I too own a Dell inspiron 1720 that I just acquired. My wife has an identical machine. Her machine has crashed twice. My machine has had startup issues, but, only after I had downloaded other non compliant software (ie. non-Microsoft blessed software)from Mircosoft competing venders. Such as "Shockwave" and "Flash Player". So, when I restart my mashine it hangs up on the Start menu and fails to launch the Windows. So, I have to unplug the power and the Battery and restart. It goes into a Fix Windows startup screen and then requests to undo to a more "compliant" pre-down loaded Windows pure state. Then the Machine works fine. I have a sneaky suspicion that Microsoft feeling the competition of other mail and search engine software down loads that are effecting there bottom line. So, why not affect user compliance of your product by denial of service when other competing software is downloaded. The State Department may what to take a look at this software,does t complie with Antitrust reg

First - It's the Justice Department that is responsible for Anti-Trust, not the State Department. Second, there has never been any OS that has been more scrutinized by any regulatory agencies than MS Vista, both by our Justice Department and the EU Commission before it's release.

Second - there are plenty of third party applications running under Vista, but almost all of them had to do some tweaks to comply with the Microsoft OS Standards that were issued some 20 years ago, but everyone (including some MS applications) ignored to one extent or another. Everyone was screaming about MS needed to do something to make Windows more secure, so MS took the extra time to completely redo Windows rather than just an update of XP. They closed all the back doors and by-passes that had been in the OS since the DOS days. The result - non-compliant software won't run, and everyone is screaming.

Adobe Flashplayer runs just fine in my three Vista machines, as does Firefox which is a bigger thorn in their side than Flash.

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Microsoft doesn't care. The OEMs don't care. The only people who care are the users affected by issues beyond their control.

If you want your hardware to "Just Work", install XP.

Linux is a good choice as well.

"If you want your hardware to "Just Work", install XP.

Linux is a good choice as well."

Wow, talk about a double standard. The first statement is, for the most part, true. Pretty much any current hardware will work with XP. But that's where you go wrong. You imply that hardware configuration is as trouble-free on Linux as it is on Windows XP, and that simply is not true. Linux has come a long way, especially Ubuntu, but I can state from experience that if the initial installation of Linux does not properly detect and install drivers for all your hardware, it will cause an absolute nightmare for any average PC user. Linux doesn't really have anything like the Device Manager in Windows, and finding, installing, and configuring device drivers, especially graphics card settings, can cause headaches even for Linux gurus. Plus, Linux doesn't have near the availability of compatible drivers that Windows XP does. The bottom line is, Windows XP is a lot more likely to make your hardware "just work" than Linux is at this point.

"The bottom line is, Windows XP is a lot more likely to make your hardware "just work" than Linux is at this point."

just depends. if you are an advanced user, yes xp can offer you a nice computing experience .

but, however, if you don't know how to figure out what chip is on a particular piece of hardware,and what alternative driver is likely to work,

Linux is the better choice for just "working" out of the box.

My HP6000 laptop is only a few months old, I've installed almost no new drivers, and the update isn't there for me either. I'm not stressed, I'd like to go back to XP anyway.

I don't care which OS you have, OSX recently had a huge security update (security holes in MacOS my oh my) that wreaked havoc on users machines who did the software update. Linux has had driver problems including unavailable drivers for sometime. The last time I installed linux and added an nVidia hardware accelerated 3d driver, when the driver compiled and installed it crashed the kernal and I had to reinstall with no ideas to why this was happening even though I supposedly was on the right release and the package manager had downloaded for me..

So please fanboys of Linux and Apple stop trying to claim that you are better. I own machines with both OSes installed and frankly you just aren't any better at all. This is something you'll have to deal with. Don't give up get some help, when you run into stuff like this. "Switching" just gets you a different set of problems..

As for Windows Vista, people with a sygmatel audio chip are complaining because their motherboard and chip doesn't work? Well if you think how many machines are out there with different motherboards and chips? If you actually look at the numbers, it would be amazing if Microsoft could test every single board and resource. It's really not their responsibility though they have safeguards in place.

So you bought from a company that used a cheap audio or model chip and the chip maker either went out or put it in the hands of the hardware seller to support. Frankly this isn't Microsoft's fault, it's the folks at Dell or HP or anywhere else to support specific features of their hardware models. I can hardly feel that Microsoft should be held responsible for a part of the OS they don't package. If the drivers come on a separate disc from the manufacturer of the hardware blame them, and remember the next time you buy hardware the problem you went through so you don't have it again.. Microsoft will do all they can and they do, but if the hardware maker goes up the river then what do you do? I have been stung by this in more than one Windows update cycle myself. I know Mac owners who had to throw out full systems because their computers weren't compatible with the OS X version of the OS..

How do I get around that, I make sure that I have a standard "supported" chipset in any machine I buy. It's simply not good enough to say I bought a "Lenovo, a Dell, or an HP"... Learn to read the hardware specs and ask questions. If they won't tell you who makes it don't buy it. I feel safe with ATI/AMD and Nvidia nforce chipsets. Hold the CPU maker responsible make them update you to something that is supportable and sustainable. A good thing to do is check the hardware specs with the list of drivers in Microsoft documentation. If all the main drivers come on the Vista installer from Microsoft then you are good.

Also don't expect your 4-5 year old machine to be completely compatible with the next version of "Windows".. It's called LEGACY hardware..

Microsoft has given driver manufacturers uprecedented early access to Vista and offered help with driver development. More than one company (third party) didn't even start their driver development before Vista shipped. Microsoft warned these folks, if they didn't start updating I'd consider it the 3rd party company's problem, like a certain big sound card maker that started sound with the PC industry.

It's best to be an educated user, back up your machine before you update anything, and be sure you have the right drivers and updates for your hardware.. It will make your life a whole lot easier.. Demand more from whoever you buy your hardware from as a consumer as well. Don't let them sell it as a "throw away" in a couple years type of sale. Above all keep your machine secure with anti-virus and malware protection.

For those looking to go back to XP? Why? you can in about 5 minutes turn off User Account Control, go back to the old look and feel (change your preference setttings) and you'll still have a much more secure OS and probably just as useable. There are several websites that are out there that will show you how to do this. In five years, I don't think you'll be looking back at this anyway. It's nice to see that XP is a great user experience that has so many people that like it though.