Hi Ward. You are correct that we delete posts that we feel are part of a campaign by a company or its agents to promote the company's products or to disparage its competitors or their products. it is also correct, as stated in another part of the community standards, that signatures must follow all community standards as well.

The point of item 13 is to delete posts from say, HP to hype up how awesome their printers are or smear the reputation of Canon's printers. The key words here are "by a company or its marketing or public relations agencies". Users are welcome (and encouraged) to post their experiences and recommendations for products. We welcome vendor participation, but we require that they disclose their affiliation. So a post like "Hi, I'm Joe from HP. I wanted to let you know that we have a newer model out..." would be fine, assuming that it's not part of a larger marketing or PR campaign. But just hyping a product without disclosing your affiliation with that product is not allowed. Nor is executing some sort of viral campaign within the posts on our site.

It is common in communities for users to add words or graphics to their signatures to express themselves. We allow and encourage this as long as they don't violate our standards. For example, just like we don't allow profanity, personal attacks, or pornography in posts, we don't allow them in signatures. I don't think that the presence of a Firefox (or Microsoft or Ubunu, etc) logo in a signature makes it part of a campaign by a company to promote their products. It is more likely that it is simply someone enthusiastic about the program/product. Until there is more evidence to suggest otherwise, I choose to assume good will (assume that the person is not trying to break the rules) and that the person is just an enthusiast, not a shill for a product or program.

You also mentioned that you see so many of the same signatures. First, the signature for that user appears at the bottom of every post. So for active users, you'll see it a lot. Second, some of the graphics are very common (the Firefox logo, for instance), are spread widely around the internet (there are several sites where one can obtain signature graphics), or are generated from templates (a plain black bar that a user can insert their own text on). I do not agree that the same or similar signatures automatically constitute a marketing campaign.

I hope that answers your concerns. If you have any more questions, please feel free to send me a private message or to post them in the PC World's Website section.

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Kellie Parker | Online Community Manager | PC World

If MS had not copied the Mac GUI, don't you think they would have based their defense on that? In fact, why would they have needed the license from Apple for Windows 1 if they weren't copying? After all, Windows 1 was written before Apple and MS came to a licesing agreement.

Many of Apple's claims of infringement were not covered by the license. The court found that most of these things were not protectable. The court did not decide that MS did not copy the Mac GUI. In fact, Windows' recycling bin was specifically found to be an unlicensed copy of the Mac trashcan.

Neither of your linked sources support your claims that I was untruthful in my posts. Yet you continue with the unfounded, childish accusations. If you can respond in a more mature manner, feel free (but please start a new thread so that we don't continue to hijack this one), but otherwise I'll refrain from further responses to you.

I'm not a fanboy by any means. I just get tired of hearing all the innacurate myths perpetuated by the Apple haters. There are lots of criticisms of merit that could be made against Macs, but those aren't the things that people write about in internet forums such as these, since they would require actual familiarity with the current Mac platform, as well as research.

Thanks North & RGreen (especially the interesting tire story), but you misinterpret the car analogy. I do not know a single person that buys a computer, installs an OS, and STOPS -- installing Zero programs. The car analogy is that no one buys a car, starts the motor, and goes NOWHERE. These programs are not accessories like hubcaps or dice hanging from the rear view miror -- they are the transmission -- something that lets you go somewhere & do something.

So, if the motor does not connect to the transmission to let you go somewhere ( the OS connects to usable software to accomplish something), all you have is money spent on something perhaps pretty but unusable.

I've heard the arguments between the hardware guys vs the software guys for over 20 years -- now we have the same thing between the OS guys vs vendor guys.

Until it all is working together at the time of the sale, the average non-techie is lost. As I said, the first company to sucessfully put it all together will make a bundle from all the unhappy customers out there -- but they are the ones who keep me in business, right? With the way it seems to continue to be going, I'll have job security longer that social security is supposed to last!!!!!!!

Actually, if you want to equate the OS to the engine, the car is more like Apple than Wintel. You go down to the local car dealer to buy a new (for the sake of discussion) Ford engine. What brand of car does that engine come in?

