Vista's rejection isn't so much that Vista is a bad product, but rather that Microsoft has angered so many people that these customers are now fighting back in the only way they can...by refusing to spend money on Microsoft products whenever possible.

The current state of things were pretty much the same for XP when it was just released on the market. Many businesses considered Windows 2000 Pro a solid product and XP offered little in new functionality and features. The fact that it was a minor point released made many end users hesitate the upgrade initially. But look at the state of Windows XP adoption since 2001? It far outpaced all previous versions of Windows, including Windows 2000.

We must also take into account that XP is the first true version of Windows that was built on the solid NT foundation for both businesses and consumers, and yes, it has been on the market for so long just because of that. Back to XP and Vista, the same case applies, businesses are evaluating and some of the IT Pro's in those Company's themselves are most likely early adopters of the OS.

They see the value, but things like Company politics, projects to finish up are holding up mass deployment of the OS. Company's don't just upgrade on a whim, SP1 for Vista isn't barely out yet and I am sure once that is in the hands of more IT Pro's then we will see greater adoption of the OS. The fact that its on 100 million desktops already proves that it is success.

A lot of persons in the Industry I have spoken to (Lab Techs, IT Pros) are mostly hesitant of Vista adoption because they think its too secure, but that is mostly attributed to a lack of understanding of the operating system based one to two time use of it. When you use the OS like most persons have since its release, you pretty much don't want to go back.

XP's adoption in the office was pretty much dictated by the strong use in the home by many consumers, and it will continue to be the same for Vista. Users will ask for it at work.

There is very little the same for Vista and for XP when they were just released on the market.

Vista's main problem, unlike XP, is the amount of 3rd party apps and games that it has broken. While there were a few broken between Windows 2000 and XP, it was a very small number of programs, compared to the massive breakage of Vi$ta. This alone is the main factor of stopping many companies and users of running Vista.

Then there is the problems of Vista has to have its own drivers. Which brings us to hardware driver breakage. A lot of fairly new hardware, like printers, scanners, modems, to name a few, may never get Vista drivers.

Now the reason that MS cites for the program breakage, is the security, or UAC. Which is a half baked, poorly done job of trying to increase the security of Windows. Many users find it so annoying, that find out how to turn it off. Make no mistake, Vista even with UAC on, is still just a big viral target, and nowhere near secure as Mac OS X or Linux.

More than likely, the real reason for the program breakage in Vista is the DRM embedded thoughout the OS so throughly, that it needed an extra 10 million lines of code, known as bloat.

I think there are many other reasons for businesses and users to stay with XP, or better move to using both XP and Linux (or Mac OS X).

Bill and company have been promising for years now to do something real about the viral and spam problems of Windows. UAC is not much folks. I think the fact that Windows has not been secured, and is not near as stable as other operating systems, is causing people to look elsewhere. Especially those who build their own systems, just look at the percentages of MS Vista sales to box versions. The fact that MS just had to cut its price on boxed versions, (standalone boxed retail versions) for the first time ever, has to say something about the quality and price of this bad OS Vista. When the most tech savvy users are abandoning it, the alarm bells should be going of in Redmond, instead of sending the shills out to comment with there name in blue links that read like a MS cheerleader site.

I agree with Joe, that "The results don't portend well for Vista successor Windows 7, which increasingly looks like a minor upgrade." It will be a minor update, more like another Service Pack for Vista, and some new wallpaper.

Andre you've got to think we are fools right? Between 1995 and 2001 we saw Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows XP come out for the desktop user. Between 2001 and 2007 (6 year span) we saw.... Vista? It obviously outpaced all other versions. There was nothing to compete with. XP is a solo OS. Its great adoption rate is not a feature it is a flaw. Microsoft's flawed development process which failed to deliver an OS in 6 years.

That "solid foundation" line regarding NT just makes me crack up. You're comparing NT with then W98 kernel right? That is why it looks so solid!! Have you already forgotten Nimda, Code Red, etc etc etc. If NT was so solid why was the trustworthy initiative needed?

