six doors. Four has been enough for almost everyone, for a long time, even for a minivan or big SUV with a third row of seats. Convincing all of us we NEED those extra two doors will be an uphill struggle for MS.

Windows is like a plate of spaghetti. You can make use of it if you suck it up, but you cannot build anything with it. Even spending 5 years and billions of dollarst MSFT could not fix it and did not even try. Give me GNU/Linux any day. Everything is modular so you can get what you want
There's no DRM, MSFT EULA, marketing crap, useless features tying everything to everything
The latest software still runs on a 386 but you are better off letting software run on a newer machine and using the old thing as a terminal
You can find out in short order what hardware is supported and what is not

Vista does not offer significant advances over XP, and costs a whole lot more when one takes into account the costs of upgrading a computer to run Vista, or replacing an older computer with one capable of running Vista. Compounding the cost equation are the time and effort of migrating data from old to new computer and replacement cost for productivity software that will not run under Vista. Finally, we have the same old orphaned hardware syndrome as with earlier versions of Windows. Hardware devices that are still useful and in excellent operating condition are suddenly obsolete because the hardware manufacturers chose not to do Vista drivers for them. Not only are consumers not WOWed, large corporations and enterprises aren't either. Microsoft must have been believing its own spin machine to think that Vista would be a resounding smash hit.

Vista is a plus for computer manufacturers and retailers, though, because it requires a more expensive computer with greater capacity. So sticker prices in the stores and at Dell's and other mail order outfits are now higher than they were prior to first ship of Vista. Higher prices always mean higher margins, somewhat offsetting reduced sales volumes.

I would be really, really surprised if any unbiased Vista survey produced different results than Harris... Ben Myers

The suggestion for Microsoft would be to discard all Vista version but Ultimate, with graduated installation depending on PC capabilities, and option for the user to force optional installaton. Keep only a differentiation in SKU for retail, update and OEM. I thought about that after reading your post which very well stated. Vista IS failing, and marketing only adds to the problem. Microsoft should also discretly lower anti copy measures, at least for while, until gaining more market shares in non buyers areas, which would have to update later. Of course, Vista price should be lowered (a lot).

Vista doesn't do anything that XP can already do better with less hardware and memory. Unless you count the DRM and extra WGA as an incentive. In the past, the basic reasons to upgrade a computer was because desktop publishing or Gaming programs needed faster cpu's and more memory. Few people willingly upgrade just because an OS needs more power,

I do believe that Vista maybe a bigger problem than anyone believes so far. It could possibly depress PC sales in general, and it is starting to look that way. PC makers may have to start selling computers without Vista, either blank boxes, or linux preinstalled if they want to move them. Otherwise, the growth in the computer market may pass to Apple.

Myself, I will never use, or buy a computer with Vista on it. And I cannot see buying one with XP on it either. How many times must the average user buy windows over and over again?

I do think MS will rush out a badly written SP1 and 2 for Vista, as they know it will suck some folks into buying at that point.

Vista will never become the dominate OS, even if is converts XP users by 12% a year. Although look for the figure to be closer to 9% a year. Simple reason for this is Vienna is due out in early 2009, and you can bet that MS is working overtime to get that out since Vista is not working out so well.

What would help Vista?

1. Get rid of the performance robbing DRM for starters. Quit holding hands with the RIAA and the MPAA.

2. Fix the user account controls so that they can actually be used by the average user. I think MS made this so people would just turn it off anyway. Sadly, Vista will never be safe as Linux and OSX are without proper setup of user accounts. I would even suggest disabling all internet usuage of administrator accounts except for updating antivirus programs, that way forcing people to use the limited accounts.

3. Stop changing the interface just to make it look new. People use windows because they are familar with it, if you keep changing it so much may as well use Linux.

4. The Price is a WOW for sure. As the price of computer hardware and software has generally gone down, MS with its monopoly actualy raised the price a little. This after being sucessfully sued in states like California for overcharging for its OS.

I purchased Vista, and I am glad I kept XP in a dual-boot environment. The fundamental problem with Vista is that it isn't as easy to use as Windows XP, which is a death knell right out of the gate. For example:

1. UAC and its misery-inducing "Approve?" prompts. Most users do not rank improved security so high in importance that they will put up with constant frustration in return. People want to be able to double-click an icon on their desktop and have the corresponding program actually RUN, not ask "are you sure?" each time. It's amazing to me that no one at Microsoft understands something so fundamentally simple.

