XP gets another six months on Death Row

Where the hell are all the vista fanbois at?

No "if you don't like vista, switch back to windows 3.1!!!!" or any other stupid banter?

"Meanwhile, a Forrester Research survey shows that only 8.8 per cent of global businesses have made the switch to Vista"

I found that line to be the best.

It really paints a picture.

Vista may have been a smouldering pile of poo when it was first released, but since service pack 1, it's been very stable. Your anti-Vista bias simply doesn't hold any water nowadays...bugger, Windows Explorer on my Vista O.S. has just restarted after a crash.

I would but DX10 for $10.00 if they would sell it for XP. Then they get money, I get a functionial OS with a small RAM print, they get some money, we're all happy. 

Get with it MS, this is what we want, optional plug ins, not a bloated OS.

I have both XP and Vista on the same gaming rig on separate hard drives. I have tried to turn off everything in Vista including indexing but it still runs all by itself, usually when first started. If I just jump into a game it causes games to crap out and lag. I have to just wait for it to finish running my hard drive like mad before continuing into a game. Yes my scheduled defray is turned off.
You would think MS would make the bloated OS smart enough to know I am running a resource intensive application (aka game) that it would not do what ever it is it keeps doing. Probably sending all my info to the FEDS if you ask me, that's about how much I trust MS.

Thank you users who have refused to buy into whatever Microsoft has thrown at our feet. I was an early adopter of Vista, tried it, went back to XP. After SP1 was released I tried it again, and promptly went back to XP. I'm very pleased to see consumers sticking to their guns on this. I seriously doubt the success of Windows 7 as well. Although I have no difinitive proof of that, I can only follow track record. I will be using XP and XP x64 for many years to come...

A significant number of my new university flatmates bought their new laptops about a month ago, and they came with Vista Home. Many of them would like to go back (forward?) to XP, but they know nothing about computers and, of course, since they don't have Business or Ultimate they won't get the downgrade media. The "if it ain't disastrously broke, don't fix it" mentality is also alive and well among them, so even if I lent them a copy of XP (which I don't have - not legally, and I don't have the money to risk taking on M$ like that) they wouldn't install it. Hell, even if I offered to install it and configure it for them, they wouldn't accept it. 

Basically, thanks to the conditioning applied by Microsoft's "education" of the public, even if Vista is crap, Joe Public will still buy and use it in one way or another. And, looking around me at various Joe Publics, it's now sufficiently widespread that you can't call it a "flop" any more in the consumer space. However if the 8.8% statistic is correct for business, then fine, that does represent a flop in the corporate space.

For the record, I gave vista Biz a whirl for about a week, before upgrading to XP Pro in disgust. What the hell is it doing with the extra 400MB RAM it uses over XP? Counting sheep? And Aero is a nice concept for a theme, but the XP one (silver, of course, not the eyeball-busting blue) was probably easier to work with over years of use.

Although, being a full-time Ubuntu user, the choice of Winders was largely immaterial. Oddly enough, running Ubuntu my laptop is way cooler, by which I mean, actually at a temperature that won't toast my lap.

yeah that's what we really want, Microsoft to fast-track Windows 7.

The only thing that really worths in Vista is DX10...

And still i can not say that DX10 is a success either...the differences between DX10 and DX9 in most games are mostly minimum...

Windows Vista generation is a BLOATED and a MEDIOCRE generation

Lets hope Windows 7 comes soon

Found a great deal on a laptop recently, that met my needs specwise, and then realised that there was no option to upgrade to XP for the 50 or so quid that Dell charge. Needless to say, I didn't buy it- and will probably end up talking myself into a more expensive machine from someone who does allow an XP upgrade.

I've had to scrape vista off too many machines, and seen them go from arthritic old clunkers to performing the way the eight cores and sixteen gigs of ram would have you expect.

Yeah, I know, I could just rat XP and stick it on whichever machine, but that's technically wrong, even when you're doing it to Ballmer. What's more, the statistics for XP takeup won't reflect the pirate usage levels :)

Anyway, nice story, made me chuckle- thanks. Keep up the good work.

I'm one of the rare breed that likes Vista. I like it a lot. The things I like the most about it is a) it's much more streamlined (UI-wise) than XP was, b) it's far more stable than XP, assuming you're not using creative drivers (and if you are, you have only yourself to blame).

Sure, Vista has it's downside. It's far too RAM-hungry for its own good. People act like this is a terrible thing, as though you have to use gas to run it and you get terrible milage. My Vista RAM woes were solved by spending a whopping $50 canadian (after a $20 rebate) on 4gb of RAM (rather fast corsair RAM at that, not generic garbage).

The people who see RAM usage as an issue with Vista need to find something else to complain about. Maybe tomorrow RAM will be expensive, but today it is cheap cheap cheap.

I might add another 4GB just for shits n' giggles.

