good for you.

What the problem is for many people is that Microsoft knowingly lowered required specifications so that Intel would not be left hanging with a bunch of crappy 915 integrated motherboards and also help Intel boost their quarterly earnings. Many people got screwed when they bought brand new computers labeled "Vista Capable" would not even run most of the new features Microsoft had been touting about.

http://gizmodo.com/362102/vista-capable-laptops-sucked-so-intel-could-dump-crappy-graphics-chips

The bad thing about it is that Microsoft knew.

Vista was supposed to feature a brand new file system. More secure. In my opinion, it is nothing more than another Windows Me.

I have xp pro and vista business on my 17" macbook pro . Using Parallels I run windows in a virtual environment right alongside OS X. I have 2 gig of ram, 2.4 intel core duo and geforce 8600m gt with 256 meg.

xp runs circles around vista. vista was and is nothing more but fluff. xp runs fine and actually faster that vista with sp1!

And btw, Leopard, with the latest updates, runs beautiful. Great spellcheck feature have to use both environments but now prefer Mac. No more issues. really.

Having different boot modes doesnt mean u actually need all of them . Well rgreen ,may have answered this but i think i missed a part of this while i wasnt able to get in past 2 days.
What u suggest is exactly my setup. A vista plus ubuntu dual boot and a xp on vm , i dont think it was worth including xp in the boot config , but it depends on person to person. Earlier some of my programs were giving probs with vista but now i dont use the xp on vm to run any of those , just a few stay there. I have been able to work out how to run the older ones.
Well the discussion has two aspects , xp vs vista and another of linux vs windows and there is no point in making the 2nd one as vista vs linux. You cant compare a group of OSes with a single one. Xp vs vista - all who have continued with vista are aware of the fact that vista is surely better than xp , although u cant really compare xp and vista both running on 512 ram. And remember its not fair comparing an OS whose service pack is still to be publicly made available to another that is almost completely patched.
Linux vs windows - there is no point in fighting over this, what matters is what you want to use, what u r more comfortable with. The part which i like abt linux is freedom , no crap initially loaded into the setup , the factory loaded installations are totally junk but its the manufacturers who r to be blamed for that , not the os developers.

---

There are 10 type of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Another little growth market is that little 'One Laptop Per Child' initiative. The one that gives out free (or very inexpensive) rugged little computers to third world children? 100% Linux. After all, you pretty much double the price of the machine if you install a Microsoft OS onto it. Of all the charitable things Bill Gates has lately thought to try, giving out free Windows licenses to the poor apparently isn't something that could get past the Microsoft board room (if he even tried). Not that Vista would in fact even boot on one of those machines. Even if Microsoft released a specially developed OS to put on such machines, it wouldn't work well (they can't even make it work well with the latest, most expensive hardware), and they'd go out of their way to cripple it in all kinds of nasty ways. You may as well give the kids an 'etch-a-sketch' and call it a computer for what Microsoft would provide. An etch-a-sketch that would automatically erase its self at odd intervals without inverting and shaking, then demand Microsoft telephone activation, then stop working with a message about a 'revoked driver'.
http://laptop.org/

Anyway, those seeds are planted. When those children are grown, do you think they'll invest $500 (adjusted for inflation) for a proprietary Microsoft OS, or simply stay with what they know?

I absolutely agree that changing OS can be 'bad news'. Every time you went from DOS->Win3.1->98->XP->Vista->????, you're CHANGING THE OS. And it's been BAD NEWS, as every poor clueless TWIT who claims that switching to XP to Vista "should" be painful, because of these precedents.

Every couple of years Microsoft guts their OS and sells the new one as if it's compatible with the previous one. And it usually is... sort of.

If you're going to change from an XP OS to a sort-of compatible Vista OS, you may as well consider making a healthy change and going to a POSIX environment, where the rest of the world will be waiting for you in a few more years. You can try WINE if you like. Sure, it doesn't work very well for lots of Windows applications, but neither does Vista.

