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Many people, including myself, will disagree about the "improved" part.

Many people, including myself would agree with the improved part.

I really have nothing against Windows 2000 and XP. They are quite solid, stable and afer XP SP2 I would even dare to say that it's secure. Sometimes I like to have fun at expense of Windows bugs but I didn't even mention Linux in this discussion.

Modded up for telling the truth. But it's not just those people. But also developers who have no clue (ignorant) of how broken Vista really is. And the users who just follow the masses.

I'll buy that for a dollar...

I think that original post that you have replied to is meant to be ironic.

The service pack certainly aren't free. They were paid for with the license fee when buying XP. ;-)

I think MS should live with the fact, that their customers are tired of living with and fixing a plethora of new beta versions of new operating systems that are constantly and endlessly streaming out from the Microsoft OS-factory with little or no added usability but just new restrictions.

My first thought upon reading your comment was that the same can be said of free software. Then I remembered that free software comes free ie. no purchase cost.

Yes, free software is developed by enthusiasts, support is iffy and you have to sometimes fix it yourself or depend on voluntaries in online forums, there are bugs and no guarantees whatsoever.

But, to have the exact same conditions provided for a piece of software I paid for (and not a small sum, mind you) is a damn disgrace. It raises the question "why am I paying that money up front if I can still get the same experience overall without it?" For the priviledge of being locked in Microsoft's incompatible formats, for the world-famous security, for the endless attempts to limit what I can do with the hardware and software I'm supposed to own?

Because we're humans. We don't have infinite money. We can't replace our car whenever a new model is developed, we can't replace our television whenever a new model is developed, etc. Same applies to the operating system.

Stand up for yourself - Use Linux!

Actually since I moved to the US 4 years ago I noticed a lot of people live like that here...

Who said Vista is "improved"?

Vista is slower, buggier and less compatible with common programs than Windows XP is currently, so it's not much of an improvement.

It will be approximately a year before Vista is ready to use, if past history with microsoft is any indicator. Until then, many people would LOVE to continue using WinXP but MS has started a campaign to snuff it out because they want to force people on their newer product despite it not being usable.

Itz like betraying gud old customers who paid so much & obtained their copy.

MS should consider the fact that it had worked on what ever new product from the money it got from selling its (currently old) products.

And linux is a product i neither understand or can work with , i rather wait for reactos to be complete

By the time ReactOS is finished, you will be using Vista SP2!

What the heck, you will gettin vista with your new comp when you buy it. XP will become a memory just as Win98.

Not if you buy a new Dell with Linux preinstalled. If you don't like Dell there are many small companies that will sell you a Linux system already configured.

What the heck, you will gettin vista with your new comp when you buy it. XP will become a memory just as Win98.

I always buy a clean pc.

Rather then an infected PC? Smooth ...

Edited 2007-04-09 16:56

If you use linux then how do you know Vista is a bad joke and the worst MS product since Windows Me? I know the new trend is to bash Microsoft with unsubstantiated claims just for some points but c'mon. At least give some reasons that are your own and not what you heard some biased reviewer on a linux site say.

It's not exactly a NEW trend. :-)

In all seriousness, if you are going to bash a product, you need to atleast give reasons. Personally, I use XP, Vista, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu on a regular basis and I believe they are all great pieces of software. Just use what works for you.

Hear hear

Agreed. They all have their minuses, and they all have their pluses.

There hasn't been a perfect OS created yet.

[Now I just have to wait and see how long it is until someone says Unix is perfect. ]

I'm no fan of Microsoft and would love to see Linux or some other OS take the top spot, but I can't help but agree with your statements point. It's so very easy to bash something simply because you don't like it.

Anyway I think you made a good statement. You got a mod up from me.

Paul Thurrott actually recommended Windows Me when it was released, even going so far as to say it was "stable".

That aside, I'm actually a bit of a fan of Thurrott, but it seems he has really headed out into the deep end lately.

I ordered Vista Home basic as an express upgrade for XP Home.

Chances are I'll try it for a week, find out that 3/4 of my programs (most from the 90's) wont work. Then I will suffer from crippling: no Aero, backup/restore, media center, cool games, DVD creater, movie maker, laptop center, bitlocker, remote desktop, fax and scan, windows meeting space, so on!!

My guess: Absolutely no benefits, all disadvantages.

That'll probably drive me right back to Linux.

Heh, I bet Wine will do a better job of running my Windows programs than Vista.

We'll see soon enough (6-8 week wait for Vista arrival by mail).

Edited 2007-04-07 21:42

"Heh, I bet Wine will do a better job of running my Windows programs than Vista."