Vista is too expensive. After buying new machines, training IT, training users, reworking customs apps, replacing hardware, yada, yada, yada, I ask you: where is the return on investment?

interesting

There is no "gee whiz" in OSs any more. After a decade of flawed iterations, XP more or less perfected and finally stabilized Win95 and meanwhile incorporated the new web media pretty well. All Vista ever claimed to do was add a nice Apply cosmetic and incorporate security features that are already available but have to be added or turned on in XP. Not much for a substantial cost in money, hardware resources, "learning curve", compatibility, with questions about long term security and reliability. XP wasn't broke, and enterprises aren't interested in a "fix" - they will be interested when MS develops a worthwhile improvement instead of "change for change's sake".

I would say Vista's biggest issue is the incredibly bad performance even on the fastest equipment. With SP1, with all the patches on a 3 GHz Core 2 processor with 2 GIGs of RAM - Vista crawls. I have plenty of clients who buy fancy new PCs with Vista only to say it seems sluggish - I can apply tweaks to Vista to make it more like XP and that improves performance a bit - but when I upgrade them from Vista to XP they are stunned at how fast that new hardware really is.

Vista on a new PC is like a speedboat dragging and anchor.

Microsoft does not understand two english words: "reliability" and "consistency". How would microsoft managers like it if every two years somebody CHANGES the things they are familiar with? I don't think they would like it if their desk, car, home, etc. were all changed-around and re-arranged every two years whether they like it or not. Stop "changing" your software microsoft and support your existing products. Way too much UI difference between Vista and XP. Ever try and report a software problem to microsoft? They are arrogant and do not listen. Microsoft plays musical chairs with software and instead users need reliability and consistency. Any day now they'll stop "supporting" XP.

I'm running Vista Premium on a four year-old PC that only garners a 2.0 rating, and I have had absolutely zero speed or reliability issues. My internet connectivity with Vista and IE7 is even noticeably fast than Firefox 2.x. Hell, I did a backup of my 6 GBs of user data in about four minutes the other day. That' pretty damn fast, even without anti-virus software installed on my system.

My two biggest complaints are that SP1 needs to fix this trustedinstaller process that kicks off when you first log on. Next, M$ needs to make the parental controls work. Other than these two complaints, Vista is easily worth the $73 I paid for the academic edition. With SP1, M$ will finally get the O/S up to the level that it should have been released at, and for this M$ does deserve a lot of blame.

But in the end though, the are a lot of ABM trolls these days that would never say anything positive about Vista for no other reason than they own O/S zealotry.

Sure, I run Vista on all my computers, without any problems at all. Not one virus. Next year I even intend to hook it up to the internet. All my programs work. And its so fast on my old 386sx as well, with only 32mb of memory.

But then, maybe this was not a good day to give up drinking, or start telling the truth. Or maybe I work for MS, and was paid to say all that?

@Jay

I helped a consumer install Vista on a machine with experience 3.0 a couple of weeks back. It took four hours to install from a "restore to factory" on a dual core AMD64 X2 5000 with 4GB. We did a side by side test of basic desktop operations with a four year old Linux box and the older box won handily. We waited for every click. Loading apps was painful. OpenOffice took 4s on the old box. Word was about 20s. Vista is either ahead of its time or a huge step backwards.

Businesses do not need more eye candy on the desktop. They want work horses that get the job done, now. Whatever Vista is doing, it is not the work the user needs done.

Having reflected on this, I was wondering what M$ will do? If they kill XP, it will kick some off the fence. Perhaps they would rather migrate to Mac OS or GNU/Linux than go to Vista. It will be similar effort for some. GNU/Linux will drive more current equipment, perhaps. If they don't kill XP, the fence sitters may just keep sitting and revenue will dry up.

I think they will have to kill XP and let the chips fall where they may. If a third of the fence sitters go each way, it could still be a big bounce for GNU/Linux and Mac OS. The official end of the monopoly is 50% of the seats by some standards, but if M$ loses 25% in a year or two that will be sweet. The retailers will have to sell what the market wants, right?

Cutting Prices Won't Save Windows Vista

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2276003,00.asp

Quotes from the link:

"What Went Wrong with Windows Vista?
How did Microsoft arrive at this awful position?

