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you'd think that with 79,000 employees they'd be able to deliver an operating system on budget, ontime, and actually performing equal to Windows XP on the same hardware.

and how many of those 79000 people are developing windows?

I can't even tell what points of mine you are responding to. But you claim I "IGNORED" some argument you made, while you ignored much of my post, such as my points regarding OSX (it wasn't made the way it was becasue of "balls"), Office 2007's new UI (which demonstrates Microsoft's "balls"), or that Solaris wouldn't be any better than NT to build upon.

Now, as to your point 1. Please cite the "same design flaws that keep coming back release after release after release". I could use a good laugh. Oh, and please don't include any "Well, it doesn't do functionality X like Unix does, so the X functionality is flawed by definition" nonsense.

As to your point 2. Please provide at least SOME evidence that NT is inadequate to build an OS on, such that Microsoft should make an entirely new OS and run NT-based apps within Virtual PC. You seem to think NT is antiquated like Mac OS 9 was. Mac OS 9/8/7 needed to be tossed. NT does not need that.

To your point 3. Sorry, I thought I'd seen you pimping Solaris multiple times before. I guess it was someone else. But your use of the very tired "79000" employees canard is the very height of sophistry. I've seen enough of your posts to know that you are far better than that. I thought you, of all people, would offer some speculation as to technical reasons why Vista would be "slow", but all you can offer is "Microsoft sucks", just like the typical Microsoft-bashers that aren't in your league.

Here's what you and the others seem to not understand, or simply don't want to understand. Vista isn't "slow" just because "Microsoft sucks". It's "slow" for technical reasons, just as Mac OS X 10.0 was. Speaking of which, I've yet to see any evidence that OSX is faster than Windows. OSX may get faster with the optimization tweaks made to each .1+ upgrade, but even after 6 years of those optimizations, it's still slower than XP. And as much as Mac advocates like celebrate Vista's "slowness" relative to XP, I've yet to see any evidence that Leopard is faster than Vista (let alone XP). But I DO have evidence that Leopard is slower than Tiger and Panther, and that's Apple's own system requirements for Leopard that don't allow it to be installed on lower-end PPC Macs. The logical reason for that would be that Leopard is too slow and/or bloated to run on such Macs, i.e. it's slower and/or more bloated than its predecessors.

As for Microsoft, yeah, I'd like them to release a new OS, but one based on Singularity, not Solaris (give me a break).

Edited 2007-11-25 00:27

1) No, you ignored the reply to the post which had the article you were referring to, does this refresh your memory:

http://blog.wired.com/cultofmac/2007/01/running_vista_o.html

You provided a link to the post containing that, why haven't you addressed the fact that the article was filled with gushy garbage such as:

"The OS is dark and handsome. It’s really quite exciting. Like the Zune’s interface, it's artfully done. The beautifully-rendered shadow effects and transparency give Vista a greater “depth” than OS X, which looks a little flat and well… old fashioned in comparison. I know this is because Vista’s new and novel, but it makes OS X look dated."

Which as I stated, reminds me of the imbecile who went on about some $7250 speaker wires.

2) Yes, I used to be an OpenSolaris fanboy, but if you took the time you read the post, I said 'could' rather than 'should' when it came to using something else as the basis of Windows. Could indicating that 'if there is something else better, use that'.

The reason for Solaris because of its familiarity by most developers rather than relying on a completely new operating system basis which programmers have little exposure to.

3) It is flawed because ever since they first bastardised the kernel by putting the graphics 'engine' within the kernel, it has been on a downwards slop from there. Are they honestly expecting me to believe that by the time Windows XP had been released, the hardware wouldn't have been at a sufficient level of 'grunt' to run a user space graphics 'engine' at sufficient speed? heck, even when Xorg is compared to Windows, sure, there is a performance penalty, but it isn't as so large as to cause people frustration.

4) Windows Vista has been in development for over 5 years, and within that 5 years I expected alot more. When it came out, sure, I cut them some slack. I thought to myself, "hey, this is a first release with alot of improvements in alot of areas - major parts have been re-written using new code".

Yes, I did cut them some slack but now I'm not when it comes on the heals of what is now known about Windows Vista SP1. This service pack has been in development, by the time it has been released, for over 12 months. 12 months they've had to improve performance, 12 months to improve reliability, 12 months to put the clamps on shoddy software companies who fail to produce quality applications (not Microsoft's fault) and their willingness to hand out 'Windows Vista Compatible" stickers far to easily (Microsoft's fault)

Add to the fact that Microsoft has a very large number of programmers/employees (79,000), and filled with some of the best and brightest people in the industry - there are no excuses as to why they can't eek out at least a 10% performance improvement over Windows Vista RTM. That is the issue at play.

5) I have made no such comparison between Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista. The issue I have is when we have the likes of fanboys praise Windows, praise the fact that 'PC's are cheaper' and more upgradable.

These very people ignore the fact that if you purchased a computer, even 2 years ago (which I wouldn't consider old), you'll need major upgrading to be able to run Windows Vista as fast and reliable as Windows XP.

Sure, I don't expect hardware from 5 years ago to run Windows Vista like a speeding bullet, but I do expect Windows Vista to at least run at an acceptable level of speed on an average machine that was released 2 years ago.

When you take that into account, one has to ask, with the money that you'll ultimately have to spend to get your machine up to a level to run the latest version of Windows - that money could have easily been spent (or possibly less) getting a Mac. Where is the competitive advantage there for the PC?

6) I have a MacBook Black (2.16Ghz and 2gigs memory), for a Windows computer, it its graphics would be considered woefully underpowered, and yet, on Mac OS X, I'm not punished by the fact that it relies on shared memory.

Yes, Mac OS X doesn't run on 'low end PPC Mac's' but when you consider what it can be run on compared to what Windows Vista can be run on, it comes off pretty damn good.

As for performance penalty, sure, there is a slight performance penalty, but no where as bad as the performance penalty one would get if one grabbed a similar generation machine from 2 years ago and tried running Windows Vista on it without major hardware upgrades/updates.