[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Microsoft: Sun Will Slowly Set on Vista here

[yankeeDDL]

Sun never rose on Vista. So it can't really set.
Sad to see how a company is looking for the least shameful way to kill a dead horse.

[Klaatu]

Maybe we Vista users can start a class-action suit for OS support or on the grounds that greater than two years after introduction, Vista is STILL only half-baked. Even SP1 just ain't cuttin' it.
I for one, feel cheated but would accept a free Windows 7 upgrade.

[G33kShallInherit]

I was at the Windows Vista Install Fest, few years ago at Microsoft Headquarters Canada. I beta and Alpha tested LongHorn.
A few weeks ago I was invited to help people with their installations at the Windows 7 Install Fest. Also at the MS Canada HQ.
Netbooks (Install from USB key), new & old laptops, new & old desktops. Virtual and physical. There were 3 machines that only has 512 mb of ram and old slow P3.
Windows 7 is such an improvement over Vista.
Windows Vista has always run flawlessly on my MacBook Pro. I put on my Microsoft t-shirt looking for weaknesses in Microsoft's latest creation.
I really, really hate to admit it... I think Windows 7 is going to undo much of the damage caused by Windows Longhorn/Vista.

[waldojim]

oh please don't include Longhorn in that.

I did alpha/beta test Lonhorn/Vista, and Longhorn had its quirks yea, but even on my AMD Athlon 700mhz with 768MB PC 133, it ran fairly well, better than Vista did on my Athlon-XP 1.4 with 1GB DDR 400.... Longhorn had the average user in mind, then some goofball team at MS decided that they needed to add crap to it. They killed a great OS.

However, my copy of 7RC is downloading and I cannot wait to try it out!

[DOUGLAS666]

Microsoft's plan to stop consumer support by 2012 is crazy. That means my new high priced system will not receive any more support within three years. So unless someone was to purchase a cheap system, it would not make much sense to purchase a new computer until the fall, when windows 7 is released. Not everyone out there is skilled enough to reload a new operating system.

[rasmasyean]

This is a dumb article. It's just one speculation after another. What's the point of this article? I can just throw dates arround and make random quesses too without reading this. This is what PCWorld calls "news" these days?

[waldojim]

unfortunately, yes this is pcworld 'news'. I have not come across ONE well written, thought out article.

[Foxylady48180]

I am in the same boat as you are only I have XP which is a bigger jump. I;m sure Microsoft will make it as easy as possible to upgrade. I think with Vista you could download it right from them but don't know how that worked. I know you but the version from them on lime and them they handle the download but I don't know how smooth that went for people.

[rasmasyean]

For like the million'th time, you can find arround the internet that you're better off buying a new computer (or upgrading to certified parts) rather than installing Vista on an XP era computer. That would be a card draw at best. Not only will you reduce the feature set by having legacy hardware, you are subject to low speeds and potential bugs on devices that weren't tested in the new OS. I don't think Windows 7 will change any of that. It "will work better out of box" much due to the fact that computers on average will be more newer (and powerful) by then and there will be less of the ancient ones still being used. Simple as that despite any marketing hype. If they could have "fixed" anything in Win7, they would have done it in Vista too. They aren't "dumping" anything. There's nothing worng with Vista...if you use the right hardware like any other major OS upgrade.

[yankeeDDL]

@ FoxyLady48180,

in my experience it's always safer to move to a new OS a few months after it's release. In case of Windows, better to wait till SP1 is out.
Much of the bugs and annoyances will be fixed by then and you'll save yourself a few headaches.

I had a look at W7 and it "feels" VERY different than XP. If you're inclined to make the jump, perhaps you can install Windows 7 as dual-boot and get familiar with it for a few weeks before transitioning fully to it. This way you can also check whether the performance on your PC is acceptable.

For me it's still too early to make a decision but so far I'm inclined to stick to XP until it's time to upgrade my PC ... which I'm not even considering at the moment. I can get everything done on Windows XP and it does it quickly and ... all things considered, relatively reliably. Windows 7 has a lot more graphics gimmicks which I find appealing, but rather useless. I also don't like the new taskbar (personal preference of course) as it does not show the "title" of the window, so I need to hoover on it to find out what it is.

Also be careful about the minimum requirement specs. XP is supposed to work with 512MB but I normally have several applications opened at once, so less than 2GB won't cut it. For Windows 7 it would probably make sense to have at least 3GB if using one of the triple-channel Intel CPU or 4GB with one of AMD's 64bit CPUs. If you have less than that, I wouldn't even consider moving to W7.

Hope this helps.

[Evildave]

Or just install Linux on it, and have an OS that makes XP look like a snail, and Vista... well, something that makes snails look speedy.

It's all drag & click, just like Windoze, only FREE. Easy to use, tons of free productivity software. Work fine, last real long time.

Your 'XP Era' machine will probably run it just fine, because your 'Windoze 2000', and even 'Win9x era' machine will run Linux just fine.

It's not a bloated mess of badly written, insecure crap that needs half a dozen 'anti-' packages scanning it continuously to give you a false sense of security.

[yankeeDDL]

Cheers to that Evildave.
For once I thought I'd save my Linux speech (I do use Windows on my work laptop: no choice, but everything else is Ubuntu, including my 900MHz Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop, which dates back to early 2001) ... but you took care of it just fine. :)

I liked the honest comment from Rasmasyean: << For like the million'th time, you can find arround the internet that you're better off buying a new computer (or upgrading to certified parts) rather than installing Vista on an XP era computer >>

It's true. With Linux you'll save the cost of a PC and of the OS and of much software that you can find frr on Linux platform. But there are situation where you must use Windows. Unfortunately ;)

[rasmasyean]

Yo, Yankee. I'll have to admit that most people I know throw out laptops like that one you're using. I'm surprised your battery still works! But I guess if installing Linux on it does the job for you, more power to you.