2. Similarly, it takes more mouse clicks to accomplish simple tasks in Vista than it does in XP. If I want to call up Desktop Properties, for example, I can't simply click on the desktop and select 'Properties' from the context menu that comes up. Now a new window appears full of options that I don't want, and the one option I *do* want--Display Properties!

3. It's been said already, but the vast number of product options from 'Basic' to 'Ultimate' are unnecessarily complex and confusing. I think many consumers look at all those options and conclude it's better to stay with what they've got than take a plunge into one of 12 different OS options and discover it's the wrong one.

In my opinion, a new operating system that isn't as easy to use as the prior operating system is doomed to failure from the start. I wish the higher-ups at Redmond would put up a big sign in the OS development department that simply says 'DO NOT fix what isn't broke!!'

I purchased Vista, and I am glad I kept XP in a dual-boot environment. The fundamental problem with Vista is that it isn't as easy to use as Windows XP, which is a death knell right out of the gate. For example:

1. UAC and its misery-inducing "Approve?" prompts. Most users do not rank improved security so high in importance that they will put up with constant frustration in return. People want to be able to double-click an icon on their desktop and have the corresponding program actually RUN, not ask "are you sure?" each time. It's amazing to me that no one at Microsoft understands something so fundamentally simple.

2. Similarly, it takes more mouse clicks to accomplish simple tasks in Vista than it does in XP. If I want to call up Desktop Properties, for example, I can't simply click on the desktop and select 'Properties' from the context menu that comes up. Now a new window appears full of options that I don't want, and the one option I *do* want--Display Properties!

3. It's been said already, but the vast number of product options from 'Basic' to 'Ultimate' are unnecessarily complex and confusing. I think many consumers look at all those options and conclude it's better to stay with what they've got than take a plunge into one of 12 different OS options and discover it's the wrong one.

In my opinion, a new operating system that isn't as easy to use as the prior operating system is doomed to failure from the start. I wish the higher-ups at Redmond would put up a big sign in the OS development department that simply says 'DO NOT fix what isn't broke!!'

Most homes have MULTIPLE computers, for parents, kids, laptops etc. In order to upgrade you must run out and buy 2-6 or so overpriced Vista boxes with the same gawddamm stuff inside. Is there any better way to feel like a fool as to spend hundreds on multiple copies of the same thing? MS needs to come up with a home license that covers a household so some poor shlub don't make the worlds richest man even richer! To add insult to injury you can buy a OEM compute in the store with Vista where MS is giving it away for a fraction of the retail price.

One license per cpu might work in the office, but at home its screwing homefolks..

Looked at Vista, It sucks. I'm sticking with linux.
Drm alone is enough to kill the deal. Not to mention all the hassles of trying to fool with it, like activation, idiotic dialog boxes, all the added craplets.

So nobody found anything to like (let alone desire) beyond the Aero interface?

If you didn't have the XP comparison, say buying your first computer, would Vista's performance and features satisfy?

There is another fallout to MS's anti-consumer business model that is ingrained into Vista (DRM) which is the additional cost that all of us incur for any and all hardware that is created for use within the Vista environment (ex.anything DX10 compatible). Besides the cost of the extra DRM overhead built onto your GPU cards or taken off of performance, there is the extra cost of many man hours to program drivers to utilize this unwanted DRM overhead. It's one thing to increase costs for your product (Windows) but another to increase the cost of a multi-use peripheral (GPU's, etc) for everyone who wants to buy one in the future that won't be used in a Windows Vista environment. The OS's control & protection mechanisms should not exceed itself unless the hardware is built only & exclusively for it.

The single biggest thing MS could do to help would be to remove all the DRM crap they built into it. It boggles the mind that a company would spend so much time and effort on trying to PREVENT their customers from doing something. If they had spent even half that effort on improving the user experience, then they would have the biggest winner in their history. MS may say that they added DRM to Vista in order to appease the big media companies, but I suspect what they really intend is to gain some control over that industry for itself. Wake up RIAA and MPAA, Microsoft isn't doing you any favors!