It's like Metric versus SAE. Sure, you can keep using those SAE wrenches (Microsoft's closed, proprietary systems) and spurn Metric (everything left that is a going concern is POSIX compliant), but finding nuts that your SAE wrenches fit keeps getting harder every year, and the only international customer a U.S. company will have for SAE based machinery is the UK. Maybe. But they're not fools. Sure, they still put 'miles' on the roads, but only backwater fools in the U.S. who think the world is 50 states continue to make new SAE based equipment. Pretty much everybody else went to Metric.

Have I had networking and wireless connectivity issues with Linux in the past? Yes. Were these caused by bad purchasing decisions? EVERY SINGLE ONE. Have I had similar problems with Windows versions with various wireless cards and USB dongles and such in the past? Oh very much YES. Samba (the thing that connects to Windows networks) will always be 'broken' when connecting to the latest (so-called) greatest Windows version because it is a closed standard that changes unnecessarily, so the people who maintain SMB have to painstakingly reverse-engineer it. It's even a royal pain in the butt just connecting older Windows PCs to networks run by newer Windows PCs, so I don't see why it's such a discovery that a Windows file share often can't be accessed out of the box from Linux.

Hi CaptainKeyboard and welcome to the PCWorld Communities.

Let me try to squash any potential conflict. It is great that you would like to advise individuals on correct English usage; however, this is not an English class. The information shared is more important than the spelling of a word or the way a word is used. Believe me, I understand that seeing a misspelled word or misused word is annoying but it is not any one person's place to correct the spelling, grammar, or context of another person's post. People take that very personally and may sometimes lash out at the person who is attempting to make a honest correction.

Additionally, this forum may be based in the United States but we get people from all over the world who post here. Some may have a better grasp of the English language than others. The best thing we can do is be patient with that person and read the post for the content, not the context.

Now, if the information itself is misleading or wrong, then by all means step up and correct the person providing the information.

---

This is my personal Dream PC: http://forums.pcworld.com/blogs/mphenterprises/2007/12/21/my-gift-to-myself

My friend, I was a huge MS fan until Vista and Office 2007. My company used to be a Microsoft Certified Partner. There are very few MS apps we don't have and use.

I am running our PCs with Intel Core2 Quad 2.40 chips, 4GHz of the fastest RAM we could find, and 2 10,000 RPM internal disk drives. The drives are configured to have all application related files on one HD and all data files on the second HD thus preventing the need to have one disk seeking both the application and the data. This is not a RAID configuration; it is a performance configuration. (We do use RAID 5 for servers and NAS/SAN.) Each PC has a video card with 512 MB of RAM, Intel GHz Ethernet cards, and sound cards. The concept behind using task specific cards is to take as much burden off the motherboard as possible and reduce the use of physical RAM to keep the use of virtual RAM to a minimum. Our infrastructure is entirely at GHz speed (routers, switches, etc.). As you may have guessed, these are custom built machines with the best compatible components. These are not low end toys. We are not gamers; we run very complex financial models and performance is critical.

Any application not required for our needs was uninstalled. That includes turning off any unused Vista Windows feature. All non essential services have been shut down. We use Diskeeper 2008 to defrag the HD's during off hours everyday. Our IE7 cache is clean each night including cookies except for useful cookies. We run two full anti virus/malware/spyware/etc each week. We run more specific scans everyday. Also we use real time scans on any new data received from any source external to the PCs including files retried from our servers, NAS, or SAN.

I did not indicate any Apple OS was superior to Vista, so I am not sure where you got that notion. Frankly I am not concerned about the appearance of an app's GUI provided the GUI is not an impediment for users or performance. The growing list of software that will not run on Vista SP1 is not from some "bloggers" site as you seem to think. The MS knowledge base has an article updated as needed of applications that either will not run or have impaired features after installing SP1. You are not correct in saying every vendor has SP1 patches; there are number of highly sophisticated non-retail, non-mass consumer applications with the same issues. MS does not post those applications because the impact is on 100's to several thousands of users. Typically the applications cost about $150,000 on the low end to in excess of $20 million towards the top; developing, testing, and implementing code changes for mission critical software are not trivial.

