If you want to more fully paraphrase the character of Harry Calahan, then:
I know what you're thinking, punk. You're thinking, 'Did he fix six thousand bugs or only five-thousand, nine-hundred, and nintey-nine?' Well to tell you the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being as this is Windows Vista, the most bloated operating system in the world, and would blow your disk heads clean off, you gotta ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?

Do I feel lucky? No, not this time. I just feel tired. I spent more than an hour grappling with Vista's "security" and "permissions" because it decided that I had no rights to some of my own plain old Office files.

I've now decided that Vista is no longer a viable operating system for me in my computing future.

But then so have a lot of other computer users, haven't they?

Re-committment to XP SP3 just feels so right and works so well!

Can't wait 'till XP SP3 comes out so I can slipstream it into my Dell XP CD and create a new XP image for work.

I'm thinking corporate deployment of Vista about 6 months after SP1.....mabye. We'll see.

The so called Vista "Wow" turned into a great big Vista "Why" for me. As in "Why" did I bother to install Vista in the first place? I've also gone back to XP Pro and am looking forward to the SP3 update.

I was not sure if I would buy XP or Vista for my new 8-core mac but in light of SP1 for Vista I have decided to get it retail.

Amazing.

I installed SP1 RC on Vista. However, I have an Norton Ghost Image pre-SP1, which I will restore once SP1 final is released and then do a "clean" install of SP1 final.

That said, my SP1 RC machine is running fine. I have not had a glitch. I think you will be pleased with the performance.

I don't believe there are really as many people as you would think that hate Vista. It is like I have always been told in business, "Each dissatisfied customer will tell eight to ten people about their dissatisfaction and one in five will tell twenty people how dissatisfied they are. But a satisfied customer will tell only two people."

Older computers and laptops are going to have problems with Vista. I could not get my laptop to run Vista satisfactorily, even with SP1 installed. It would always eventually freeze up. But that does not make Vista a bad product. My desktop is a different story. It loves Vista and runs fast and smooth. I have never had a freeze-up or OS crash yet. I'll bet if someone took a poll of customers who purchased mid to high end PC's with Vista Home Premium or higher, it would get high marks. It is a modern OS with modern hardware requirements.

If you have an older or low-end newer computer, absolutely stick with XP. With all updates installed, it runs great and secure.

Brian;

Good Job, I can also smell the memmory burning and the liquid cooling blowing up in the air in the background.

______________________________________________

You know, Joe, I've tried the SP1-RC and once it installed, it thought of me as a theif and I couldn't get into the operating system. Fortunately for me, I made an image and did a restore.

Since then, I got a Mac Pro, and thanks to Brian's quote, I am going to watch Dirty Harry on it.

It is amazing how people get pissed when their 2 year old hardware don't work with Vista and then get all exited when they realize that their spick and span Leopard OSX runs just fine on... a brand new MacPro. Doesn't really add up, but who am I to blow against the wind!

Gates Wishes More Polish Had Gone Into Vista, Sort of
http://osnews.com/comments/19140

Even Bill knows Vista sucks.

Simple, tiny computers forcing Microsoft to make changes
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/346547_flashpc09.html

Consumers Struggle With Microsoft Vista, Malware and Network Setups, According to support.com's First Annual Call Center Review

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/industries/technology/article/consumers-struggle-microsoft-vista-malware-network-setups-according_423130_12.html

Quotes from the link;

"support.com, a remote tech support service, found the majority of consumer tech issues in 2007 fell into three categories: virus and spyware issues (27 percent), tune-ups (31 percent) and simple quick fixes (32 percent), according to its first annual call center issues review. In its inaugural year, support.com found that consumers struggled with Microsoft Vista, accounting for 10 percent of calls.

Even with advances in and awareness of computer security, viruses and spyware continue to infiltrate computers, leaving consumers frustrated and unable to protect their computers properly. In 2007, support.com technicians removed an average of 36 viruses per computer. Technicians reported this is due to exposed vulnerabilities once the computer is infected, leaving other viruses to be downloaded without detection.

While virus and spyware removal ranked as the top problem in the call center, slow performing PCs came in second on the list."

Reviewing the data from support.com, viruses and malware really are still the main problem for Windows users, including Vi$ta users. Windows is not a modern OS compared to Linux, Mac OSX, or BSD, which do not suffer from the same malware/virus problems as Windows does.

Also the fact that 10% of the support.com calls were just about Vi$ta, would imply that the Vi$ta OS has problems, and is not easier to use than XP.

SP1 is not going help any of this, is also is a performance dud, not to mention, that SP1 will not make any more programs compatable, the biggest problem with Vi$ta. Gaming will still be a terrible experience as well with Vi$ta, as most have found out. Gamers are using XP, as Vi$ta is just too slow, clunkly, and hangs up too much.

Joe;

My gosh, I find myself in somewhat of an agreement with Chips on his latest two comments made, well, there was another one he made several days before that I found myself astonished in agreeing with -- What is the world coming to?