I've found that IEs4Linux runs better than IE does natively in Windows Vista. So you're probably right.

On another note. I'm a Linux fanboy but Vista is really not that bad. It's a resource hog and due to that it's just as aweful about taking forever to close a crashed program, far slower at multi-tasking than Linux and so forth but it's not bad, considering. Some issues I had in XP are resolved with Vista such as my sound chip driver. For no apparent reason under XP the sound would just stop working. But under Vista 64 using the exact same driver from Dell it runs flawlessly (of course it also ran flawlessly under Ubuntu, & OpenSuse).

The only downside I've found with vista so far (not counting the other things mentioned because those problems I had in xp as well) is that iTunes won't burn disks because Apple refuses to support 64bit.

At this point I'm getting very tempted to just make Ubuntu my main OS, get Parallels and do the twin install trick to get my Vista upgrade disk to install (can't run my Dell XP virtually) disable Aero so it runs like Home Basic and thus isn't so resource hungry, then just run the few windows things I need that way.

Heh, I bet Wine will do a better job of running my Windows programs than Vista.

Isn't this equal to say that there is shorter path than straight line that connecting two points?

Ok, may be you feel wine is better than native windows, but I doubt you believe that linux programs that run on FreeBSD's linux compat layer are faster than when run on linux natively.

Sorry to nitpick, but there indeed are shorter paths, that connect two points in general settings, where "general" means that you don't happen do have a purely euclidean metric / topology ==> your two points are not sitting on a flat (hyper)plane.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic

is a quite accessible introduction to an important mathematical concept.

So with that in mind, it is entirely possible to achieve better performance with an comp ability layer like WINE than with the native stuff (once the compability layer works, which starts to become increasingly true for WINE, judging from my limited exposure), if the compability layer and the OS that hides beneath manage to be more efficient than the "original" OS.

I'm not implying that this is the case here, as I have not done measurements myself, but judging from posts like the Grandparent post of this and this [1]

, it is - repeating myself - not entirely unlikely.

Remember: WINE is not an Emulator

[1]:http://www.winehq.com/site/myths

EDIT: Pressed Submit to early ...

Edited 2007-04-08 07:42

Especially when a 'straight line' is defined as 'the shortest path between 2 points'. So No you're wrong.

Wine is more compatible with XP than Vista is. And runs a lot more than two windows applications.

But you wouldn't know that, would you?

I would know that as I run vista, xp, linux WITH wine. And to say that wine is more compatible than windows vista is a complete lie. For you to say that a reverse engineered windows library implementation runs better than the real thing shows that you apparently wouldnt know.

{ Maybe when pigs fly, wine will actually run more than 2% of windows programs. }

Wine runs most Windows programs, particularly non-Microsoft Windows programs, because non-Microsoft programs use only the documented APIs.

Wine runs infinitely more Windows programs that any Microsoft product runs Mac OSX or Linux programs.

Actually, because there is a finite number of programs in the universe, Wine can't run infinitely as many Windows programs, so go back to sleep

>Wine runs infinitely more Windows programs that any Microsoft product runs Mac OSX or Linux programs.

Division by zero is undefined, it is not infinity.

Despite the mathematical faux pas your point is good.

B^)

I imagine so... Its not exactly a difficult title to win when windows doesnt run ANY mac os x or linux programs.. This means it only has to run one to win I dont see why microsoft would build windows to run mac os x, or linux programs. How many windows program does osx run (not the mac os x port of wine doesnt really count here, as based on your wording it would have to run windows programs because of code written by apple.. apple doesnt support running windows or linux programs either..)? How many os x programs does linux run? We could play this game all day and that still doesnt make wine any better than it is.

I have plenty of experience with wine, and it does not run "most" windows programs. It runs a large number of them possibly, but it certainly has not reached the "most" point.

1st mistake - XP Home
2nd mistake - using the half-twit XP version as a basis for anything dealing with Vista.

"Home" is sub-par, and upgrades, well, let's just say; there's nothing like mixing two OS's together and fooling yourself that it will result in something hopefully useful without issues.

With the various versions of Vista to choose from, you're opting to upgrade the lowest of XP versions will have you with an even less capable version of Vista. It's not hard to guess what any 'review' you have as a result will contain.

[i]Ive got no plans buying windows vista ;p</p>

I never bought XP and it has never contaminated my system.

That's nice. Do we care?

No.

Why ?
He might have built his computer, therefore having the choice of which system to install.

Edited 2007-04-08 07:53

you missed Windows 98 SE.
hah, now we've gotcha!