First it promised far more than it could deliver with Vista. Feature after feature was taken out as the horrific realization sank in that the Microsoft was never going to be able to make good on its promises. Removal of features such as WINFS and PC-to-PC synchronization lowered the value proposition for Windows Vista and helped cement Microsoft's reputation as a company that makes a lot of promises but fails miserably at delivering them.

Despite all of its billions, Microsoft cannot seem to hire competent UI designers.

Worse than the rest of this, Vista's insatiable need for processing power, RAM, and hard disk space has given it a reputation among some consumers as a serious computing pig. Consumers whose machines ran very well under Windows XP have reported in online forums that Vista slowed things down considerably.

Many other users have reported application and game incompatibilities. One has to wonder why Microsoft just didn't start from scratch if there were going to be so many application compatibility problems...isn't backwards compatibility supposed to be the saving grace of Windows? Why bother if many programs won't run or won't run well at all?

Vista will go down as one of Microsoft's biggest mistakes ever and the best thing the company can do now is to pay out some cash to settle the lawsuit against it and move forward as quickly as possible on Windows 7. This time Microsoft better not promise more than it can deliver and it had better not put out such a bloated, slow, and buggy mess as Windows Vista. And Microsoft has to make sure that if it labels a computer as "Windows 7 Ready" that it had better damn well be ready for it.

Choice is coming again to the operating system arena after far too many years of a tedious, incompetent and dull reign by Microsoft. Consumers are shunning Vista and that is a very positive thing for all of us. As Mac and Linux desktop market share goes up, more and more pressure is applied to Redmond to respond competitively. Microsoft's time as king of the operating system hill was a terrible, terrible thing for all of us who use computers regularly.

So as we watch Microsoft stumble and bumble along trying desperately to fix Windows Vista, let's be grateful for that Vista has gotten a lot of people to seriously look at other operating systems.

Choice is a beautiful thing."
--------------------------------------------------

Laptop buyers: We don't want Windows machines

http://blogs.computerworld.com/laptop_buyers_we_dont_want_windows_machines

Quotes from the link:

". At the price-comparison site PriceGrabber, only five of top 15 most popular laptops are Windows-based. The top seller is a Linux-based Asus Eee PC. In fact, three versions of that Linux notebook are in the top 15 sellers. And in the top 15 sellers there are a total of seven --- yes, that's right seven -- different sizes and configurations of MacBooks. HP, Toshiba, and Sony are the only manufacturers of Windows-based laptops in the top 15.

This isn't only happening on just PriceGrabber. Over on Amazon, things are even worse for Windows laptops. The nine top best-selling laptops are either Asus Eee PC Notebooks running Linux or Macbooks. Of the top 15, only three are Windows-based, made by Toshiba and HP.

Now, keep in mind that these numbers are quite skewed. Online retailers don't take into account direct sales like Dell, or corporate sales --- and those numbers are quite large. There's no doubt that when those numbers are taken into account, Windows-based laptops far outsell Linux and Mac machines.

Still, these numbers should scare Microsoft. It shows that Web-savvy consumers are turning away from Windows-based laptops. They tend to be influencers, so where they go, others will most likely follow."

Windows 7 due in 2010? It can't come too soon

http://blogs.news-journalonline.com/techtalk/2008/03/windows_7_due_in_2010_it_cant_come_too_soon.html

Quotes from the link:

"That's three years after the wide release of Vista -- the worst excuse for an operating system yet from the boys in Redmond.

Given Vista's lackluster performance, feature set and ongoing compatibility problems, one can only hope Windows 7 will be better. It's hard to imagine how it could be worse. But we are talking Microsoft here, so anything is possible.

If the folks at Microsoft are smart, they will focus most of their attention on improved usability and performance, instead of the kind of pretty but useless eye candy that was Vista's main claim to fame. All that eye candy turned Vista into a slow, bloated pig and lingering compatibility issues proved a constant source of frustration for many users. Many were also angry about the draconian roadblocks in Vista (Windows Genuine Advantage and various DRM schemes) that made users' lives more difficult instead of easier. Those should be stripped away."
--------------------------------------------------
Actually, there is already an early build of Windows Seven out that was delivered to the US antitrust committee. So 2009 delivery date, is not out of the question.