Like I said before, I am in the IT business and own my own shop. Lately I have been swamped with work orders on disatisfied customers with Vista on brand new machines, and mind you that these machines are brand new, but they are "cheap" machines, bargan machines that quite often barely run Vista but will most certainly run XP just fine, and people in general do not understand or care about "minimal requirements" but rather just see performance and can grasp that their machines run better on XP and they do.

The second thing so far as I deal with businesses who will not want to venture into Vista because their software they are running will not work on Vista and they DO NOT want to loose their productivity or functionality on migrating to Vista because of the perceived learning curve and that their proprietary software is incompatible. They will not spend the money on new high end workstations just to run something that they cannot afford.

Also the learning curve, let's face it, Vista is different from XP and most of the personell working for these places are not like us in the first place, they are not computer geeks. They in fact are people just making a living and under enough stress from their day to day jobs. With learning, or forced to learn a new operating system in attempting to do the same old thing they've been doing for the last five years, well adds to the frustration with many.

There are businesses out there that take this frustation factor, productivity, and hardware and IT support costs as a major factor in their discision-making processes. I think we all can gently nod our heads on this in agreement or at least some consideration, right?

When I migrated to Windows 2000 from Win 98SE it was a very smooth process, and I was able to play my games just fine, not to mention system stability on the NT Platform. When I migrated from NT 4.0 to W2K it was a no brainer snap. When I migrated to XP in the beginning, I disliked the "Fischer-Price" look of Xp -- It sucked, but I got used to it, it grew on me. When I clicked on "Start" then chose, "Control Panel" and selected "Add or Remove Programs" its been that way since Windows 95 -- Why did Microsoft change that in Vista. Now most of us here on the board can say, "Well its now under 'Programs and Features'" but you've missed my point -- Why did Microsoft find it neccessary to change that, was it because of Userability issues? Nope, everyone "knew" where to add or delete a program and what it was called. Now I am using this as an example and there are many of these so called changes in Vista and I am certainly not against for added features and functionality, however lets leave the old ones called the same and leave these features alone in their naming convention.

Listen Microsoft, you brought us up on these things, to be called and act accordingly, why all of a sudden are you renaming things and adding a level of frustration for the people I've mentioned here, why?

Don't even bring up Office 2007 with these people, god they will kill me to mention this with them... Too many changes for these folks. I am not saying their stupid by any means and has nothing to do with how bright they are, but why alienate the workforce, MS's bread and butter by agrivating them so?

As some of you know, I went from Vista 64 which is alright to a Mac Pro and I am learning Mac, still I will not make a judgement on Mac, I am not schooled enough on this yet, but I like it.

I sold me fist Ubuntu Linix machine today that was on display, completely loaded with Open Office and all the latest features. A man said, "My god this reminds me of a dressed up version of Windows 2000 -- I love it." I explained the difference, but he walked out of the store with the system. He'll do just fine with Ubuntu. It burns CDs, DVD's listen to music and email, plus his light office work just great and I wish him well.

My Vista 64 machine is of no more, top knotch HP workhorse has been reformatted with Windows Server 2003 Enterprise and doing just fine these days as my server and development platform.

Thanks Bill Gates for introducing me to Mac!

Douglas S. Taylor: Yer a windy feller but ya nailed it purty good.

Have tried 4-5 times in the last 24hrs to get the update to work. Microsoft is going to have to do better than this if they expect the general public to use Vista and be happy with it.

I myself am going back to XP on those systems I've moved to Vista. Maybe I can hold my breath and hope that SR2 will be the answer.

tried it then uninstalled. Caused major reliability issues, random reboots and generally screwed up software.

I installed SP1 RC on two of my main machines and although the install process is nothing short of stupid and takes forever (yes on a very new machine) the improvements are worth the hoops you need to jump through.

Faster file processing, faster network access, small improvements in overall speed. I have not had any of the problems that people are claiming like random rebooting, system crashes and the like.

One small word of advice - Vista hates overclocking, I have found that returning ALL components to their rated speeds and voltages prior to installing Vista and again prior to installing service pack 1 that everything appears to go much smoother, while I know that there is no logical reason for this to happen, I am not the only person who has noted it.

A short search on most of the boards will turn up the same advice.

I installed SP1 RC on two of my main machines and although the install process is nothing short of stupid and takes forever (yes on a very new machine) the improvements are worth the hoops you need to jump through.

Faster file processing, faster network access, small improvements in overall speed. I have not had any of the problems that people are claiming like random rebooting, system crashes and the like.

One small word of advice - Vista hates overclocking, I have found that returning ALL components to their rated speeds and voltages prior to installing Vista and again prior to installing service pack 1 that everything appears to go much smoother, while I know that there is no logical reason for this to happen, I am not the only person who has noted it.

A short search on most of the boards will turn up the same advice.

Apparently even this site suffers unusual problems from time to time - note two posts above after pressing post once.

This is even with the sites own 'safety' feature that does not allow people to post more than once within a set amount of time (I am not sure what this time limit is)