[yankeeDDL]

I had to replace the battery in 2005 and this one is not that great anymore. Actually it's quite crappy.
But the laptop was not intended for mobility to begin with but as a desktop replacement (it has a GeForce 2Go with 32MB of ram and a 1600x1200 15.4" display: not bad for a 8years+ laptop). Still, I can move it from room to room without having to turn it off or to "run" for a power outlet. That's good enough.
I can still watch fullscreen Divx on it (sometimes I use it as a portable TV, so I can watch movies from my bed), and it handles torrent downloads, web browsing just fine. And since I can network it with my PC (which also has Linux) I have access to all my documents. Yes, it works quite well as an "extra PC". Wouldn't use it as my only PC though.
For that I have a 4GB Athlon 64 (single core: dates back 2005) with 4GB of Ram, ATI's HD 2600XT and a couple of 250GB HD. I have XP installed on it with MS office 2007 in dual boot with Ubuntu (I moved yesterday to 9.04 from 8.10). I have a lot of peripherals (webcam, multi card readers, external HD and DVD-RW, wireless mouse and keyboard, bluetooth dongle, PDA cradle ...) so Ubuntu takes relatively long to boot: 41seconds. XP boots in 3 minutes and 29seconds (that is till the HD sits reasonably still:in Ubuntu I also load the resource monitor ... because I can, so I know for sure when it's ready). Since December I haven't booted in XP once: no chances/time to play games; for everything else I use Linux ;)
In both Ubuntu and XP I load a bunch of IM software (Skype, MSN ...) at startup. On XP I also have the antivirus, activesync ...

Oh, the 8yrs old laptop boots in 1min 04sec with Ubuntu 9.04. There also I have IMs, loaded at startu, but the only peripheral is the wi-fi usb key. ;)

[yankeeDDL]

By the way, the laptop was "Designed for Windows ME". Incidentally, that was the only OS that never worked on it. I tried: I swear, I really tried to get it to work, but failed miserably after few months. It would could not be on for more than 4~5hrs without crashing.
I moved to XP few months after it was released and stuck to it till 2006 or so. Habits change and by then I found myself holding off from starting all the software to avoid slow down. I stripped down the startup services and apps to prevent growing beard while waiting for it to boot, then had a bunch of ... groups of softwares that I would start depending from what I was planning to do ... when browsing the web I would close tabs right away to save as much resources as possible (it has 512MB of ram) and I would try to keep as few programs running at the same time as possible.
Then I almost threw it away. Then last November I decided to try Ubuntu on it, and wish I had done it sooner. I also tried some exotic distro (Puppy Linux, to name my favorite): it's just amazing to see a fully fledges OS with memory footprint on th eorder of 50MB ... leaving all the resources available to run software. I haven't timed Puppy Linux but I bet it booted in less than 30sec. Easily. I went back to Ubuntu cause I still have a very basic knowledge of Linux and on "crude" distros like Puppy Linux I had my difficulties (could not find a way to install OpenOffice and I did not like AbiWord). But Ubuntu worked just as well to breath life back into it.

I would certainly encourage everyone to install Linux on an older laptop before throwing it away. There's nothing to loose and much to gain. You may end up liking it like I did :)

[rasmasyean]

You're a packrat! Lol
I've tried to keep old computers (that I stole from work, etc.) in the hope that I would use them for whatever little thing at a different section of the house, but never found the desire to after my new computer can do everything that did in the background. On my main, I never upgraded an OS without changing the CPU/MB/RAM at least actually so all my parts just went to friends and family for salvage. Stuff like HD and disk drives can still be used for a while after its generation so those are the only things I kept from old computers to the next. But after a while I found even the speed increase in new HD's and DVD's and DVD-RAM and such make it so it's a pain to use older parts too. Plus it's nice to have all your files in one place...unless you're doing some home network storage solution. Even then, you will suffer running modern apps on legacy hardware.
I guess if you find a special use for it then you can turn it into an application focused electronic device...like jukebox or something. Otherwise it's just some ugly furniture. :p

[yankeeDDL]

You're doing what I thought I'd be doing before I discovered Linux.

You don't really need network storage to have all files in the same place: I have the laptop and the PC on the same network: I can access the files both ways. I'm sure you can do that with Windows too.
I can do everything on my 8 years old laptop except gaming (for which I don't have time anyway) and burning DVDs (it has a CD-RW, not a DVD-rw). It's nice to have it up and running, sharing torrents, listening to online radio, arrange music, take care of my photos, follow my web 2.0, checking emails ... even all at the same time. It is, from every perspective, a fully operational PC for me. And it runs the latest (Linux) OS :)

Anywa, we're digressing. Point is, I never looked at Vista. Realistically, I may have to use Windows 7 on my work laptop (where I have to run Windows) and I'm not looking forward to leave XP. Perhaps it's only that I grew used to it since I've used it for 8 years, but I simply feel no interest to change, leave something that has served me well to go onto W7.

[rasmasyean]

Windows XP does not support 64-bit mainstream. With larger applications and the demand for more productivity per worker, the extra RAM if anything will allow you a quicker multitasking experience. I also think that once people learn a bit from the energy savings of Vista and Window 7 later (there have been case studies on this), they will want to move to it, not to mention MS dropping support. I wouldn't get all teary-eyed when your firm decides to "move forward". They are always looking to lay-off people nowadays so if they see you as not adaptable just a little, you might cross their mind.

[Foxylady48180]

I'm not certain, but I don't think I have a problem with my maching. I have Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93 GHz 4MB Cache 1066 FSB (CPU) and 4GB of RAM. What worrys me is doing the deed. Never swapped out OS's before and have to find out how to do that without screwing everything up.