Voice of reason - one of the best non MS Fanboy posts I've ever read. I always read these fanboys saying how they run vista and it runs great and they think everyone else must be an idiot - I guess they know better than the IT community, technical journalists and the rest of the public who think Vista sucks.

As for Vista being the biggest mistake of MS - I'm not sure - I think Ballmer is. When Bill was at the helm, MS released Windows ME which was bad as well (not as bad as vista but still bad) - But Bill had the sense to listen to everyone - kill off any more developement on Windows ME and just move on - no service pack, no looking back. Anyone ever wants to talk to Ballmer about Vista he ignores what they say and says we sold a lot of it so it must be good. Anything bringing on a class action lawsuit, petition to keep the previous OS lifeline extended, a backlash by hardware vendors who don't want Vista only agreements and brought back XP, backlash by the public so you can upgrade to XP for free from Vista and so many kudos from the press and the IT community MUST be a good product - right?

Why the Vista rants? Maybe we expected more from a World Renown Company whose (normally first rate) products changed the face of computers and greatly contributed to the development of the internet into what it is today.

Maybe a lot of these Vista rants are from people (myself included) who have used MSFT's products through the years with relatively little problems. After good solid operating systems like Windows 2000, XP, XP Pro and Server 2003, we expected yet another fine product that could outdo those fine Operating systems. That did not happen and it could not have come at a worst time for Microsoft.

Yes there were some issues like Windows ME, the Netscape fiasco and the ongoing EU problems that have plagued Microsoft. But nothing that MSFT has faced till now has ever really come back and haunt them. Until now.

The Vista release comes at the time when more and more government entities are moving to open source. This is 2008 and it is no longer the mid 1990's. There is more competition on the block now, from Apple, to Linux and to government mandates for open source.

Instead of MSFT solidifying its market share with a usable Operating System. Since Vista was released with its share of issues, a growing number of users have turned from Microsoft. So whats wrong with Vista?

Vista's problems come directly from the built in DRM. The DRM checks what you are doing with your computer 30 times a second. thats the reason for the high Ram requirements. The eye candy might have required a new video card, not DRM.

I have the Vista transformation pack on my XP machine, it looks like Vista, has the clock, RSS reader, backgroud is Vista, but it is otherwise XP. (Look up the Vista transformation pack on the 'net...its free. It just changes the GUI)

The argument for DRM in Vista was so that the consumer could play Blue Ray and HD DVD discs.

Why was DRM included in the Home Basic and Business Editions? So people could watch Blue Ray discs at work? Maybe that 512 MB Ram laptop with Vista Basic would serve as a fine Blue Ray player? ...Think again

At what point did Microsoft decide that the needs of the entertainment industry were more important than its core consumer base? So why was Vista with its slow running, buggy and bloated DRM forced on the public and IT world...so they can watch Blue Ray on a cramped 15" or 19" screen What a crock of spit.

The driver and compatibility problems seem to stem from this DRM problem. Vista users need to look further about Microsoft being able to revoke drivers (or even hardware) on their machines. DRM and its resulting bloat and buggy issues do not belong as a part of any operating system.

DRM was never popular with the public and MSFT went against conventional wisdom to serve special interests ...namely the entertainment industry. You can't screw over the public and force a shoddy product on them without thought on THEIR needs.

Now its pay back time, Apple is the winner, Linux is the winner, open source is the winner, and the biggest winner of all? Windows XP, with businesses making a good living installing XP over Vista. Last check a good portion of the IT World do not have Vista in their future.

Microsoft is going to make yet another mistake, and that is to discontinue sales of XP in about three months. MSFT, wake up and smell the coffee, keep XP until Windows 7. In the meantime bury Vista, lick your wounds and move on. Lets hope that Windows 7 will be a success and learn from the mistakes from Vista. We expect better from a World Class company, now its time for MSFT to deliver.

