no, there really really plain and boring!

I have never used Vista, and don't plan on buying or using it. After viewing a few screen shots though, in my opinion, Vista does look visually better than XP. I prefer Ubuntu over XP, but can not abandon XP just yet.

Vista is annoying.

I've had the displeasure of setting up a production box with Vista on it at my old workplace.

My verdict? They could have jiggered the UI layout of XP a bit, polished up the widgets, properly implemented sudo, called it good, and they would have made a more revolutionary, compelling product than Vista. How any company could possibly commit an operating system to development for over half a decade starting with an already-marketable codebase (XP) and come up with a product as lackluster as Vista is totally beyond me.

They must've been focusing on much more important things like the Zune.

The funny thing about all this Vista bashing is that it is excactly as the XP bashing when that came out. Yet 99,9% of everybody uses xp and not Win98.

True, but I'm willing to bet a majority of Windows users don't know good alternatives exist and they are roped into buying the latest Windows from the "helpful" employees at Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.

accidental repost.

Thing about win98 to winXP was a no brain-er. Win9X was a steaming pile of dog poo.

A lot of the people here use Linux, one of the often asked question is how do we get more people to use Linux? In my opinion one of the reasons that Linux isn't used as much as it could be is that WinXP is rather good.
Now before this starts one hell of a flame war my memory of OS's on PC goes back to DOS 4. The high points would be DOS5, BeOS, WinXP & ubuntu. Low points would be Windows 3.1, OS/2, Win9X, Win2K And Vista. If WinXP was like win9X series then MS would be in the minority and we would all be using Linux.

I see nothing in Vista that couldn't be in WinXP SP3. I see nothing in Vista that isn't done better in ubuntu. Vista has been rushed out with less than 2 years development, it's simply not finished.

I use both WinXP for gaming, ubuntu for everything else. I have used Vista having been involved with Beta testing prior to it's release. Vista wont be ready for at least a year, once all of the drivers and patches have been written. Then and only then would it be worth considering.

It's only "Killer App" is DirectX 10, Gamers will start to move over to Vista. Partly because they change their PC's more often than most and the games they play will play better with DX10. I'm starting to see the guys in the clan I'm in making to move to Vista. Not through choose but because it is preinstalled on the new hardware they are buying.

One thing that is different between Linux and Microsoft, is that when a new update come to Linux it is something that will be better.

But when Microsoft get a new update it gets worse.

I havent tried Vista but all I've heard is bad things about it. I know of 3 or 4 people who tried to update to it, with perfectly acceptable computers and the only one that had a smooth ride with it (post install) was my mate who installed it on a Mac Mini.

I can say I wont be getting it, I've got my Linux now. And with Ubuntu Dell's I can get a new laptop and avoid the Windows Tax.

Not true. It gets better, but not in a hacker's opinion. Bugs are fixed that allowed DRM and other such restricting technologies to be bypassed, and so people say it's "worse". Someone who was trying to hack a Linux computer could also say Linux is getting worse with every new update.

I've heard nothing but bad things from someone who was biased to hate it in the first place, whereas I've heard good things from a friend who was unbiased, and didn't care at first whether or not his new computer came with Vista or XP. Now he won't leave Vista, and I wouldn't either!

The simple truth is, if you get a computer with Vista preinstalled, with all the drivers and whatnot guaranteed to run smoothly, you have a 95% chance of a good experience. However, if you slap a copy of Vista on a computer that was built for XP, you have the same chance of an error-free installation as you do Linux.

My game machine is vista. I ordered it with XP but they messed up and put vista on there. No problems yet, but literally all I've really done with it is install and play games. Everything else is here on the windows box.

you do realize that there is a downgrade option hidden somewhere, so you can go back to xp.

Never heard that. It's working well enough for what I need it to do. However, I don't think I could go back to using anything like Windows for everyday stuff because I don't like the way it pesters you to do things for you.

Ubuntu automatically keeps track of what updates to all my stuff I need, but it doesn't continually bug the piss out of me about it, it's just ready when I am.

I have had experience with Vista. brand new laptop. Loaded and tied to fiddle..... took aaaggggeeesss to load and then everything was 'Cancel or Allow?!?!?!'

I won't be touching that ever again *currently using ubuntu on the said laptop... vista gooooonnneeee*

True. But that wasn't the case when WXP first came out. It takes at least until SP2 for Windows to be generally usable. That's just how they operate. In a year or two, XP won't exist anymore except on dinosaurs, and by that time they will have worked the major bugs out of Vista. It was the same with W9 and WXP, and I don't see any reason why it will be different this time.

Oh, and what does a firewall do? How about sudo? How about anything under System -> Administration? They don't "bug" you, do they?

Seriously, though, computers ask you questions because they are dumb. When you do anything outside your personal folder in Vista, it asks if you really want to let the software do it. Just like Linux. Is there anything wrong with that? And besides that, what's one simple click to continue compared to hours of frustration after viruses have taken your system down?


I think people are biased to hate anything small about Vista before they've even touched it. If people made the same approach about Linux, there'd probably just as many complaints, if not more.

Slow down there Jake. I'm not biased against Windows at all. Free market capitalist here. But in answer to your question, no, Linux OSs don't ask me to allow or cancel everytime I start a program. Vista does. It also pops up those little windows and other things that sometimes take the focus of the game I'm playing. I don't appreciate that at all.

On the other hand, Ubuntu keeps track of when I need an update, but doesn't bug me about it. There's a little icon that shows, and if and when I'm damn good and ready, I can click on it, but it never interupts what I'm doing or tries to demand my attention.