I would suggest that it might be useful for you to do significantly more research from industry trade journals. One of my favorites is only available to industry insiders, and the subscription price is $1,130 per year. It is one of about a dozen such journals to which we subscribe. Also you may wish to become a client of at least two of the following firms: Gartner, The Tower Group, The Tabb Group, Forrester Research, and several other similar firms. I believe the information and access to the top IT analysts in the IT business are well worth the costs. I recommend two because their advice is not always completely consistent. This allows us to go back to each firm and challenge them on the differences. I have only myself to blame for not following some pretty expensive advise. Should you find my suggestions worthy, you just might learn a bit more than you seem to know already.

This is not the case with vista only. It was the same with earlier windows OS also. Leave windows , linux and mac OSes are also patched continually, all the 3 rd party applications are updated and patched regulary. So you should get a rebate on all purchases ? Or should all applications be made free ? If people think that way, then there are tons of open-source software present.

---

There are 10 type of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Over Christmas I was visiting with an old friend and his wife. One of their daughter's and grandson are living with them temporarily, and he received a new e-Machines with integrated video, a C2D E4500 and 1GB of memory. The OS was Vista Home Premium. His Uncle had already de-crapified it and removed Norton's, and we installed Avast and Superantispyware.

It runs fine. He was happy as a lark, and had the wireless set up and was playing some of his games on it. (Don't ask which ones as I'm not a gamer).

This is why the vast majority of users are more than happy with their machines with Vista. Many of whom run with only 1GB.

My three machines are a little more powerful with dedicated video cards and 2GB of ram. I recently boost one to 4GB when Newegg had a promotion on the exact ram I have in my built up machine so since I still had two empy sockets, i figured I wouldn't get a better deal. The only problems I have had have been with one program. Quicken 2008 won't print right on my lasers, but Quicken 2006 on the same machine prints just fine. That's a program problem, not an OS or printer problem. Everything else works fine.

I do know that not all older periphials will work, but that is a driver issue. Drivers come from the device manufacturer. If a manufacturer chooses not to write a driver for an OS, that is between the customer and the manufacturer. All OS's currently on the market have this issue with the lack of some drivers for a particular OS, this is not unique to Vista, not even unique to Microsoft.

---

Doing an obscenely unscientific survey, I came across this right off the top of my head with Google.

"I Love Vista" Results 1 - 10 of about 34,500
"I Hate Vista" Results 1 - 10 of about 40,700
Pretty close for these milquetoast terms.

Let's try some more visceral colloquialisms.,,
"Vista Sucks": Results 1 - 10 of about 212,000
"Vista Rocks" Results 1 - 10 of about 27,600
"Vista Rules" Results 1 - 10 of about 16,100
"Vista Is Awesome" Results 1 - 10 of about 553

Overall, based on my spotty Google survey I'd say the majority consensus is "Vista Sucks".

Even if you stick with love vs. hate, 50% is a FAILING grade pretty much everywhere... and Vista doesn't even get that.

You Microsoft shills out there aren't doing a good enough job! For shame! Get on the ball and post how much you adore Vista, how you want to have its babies and can't live without it for even an hour. Spam everything, everywhere!

Added:
OK, I finally found one that's a little better for Vista. But it's going to be hard to top "Vista Sucks" (in quotes), at least for pertinence to what the search is about.
"I like Vista" Results 1 - 10 of about 130,000

Its interesting there are about half a million articles about downgrading to XP.
Downgrade*Vista Results 1 - 10 of about 504,000

There are millions of articles about upgrading to Vista, but someone's shoveling money and making offers and deals to get millions of blurbs about that out in the public. Nobody would pay to put an ad that says "Downgrade back to XP" on TV. Well... maybe Apple might.