With Mac OS/X, what brand of computer does it come in?

With Microsoft, you want to buy a new Vista or XP machine, your choice - what brand does it come in - or maybe we should ask how many brands does it come in?

There are what, four major manufacturers, dozens of smaller manufacturers, hundreds of specialty custom build manufacturers and then hundreds of thousands of people who have built their own computers by assembling the parts they have bought at a variety of suppliers. And we expect the OS to function properly on perhaps five hundred or so motherboards (per current Newegg listing) and another 400 or so video cards (same source) and in addition to that support tens of thousands programs written by someone that MS has absolutly no control over and do it flawlessly.

To use the car analogy again, it is not the function of the engine to modulate the transmission, but to provide power to the input shaft of the transmission. It is the job of the transmission to function behind the engine. Or to put it another way, when you install a different engine, you must modify (update anyone?) the transmission input to be able to bolt up to the new engine. You never modify the new engine to work with the old transmission.

I can see you trading in your 6 year old car, and during the deal you want to be able to use the transmission out of your old car in your new one, but you want the engine to accept the change. I don't think any of us need to imagine too hard to envision the car dealer's reaction. But that is what you are asking of Microsoft. Their new OS should work flawlessly with older programs, many not even written to the proper XP standards or even the NT4 standards. If they had been written to the standards set forth when NT4 was the "professional" Microsoft OS, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Yes the drivers would have to be written to the new OS, but the old programs would run fine.

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In case no one has realized it yet, MACWorld and PCWorld are lovers (both run by IDG). They live for this type of hype as it gets your attention. PC's are still and will continue to be the prevailing format...and a MAC is really a PC now anyway - so the laugh is on you!

Vista is and has been stable for a long time. Many hardware and software vendors have decided not to update products as they were for Vista to make $$ for themselves with NEW products and leave you in the cold - again, the joke is on you. MS can only do so much as far as third parties go. Blaming MS for this is not responsible journalism but the stuff of tabloids it is. Shame on all of you.

I certainly agree with hanna.

I am so discouraged am thinking of returning my new computer to sony because i am beginning to think it is a lemon.

I have had nothing but problems in the three months -nearly-that I have had this rubbish!

I have an HP printer one year old and DID go to HP to ask for advice before installing it. I was told to download new compatible software

as the original would not work. I did so. No problem at all with HP who were very efficient and kind-via email. (Very different from the

service???? I originally received!) BUT, it took about one hour to get this beastly machine to print one measly letter from the computer.

Today i tried again to print one small item with the same result. Almost an hour later it did print. BUT who has this time to waste? I do NOT!

Is it the printer or is it this VISTA? I suspect VISTA as it has been nothing but a problem since I bought it.

I found out that my very old Sony with OS 98 second ed. did not have a broken monitor after all but some electrical thing at bottom of scrren which was not working. $75 later I have my old thing which works as fast at 450mhz as this new one does at 1ghz

vista stinks and has driven me crazy!

ladymoneypenny, Vista is not the problem. There may be something else that causes the delay, the like of which I have never seen on any PC system. I suspect that you have one of the "free" all-in-one anti-malware suites by either Norton or McAfee that could be the culprit.

Many times I have invited those that post in this tread to list the problems they are having with their machines on the appropriate help threads rather than just this one which is an opinion thread. The experience you are having is not normal and should not be suffered through. Yes, Vista is different, it has some of the settings in different places, but after 6 months of using it primarily and having it on three machines, I don't like going back to XP on my old machine, which is turned on now only to research a question about XP.

I have never had a document take more than just the normal print spool time on any of my machines, (5) with either Vista or XP, regardless of the application. Now, if I print something off the internet, it has to go through the security and I have to click OK on the security software message, and then it prints, but we're talking about 2 min, not 60.

Please review the posting in the Windows and Printers discussions, and post the detail of your problems in the appropriate discussion. You machine should be a pleasant experience to use, and the forum members are ready to help you, but few will find your listing here. Please be sure to list machine make, model, OS, memory and printer specs. We stand ready to help.

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