Microshaft's board of directors needs to take a good
look around and get rid of their uniblab clown.I have been turned off every time I have heard him open his mouth.THE BLAD BOOB BALLMER RIDES AGAiN
Well Vista removal is is getting to be good money for us guys who run a small PC shop.
i have already removed it off of 35 and it grows every week. so my thinking ,what kind a of fool business would even think of using the crap.

There are a lot of people in this world who refuse to be objective about Microsoft, they see bad in everything it does, even when it is not acting improperly.

Microsoft has a history of releasing mediocre operating systems. Vista is the first time they have released a reasonably good OS. So what do we do? Criticize them.

You are berating Microsoft because of the new UI? These are the same people that were criticizing Microsoft because Apple has a better UI. The Vista UI is a good one, a definite improvement over XP's interface.

To its credit, Microsoft has repeatedly rewritten the internals of Windows as it has released new versions of Windows. That is a good thing, assuming they are doing it right, which they appear to be doing. When that happens, it is inevitable that some applications and some drivers will not work.

It is not Microsoft's responsibility to test every application out there to see if it works with Vista. That is the responsibility of the application publisher. Those publishers had about 18 months to obtain various betas of Vista, test their applications, and make any necessary changes. If in 18 months they cannot make whatever changes are necessary, they should not be in the software publishing business.

If anything, Microsoft has too much backward compatibility in Windows, which means there is too much code that is dealing with the past. Vista is not meant to be installed on older machines. You need at least 2 GB of RAM, 4 GB is ideal. I have used several computers with that amount of memory and performance has been fine. If you have 1 GB, Vista will simply be too slow, so slow it is unbearable. Again, Vista is designed for newer machines. Memory is so cheap nowadays that requiring 2 GB of RAM is no big deal.

Yes, Microsoft did drop some features. Microsoft has been talking about the WinFS file system (essentially, this is Cairo) for over a decade. Where the hell is it?

One reader mentioned various Linux desktops being popular on some Web site. For me, the MOST important factor in choosing an OS is which applications can I run. Everything else is secondary. An OS by itself does little for me, it is simply a necessary base on which to run applications. On the desktop, Linux simply does not have decent applications for 99 percent of the people out there. There was talk about Linux desktop taking over the world, world domination, and then one of the Linux gurus said, "Our goal is to increase Linux's market share on the desktop from 1 percent to 2 percent." Everyone thought he was ridiculous.

Well, guess what? Linux's market share on the desktop has actually decreased recently. Why? Well, a lot of people have realized that there will probably never be a good selection of apps for Linux, so they have given up. Two, many of the uber-geeks that were running Linux have switched to OS X because it has BSD as its base.

For the foreseeable future -- certainly the next 10 years -- Linux will irrelevant on the desktop. For the next decade, it will be a server OS, where it is providing fierce competition to Windows Server. (In some segments, such as Web servers, Linux is ahead of Windows Server.) And it will be a great choice for mobile and embedded devices, such as PDAs. But it is not going to be the desktop OS for many people for the foreseeable future.

Which brings us to OS X. Using it can make a lot of sense if you can live with the limited software choices. Me, I am a business user. I run a team where thousands of emails a day are processed through Exchange Server and all of us have access to various mailboxes. We have no choice but to use Outlook as the client, since Entourage simply does not work well with Exchange Server. Outlook is a pretty good app.

The other thing we do a lot of is design ad hoc forms, queries and reports, connecting to a SQL Server database. There is no tool on the market that comes close to what Microsoft Access offers for quick-and-dirty application building. Everything else is a joke. And Access does not run on Macintosh.

So our team uses Vista and we are happy with it. We spend almost all of our time thinking about the apps we are using, rather than thinking about the OS. Yes, we could purchase Macs and then run them so they are also running Windows, but I do not see the point of that. Why do I want to deal with two OSs if one OS (Vista) does everything I need?

Vista is a good OS. It is the first time Microsoft has released a good OS, after about a dozen trys. I assume Windows Seven will be better -- either a little bit better or a lot better, I do not know. I certainly have no intention of taking the trouble to install Seven on my current machines, I will simply get it when I upgrade our current computers, which we do about every three years, since we mostly use notebooks.

