Thank god it's time to put the old girl down! Vista is better.

XP works just fine, thank you.
Who needs either Vista or 7? No doubt some mysterious and untraceable malware will soon appear online or secreted within some innocuous and popular 3rd-party software to sabotage the systems owned by the public or businesses who insist on clinging to XP, and of course the only solution will be "discovered" to be an "upgrade" to Vista or 7. After all, they can't sell new OS versions if the existing ones still do the job!
The only question is when the OS "WMDs" will arrive.
Anyone care to bet on it, or better, whether 7 will be rentware?

When I build a new computer system, it will contain XP. If I need to replace my laptop, I will make sure it has XP drivers available, get one with any Vista flavor, get an OEM copy of XP with a new hard drive with external hard drive case and downgrade to XP. I've worked with Vista enough to know that unless you go very high end and waste a lot more money than you need to by doing so, the experience is less than satisfying. Even a high-end laptop with Vista is slower than my four year old Centrino-based laptop with XP-Pro. If I can't get XP anymore, I'll make the final transition to Linux. Vista is just too resource intensive for my tastes, forcing people to spend more money than necessary for their computer needs just to keep an operating system that takes too much computer to run happy. I'd rather fiddle with XP or Linux than Vista because in the end, it will be faster, less expensive and do everything I need it to do. For those who post things to the effect that you just need to get a high end computer and spend the money and join the technology world, the point is, with XP, you didn't have to. Vista doesn't really offer enough advantages to make the cost differences worth it. If you had XP on that high-end computer as part of the technology world, you'd beat Vista on a machine with the same specs to the punch EVERY time. How does that make Vista better?

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Are you SURE it's plugged in?

My first Windows 98SE just got resurrected yesterday on my first computer from 1999*.* It was even after a hard drive format error popped up. It said that Windows 98 could not be installed. Ha. Even the fomer tech Joel didn't think I could install it from the next screen after clicking Enter to continue, and Then the command prompt D:/WIN98> that led me to type in SETUP /P J and into 98SE set up it went. Yippeee!

I am very tired of having to activate Windows XP with every fresh install and major hardware changes. So my first PC is now back to its original manufactured state of Windows 98SE. I have two other PCs with XP MCE2005. And that's where they will stay for a very long time, God Willing.

Yes, Vista has flaws, every OS does, so that arguement is out the "Window." What Vista offers over XP doesn't make it a great buy in my book. The push Microsoft used for this new OS is that it's "prettier" and more user friendly. As an I.T. professional, I don't use the GUI much at all, it's mostly keystrokes for me, I hardly ever touch my mouse unless I'm surfing the web, so the super awesome graphics just slow the system a little. At work (medical facility), we have quite a few third party vendors we work with that won't/can't offer support for Vista, so it's either keep XP or clos eup shop, guess which we chose. I really have nothing against Vista, but the stigma attached to it and the lack of "power user" upgrades makes it a worthless OS, professionally speaking. It's a great system if your computer use is relagated to email and watching streaming video online (which is what most people do), but the reasons just aren't there for me. So, to make a long opinion short, if you want a "show horse" Vista is the way to go, if you want a "work horse" it's XP all the way.

I still run XP on my desktop with NO trouble whatsover. My wife has a laptop with Vista, which I haven't used much but I also seem to need to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out. My last effort was a few days ago when I tried to figure out why all of the "start up" programs are NOT starting. I discovered that Vista apparently has something called "Defender" which insists that the BOINC program that I want to run automatically is some sort of a security risk; maybe that's a great feature, but the &^%)^#$ Defender program won't allow me to over-ride it in any way to permit the BOINC program to auto start when the laptop is turned on. Shouldn't that be MY choice as to what starts up automatically. I finally gave up, after wasting a half hour of my time trying to research the issue, and instead just SWORE ... AGAIN ... that I will never willingly accept VISTA. By the way, the BOINC program is for humanitarian work that I've been doing on my desktop with XP for many years without any security problems; because my wife doesn't remember to manually start it when she turns her laptop on, our project is losing out on a lot of computer crunching, so I hope that someone will please provide me with a solution. My personl website www.velek.com explains it. Thanks in advance.

Bill Velek

Microsoft already has their "XP WMD". It is in a message from one of their servers and causes a "Your license has expired" to pop up and you can no longer write files.

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Intel C2Q 6600 Kentsfield 2.4 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 8MB cache | 3GB DDR3 1333MHz Corsair + OCZ RAM (DC) | NVidia 8600GT, 256MB DDR3 memory, 620MHz | 3x 250GB Samsung HD250HJ