I have 2 PC’s sitting side by side, one XP with an older slower processor and a Vista PC with a newer processor. The XP PC is faster in all areas that really matter.

I am dumping Vista.

Their goal right now is to get business to adopt their OS. Only thing Microsoft has to do is have VISTA talk in some way that XP won’t understand, then everyone will be faced with either ceasing to do business with the VISTA adopters, or join in and pay yet again just to be able to communicate with the Microsoft Technology Partners.

I can’t tell you how many Microsoft web sites I can’t see. And still Microsoft bandies around their “Linux is Violating our Patents” crap for just trying to talk to a Microsoft box.

Personally, ripping up my computing infrastructure to replace so-called “obsolete” technology is just about as much fun as repiping my house because the hardware store won’t sell me any more washers that fit my existing faucets, and have law passed to keep anyone else from making any.

This “embrace, extend, Patent” crap is for the highly paid business executive who has risen over the need to be accessible to his customers. When one has the income of these businesses, why the hell do they need customers anyway?

I have only found ONE stock broker that honors standard web protocols!

And I have had a helluva time researching healthcare insurance, resulting in hours of phone time when what I wanted was a simple HTML page.

“Plays for Sure” my eye!

Clearly they have forgotten what an Operating System is suppose to do.

It’s a platform to run ‘Application Programs’ on.

For a single user desktop Pc to require 512mb of memory just to run is a joke. Only one PC in our office came close to the min reqs for Vista, and I’ve got Vista Beta2 running on it. ( without the flash gui because none of our desktops have DX9 cards, why should they it’s an office!)
What do we get for giving the OS all that memory and processor?
A slower and more clumbersome OS!

And transparent window requiring DX9 hardware and 128mb memory – KDE 3.5 can do that on an S3 class video card, In fact I have Suse 10.1 running inside a MS virtualPC with transparent windows turned on!

Vista is a joke, but I doubt many users will be laughing.

Bottom line is if you’re a windows user stick with XP, unless you’re running a top of the line PC and don’t mind the OS using more resources than any sane Desktop OS has a right to use.

I like vista but I wont purchase it for atleast 2 years as it will be very buggy. I have a licenced RC2 copy from M$ and I must say that it only took 35 minutes to install on my test laptop. M$ have basicaly copied Apples OSX and added somw bells and whistles. OK, it llooks nice and pritty but uses up too much system resources even with 1gb of ram. Because I’m a self employed software developer I had to upgrade my test laptop memory to 2gb just to see if it made any diference, it did.

I’ll keep developing my applications in XP pro because vista updates the look my software to match th vista look. Datagrids, forms, buttons, text boxes, everything is updated to look live vista and it works well except for one calendar and the security issue which I have now fixed.

In answer to James, personal computing really did make spectacular breakthroughs from the seventies through the nineties. But most people who use computers now have more capability than they know what to do with (though a really long-playing laptop battery is still needed). Basically, the technology has now entered into the “mature” phase as far as really useful capabilities are concerned. Until home theaters become holodecks, with a few tweaks, the present level of hardware speed and software versatility is adequate for most purposes.