James Mitchell
jmitchell@kensingtonllc.com

Mr. Mitchell,

I'd recommend you plead with the publishers of this website and beg them to take down your information. Do you really want to be known as the computer "expert" who hitched his wagon to Vista?

I don't think Vista can't be fixed, I just find it highly unlikely that it will ever run as fast as XP. Google benchmarks, Vista and XP - sure you can run it on a very expensive computer and it doesn't seem sluggish but it also doesn't seem fast - format that same drive, slap on XP and it will FLY. Vista is incredibly slow. A GOOD programmer knows to take advantage of new 64 bit coding, better cores, faster memory so that his code actually runs FASTER on new equipment and efficiently on old equipment instead of requiring new, top of the line hardware just to run at the same speed as a 5 year old OS on a 5 year old PC.

As for getting an OS for the sake of applications - WHY VISTA? XP is compatible with significantly more apps than Vista - your logic escapes me.

Why run Vista when you can run XP on new PCs and it is significantly faster, run XP on older PCs without spending money to replace them so you can run Vista.

Is there some app that runs only on Vista that you need? If PCs are about running apps for productivity - again your choice in Vista escapes me as you spend more money (hardware and OS) to run Vista.

While you may feel Vista is an adequate OS - I sure wouldn't be known as the guy who thought Windows ME was a good OS.

PS - I'd have someone rewrite your website as it looks like it was put together by an admin, not someone with a degree in communications. Also I'd hire a web developer - if you want to look like you know about computers you don't want a web page that looks like it was slapped together during 1 day of dreamweaver camp.

I don't think there are a lot of anti MS messages here as you seem to think - however I do read a lot of anti Vista messages - completely different. This is no different than when a writer has a series of good novels and produces a truly bad novel. Critics putting down a single book aren't necessarily saying all their work is bad but are entitled to be honest about how bad a work is in comparison to others.

@ Tom, Mr.Mitchell does have a rather elaborate site. You just have to look around a bit deeper and find it here kensingtonllc.com/ Company/Default.htm

It evades me why he'd only post a link to such a simple landing page. You can find more info about him here: kensingtonllc.com/ Team/Mitchell_James/ Default.htm . Just take out the spaces between the slashes.

Gerardo - I agree he has lots of info on his site but his site is has less design creativity than a powerpoint template. Also READ the way it is written - seems like it was written by someone in 8th grade. I'm not saying everything I type is poetry but I'm not making posting it as my representation of who I am or what my business does. I'm honestly not trying to put him down - I'm sure he is extremely bright when it comes to business savvy but he really should have a professional redo his web page. He might have done what I did and slap together a web page and has forgotten to go back and improve it. Happens to a lot of businesses.

Back to the topic though - Vista sucks :)

everybody, hum everybody, say vista is in a bad shape, sure there is lot to improve, fax for example, media center etc. so come on mikeysoft, let's have it all, ultimate for 99.95 bucks no extra's included...and then all will gaze with wat a ludicrous speed this os will go forward.

@Boe: "When Bill was at the helm, MS released Windows ME which was bad as well (not as bad as vista but still bad)"

Vista is worse than ME? I hope you're kidding.

ME was completely DOA. Windows 2K already out and XP was on the books. ME was a 12 month stopgap for DOS users before the NT line went completely mainstream in XP, and it offered nothing over Windows 98.

ME was the unabashed fleecing of the Windows 98 userbase.

At least Vista isn't preying on the consumer by abandoning the product line in 12 months like ME. Here, a year after release, people at Microsoft are still running Vista on their desktops, so they're "suffering" as much as anyone else would be running it.

@ James Mitchell: I mostly agree with you, and I run Vista at home (not work), but Vista is no more a "good OS" than XP was, or Windows 2K. Windows 2K was Microsoft's best Windows release ever, in my opinion. It's still used a lot of places because it was so good.

