[riceorony]

Anyone else read these new articles of microsoft announcing the release date for their new OS?

Vista takes up about 4-4.5 gigs worth of HDrive (more than all previous windows OS combined I believe)

The new Windows 7 (which appears to have the same interface as Vista) will take only 0.5 gigs of HDrive and be much much much less resource gluttonous.

The reason for the early release is because only 3% of companies actually upgraded their OS to vista to date, while microsoft was projecting 25% of companies to have upgraded already. I believe everyone is waiting for someone to say the OS is finally "stable" (but lets not forget XP didnt get stable till SP2)

I've used Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP, and now Vista

Oh how I miss '98.

Vista reminds me of windows ME, the operating systems no one wants :-(

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It's true that Vista has not been the runaway success that Microsoft predicted or hoped it would be, not only in the corporate area but also amongst home users. The forums are rife with reports of Vista errors, Vista's poor startup time, it's much heavier demand for more RAM (a point which pleases the memory makers and vendors no doubt), and last but not least it's requirement for different drivers which has left many owners of older printers and scanners with a stark choice -- replace them or go without. And I see practically every day at least one new post along the lines of "I'm so fed up with Vista I'm going back to XP". Since Microsoft knows nothing about how many people have decided to "downgrade" after buying Vista, the true figures for Vista users are probably a lot less than they would have us believe. And they'd be a lot less if we had a choice of either XP or Vista on all new computers till, say, the end of 2008.

I don't how much the SP1 update will address the many problems Vista currently has since I'm not a Vista user, but I wouldn't say it' as bad an OS as ME was (which I did use, for a short while). Going out on a limb here, I don't think Vista is "the OS that no-one wants" (it has many happy and impressed users) whereas I never heard any reports that Windows ME impressed anyone. It was rushed and botched because XP wasn't ready but Microsoft thought they just had to offer us something new. Their mantra at that time seemed to be "A bad upgrade is better than no upgrade at all".
Vista has had much more R & D time allotted to it than ME ever had.

The real problem Microsoft had when developing Vista is that XP is now well sorted and very stable, and there's not much you can't do with it.
"So what do we give them now?" says the Microsoft boffins. How about some impressive eye-candy stuff that they won't be able to resist?
And that's basically all Vista gives you over XP. Can Vista run a productive application that XP can't? -- not that I know of. Oh, there's that Sidebar of course (probably Vista's only really useful component) but even that's been ported to XP now if you know where to look, plus there's the other XP sidebars that do much the same thing.

I really think Vista is the first sign that Microsoft is struggling to improve on XP in any meaningful or really useful way. Because as far I'm concerned, XP-SP2 is just so well sorted. Okay it can still throw a wobbly from time to time, but that pales into insignificance compared to Vista's tantrums and it's over-burgeoning security features. I dread the the day my XP system finally dies, as one day it surely must.

[pip22]

It's true that Vista has not been the runaway success that Microsoft predicted or hoped it would be, not only in the corporate area but also amongst home users. The forums are rife with reports of Vista errors, Vista's poor startup time, it's much heavier demand for more RAM (a point which pleases the memory makers and vendors no doubt), and last but not least it's requirement for different drivers which has left many owners of older printers and scanners with a stark choice -- replace them or go without. And I see practically every day at least one new post along the lines of "I'm so fed up with Vista I'm going back to XP". Since Microsoft knows nothing about how many people have decided to "downgrade" after buying Vista, the true figures for Vista users are probably a lot less than they would have us believe. And they'd be a lot less if we had a choice of either XP or Vista on all new computers till, say, the end of 2008.

I don't how much the SP1 update will address the many problems Vista currently has since I'm not a Vista user, but I wouldn't say it' as bad an OS as ME was (which I did use, for a short while). Going out on a limb here, I don't think Vista is "the OS that no-one wants" (it has many happy and impressed users) whereas I never heard any reports that Windows ME impressed anyone. It was rushed and botched because XP wasn't ready but Microsoft thought they just had to offer us something new. Their mantra at that time seemed to be "A bad upgrade is better than no upgrade at all".
Vista has had much more R & D time allotted to it than ME ever had.

The real problem Microsoft had when developing Vista is that XP is now well sorted and very stable, and there's not much you can't do with it.
"So what do we give them now?" says the Microsoft boffins. How about some impressive eye-candy stuff that they won't be able to resist?
And that's basically all Vista gives you over XP. Can Vista run a productive application that XP can't? -- not that I know of. Oh, there's that Sidebar of course (probably Vista's only really useful component) but even that's been ported to XP now if you know where to look, plus there's the other XP sidebars that do much the same thing.

I really think Vista is the first sign that Microsoft is struggling to improve on XP in any meaningful or really useful way. Because as far I'm concerned, XP-SP2 is just so well sorted. Okay it can still throw a wobbly from time to time, but that pales into insignificance compared to Vista's tantrums and it's over-burgeoning security features. I dread the the day my XP system finally dies, as one day it surely must.

[Neil Jones]

Vista Service Pack 1 results in a more responsive system. So I've noticed anyway. If nothing else it cuts down on the "Do you want to do this?" prompts that came up every time you wanted to blow your nose. It's looking very much more stable now and a lot more appealing - it seems to grow on you.

Windows 7 will probably cosmetically look identical to Vista in much the same way that Windows 95, 98 and ME looked identical to each other, Windows XP looked uncannily like Windows 2000 in different colours, and Windows 3.1 looked the same as Windows 3. Microsoft tend to change the look of Windows on every other version so any major cosmetic changes in functionality and look will probably appear as part of Windows 8 or 9.

[riceorony]

Bravo sir, well said!




Do you think the announcement of Windows 7 will halt most companies to skip Vista all together?

I'm glad they extended the XP support till June 2010!

They were going to cut XP support this year but got a waveeeee of anger

Oh well I do miss windows 98 though

[happyrock]

more on vista here...
and then the real life experience's here...