Soon they will be giving Vista away to lure people to Office or other services. :-D

You ar forgetting that Microsoft wants you to upgrade, and not to stay with XP. If you stay with XP, there will be more and more things that would not work as you go. Finaly, if you stay with Microsoft, you will have to upgrade. And they will charge you for the upgrade, more than $29.

My experience that is on recent PC you have to run two generations old Windows OS, and it will run as OS is supposed to, quick and responsive. That means that you should run Win2k now. Many things are not working, but the rest is great.

I still run Windows 2K on an older PC, so far I've hardly encountered any software or hardware that doesn't work on it. There are better 2K compatible alternatives to the handful of multimedia and internet apps I've seen that are purely for XP. Even games will generally run on Windows 2K without any problems.

Whatever Microsoft do, people aren't all going to dump XP any time soon. While a large number of people are still using older versions of Windows, software/hardware companies are likely to keep on supporting them.

If someone wants to stay with XP, Microsoft aren't going to be able to force them to change any time soon.

If you are ok with older software, then they probably will not be able to force you to switch. I use Win2K to run some games, too. But, make no mistake, there will be games that run in Vista only, sooner or later.

But, Microsoft doesn't intend to have customers that are satisfied with their current OS. They want them to live in expectation that next one will be perfect for them. That is the marketing strategy. I respect Microsoft, but that is not good enough for me. That's why I use FreeBSD for all serious work.

I'd like to give up Windows completely, and buy gaming console for fun, but I need to run MS SQL server.

"My experience that is on recent PC you have to run two generations old Windows OS"

Your experiences must be with Pentium 3s and older then, as I've never witnessed anything like that

"I bet a whole lot of people would be willing to pay for extended support for XP."

--------

Well, they don't have to because Microsoft is supporting XP through 2014. What is it you guys want in an SP3 anyway? You're getting the monthly security updates even without SP3.

yes, but when you ripen a banana at home, they are far far far more tasty compared to when they are first bought.
Same as Windows
Same as Ubuntu

Personally I prefer greenish bananas: more tangy, and less grainy texture. I heard they can be a bit bad for you when underripe, though.

"...but it SHOULD NOT be taken too seriously..."

I agree...Windows 2000 had service packs shipping well into the XP release cycle. Microsoft will not (I daresay cannot) leave their corporate customers high and dry. At the very least they'll have to ship something to make XP play nice with Vista Server whenever it ships.

We'll get at least one more SP for Windows XP, and if you're on XP x64 expect service packs for at least another 3 years given that they will fall in line with Windows 2003 SP releases.

Thurott...what has happened to this guy? I used to respect (and actually look forward to reading) his columns. Lately he's jumped off and on the crazy train a few times too many.

[q]I agree...Windows 2000 had service packs shipping well into the XP release cycle. Microsoft will not (I daresay cannot) leave their corporate customers high and dry. At the very least they'll have to ship something to make XP play nice with Vista Server whenever it ships.[q]

Lets acknowledge the fact, however, this isn't the first time Microsoft has done it; they first canceled NT 4 Service Pack 7 after having promised it, and put it into development for several months.

Then they canceled Service Pack 5 for Windows 2000, making up a cock and ball story about customs demands and so forth - when in reality, they just couldn't be bothered.

Now onto Service Pack 3 for Windows XP - anyone surprised now, after a legacy of canceling two previous service packs as a motivation tool for customers?

But what I do find it funny are the numbers who stick with Windows; it seems that the Windows world seem to suffer from the equivalent of 'battered wife syndrome' where they do everything possible to justify their bad treatment by Microsoft - they see the door, they can leave any time they want, but they seemed to have pulled into a trap they can't escape from.

Good analysis!
I can't mod you up more
:)

Edited 2007-04-08 10:45

But what I do find it funny are the numbers who stick with Windows; it seems that the Windows world seem to suffer from the equivalent of 'battered wife syndrome' where they do everything possible to justify their bad treatment by Microsoft - they see the door, they can leave any time they want, but they seemed to have pulled into a trap they can't escape from.

Amein to that!

I agree, I can't believe he is presenting this as a fact. This is nothing but FUD.

Um, he clearly says it isn't fact:

"Um, he clearly says it isn't fact:

"...but it SHOULD NOT be taken too seriously..."

Who says that, Thurrott? I think you need to go back and read it again because nowhere on that page does he say any such thing. The person who submitted this article said that.

Edited 2007-04-08 01:14

A lot of people would say that the Linux alternatives cannot even start the engine.

A lot of people would say that nVIDIA and ATi/AMD are marketing products that don't work as advertised for a large percentage of the their users, and that the major OEMs don't seem to be doing much about it.