The problem is that 90% of Vista isn't necessary for most users. They don't _need_ Aero glass, they don't need UAC, .NET 3.0, WPF, etc. No one needs this stuff to the point where they'll drop $400 on Ultimate.

In that light, Vista's problem is purely marketing, not technical. Microsoft's customers won't cope with problems when they don't need to. Microsoft needs to look at Apple for direction on this. Apple/Steve Jobs has perfected marketing OS features that people don't need or really want (until they hear about it). Plus, Leopard is basically a forced upgrade. You can't buy Tiger anymore and all apps will be Leopard-centric within months. Yet Apple users fall all over themselves to pay $130 every 12-18 months for a new version that they don't really need, and are forced to buy since third parties target it so quickly. Microsoft needs to find out what's in that marketing kool-aid if they hope to sell Windows upgrades more easily in the future.

Tom I agree with you on his lack of design. I'll sum up my opinion on his site with the following line of code form his page:

!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"

James looks like the type of person that loves to spend big buck on software and produce practically zero results. His money would have been better spent in professional IT services. Like a proper web design and actual server uptime. What is the point of registering and having a domain if for 3 years (mid 2004 to mid 2007) his site is not up? Personally I think his site is a spoof, but that is only me.

Back on topic I believe James' post is full of assumptions. He also contradicts himself. He says Windows is a bad product up to Vista. Then miraculously Microsoft releases a reliable product out of the blue. A "reliable product" which has backward compatibility, in his words:"If anything, Microsoft has too much backward compatibility in Windows, which means there is too much code that is dealing with the past."

He is saying there is too much legacy code. Too much of that bad legacy code from the other Windows versions he clearly marks as flawed. Thus in his own word Vista needs to be flawed.

My experience with Vista these last few months is that it supports open source software better than Microsoft's products. Installing and getting Microsoft's development tools has been a problem plagued with updates, patches and compatibility issues. Some things don't run on my Vista Home Premium. Thus Microsoft's Vista version segmentation is actually a burden for people like me. A burden to use their products, because open source products (professional products) run just fine.

On the consumer front, Vista-preinstalled continues to dominate the market.

The Mac's worldwide market share is still in the Others category, behind at least five other companies.

As for Mac laptops, NPD/DisplaySearch puts their worldwide market share at a whopping 4.1%. For comparison, HP has a worldwide laptop market share of 20.1%.

Al enjoys reading the posts from those who claim to have "zero problems" with Vista. perhaps those folks got the gold-plated Vista Shill Edition sku that doesn't ship the same bloated, cruddy code as the rest of the skus.

Perhaps if MSFT would simply ship the Shill Edition to everyone, Vista wouldn't be getting continued bad press & word of mouth for being such a piece of junk.

Wow! This is the only blog on the internet focusing on microsoft!

Get a Mac! ;)

Vista is a piece of crap.

I have XP Prof on a laptop with 128MB Ram & Celron processor and works great.

I have another laptop with 521MB RAM and a Centrino processor with Vista Home Basic and it runs like a legless chicken ! It is a piece of rubbish software. Slow, buggy, freezing all the time.

No, I dont want to upgrade my system with more memory. I am going to format my second laptop and remove the legal Vista from it and going to install pirated XP on it. I dont think it is ethical for me to pay for a legal copy of XP on this machine when I have already paid for the crappy Vista !

To Mr. James Mitchell :

What you wrote is a piece of crap. As a PC user I don't care what fancy shit is under the hood or how pretty my fonts look. As a consumer I want a fast, stable OS with minimum of hardware upgrade. Vista is a piece of crap software.

If I want security I will install a Firewall. The XP firewall is more than enough for most users.

I belive the push for Vista will grow much stronger when people need to use a 64-bit operating system to take advantage of the 4+ GB RAM preinstalled on their new computers. RAM is getting cheaper and cheaper. x64 Vista runs pretty fast for me.

microsoft vista is not any good at all
i have a hp notebook and was told by hp that i can take it back down to xp but afater i got it NO DRIVERS AT what a lie they told now i am stuck with a notebook i will never koop up the the net at all i can not run my sound program in vista but microsoft there are a lot of drivers for it will it is a lie again and again