MS knows Vista as a product is a dead-end. As a platform, it's got plenty of life left in it though, which is why when Windows 7 comes out it will shake off the stigma associated with Vista and adoption rates will soar.

Think about it this way, you pay for the price of Vista then they let you downgrade to XP? Not sure why they would argue about it. They are making a lot more money and they can just send you to the Faq's for answers since well just about everything is covered isn't it?

Vista is ok if used on a desktop. On laptops it is a hard drive killer.

One of the reasons Windows XP is still even a feasable option is because Microsoft back-ported about a year's worth of technology to XP while Vista was overdue (IE 7, WMP 12, Windows Defender, networking and security upgrades, etc).

I'm sorry, you can't 'but' DX10 for XP; after all how long is Microsoft supposed to keep life support going for an OS that got it start in 2001?

As for indexing...if the hard drive is running in the background while you are gaming, it is NOT indexing. You have complete control over which files, file types, and folders are indexed. Even with the additional folders added my computer only has approx 4,000 files indexed and once it is complete, there should be nowhere NEAR enough resource utilization to lag a game...unless maybe you are running a celeron with 512MB.

It's just like everything else....whatever goes wrong, it HAS to be Window's fault. Never mind any 2-bit hardware vendor can sell you a peripheral with a crappy driver never tested by Microsoft and when it brings your system down people cry it's the OS's fault.

I'm running 3 computers with Xp and 2 with Vista (one laptop, one desktop) and the Vista computers are much more stable, require less maintenance, and don't slow down over time like XP does.

These "extensions" are made primarily made for businesses (Hence Vista Business and Ultimate only) who ALWAYS balk and proscrastinate on upgrades...they always use the "if it aint broke, don't fix it" routine, which saves money and ensures no compatibility snares.

In fact, I've noticed the hospital I work at and my bank still use Windows 2000 Professional!

I guess that means, by your logic, that XP is an unstable resource hog.

Dimdows 7 is basically a rehash of Vista. So why should Vista-haters go for it? And Microsoft can't keep offering XP forever. So what are Dimdows-lovers going to do?

Your Anti-"Anti-Vista" bias demonstrates your ignorance and illiteracy.

Simply because Vista works for you doesn't imply that it works for everyone else. It is still a well known fact that majority of organizations (from small startups to small to large enterprises) are shunning away from Vista. This has been and will continue to be the motivating factor for Microsoft to continue extending OEM sale of Windows XP as well as its support line.

I doubt Microsoft is bothered much about the everyday Joe wanting to stick to XP... Microsoft is more bothered about keeping the massive consumer base that evolves around businesses across the globe happy. I won’t be surprised if Microsoft continues to extend OEM XP sale (or "downgrade", whatever you wish to call it) up until the moment Windows 7 has a 100% confirmed release date.

Already many organizations have made an ultimatum to never use Vista as it would make much more sense to wait for the hopefully more polished up Windows 7, especially since many "analysts" are predicting Windows 7 to be released in 2010. Why bother use a maladjusted operating system when something with more hope is right around the corner? Why waste time with testing, creating deployment packages, deployment images (and a lot of money in the process) now?

XP is a dead end OS - try running it on machine with 8 GiB RAM (or even 4 GiB which is todays standard). dont even start with XP64 - useless.
Vista64 works just fine (if you're not running it on outdated hardware, not installing bs software/drivers as most lamers do)
if it runs poorly for you, get professional help (someone who knows what he is doing unlike yourself)
there are so many lamers who think they know about computers and constantly screw up their installations and then blame OS.

vista is intended for thick people with no willingness to learn

thick people part with money more easily

think about it (if your limited brain cells are not bottlenecked by an over zealous OS)

microsoft have rigged the statistics of their vista sales by insisting that PCs are shipped with a vista licence even though the customer has bought an XP operating system. the vista licence remains unused.

this way microsoft can say "we have sold 'n' million vista licences" when only a fraction are actually in operation. they dont mention how many are in use. (i wonder why?!)

its as bent as a nine bob note so you shouldnt put any faith in microsoft - their word is mud.

if vista was so good then they wouldnt need to lie and everyone would be using it. people have voted with their feet and the proof is in the pudding. rubbish

Running Vista 64 bit on 3 machines (pentium laptop, and 2 A64 machines) - never crashes, runs as quick as XP ever did and I've not installed a program or game yet that wouldn't work.

As as for the business uptake, the company I work for (bank, 70000 desktops) was still runnning NT4 until 3 years ago, most large companies wait a long time before adopting an entire new OS, they don't just jump in as soon as it comes onto the market, or even within a couple of years, these things take a hell of a lot of planning and budget to implement, so are normally done when it becomes necessary, not just when a new shiny thing becomes available.

Personally I don't get the Vista backlash at this point.

Never mind vista, I never made the leap to XP, as one of the other comments said, I consider it a bloated unstable OS compared to 2000.

I maintain 50+ xp machines at work, but run 2000 on all my home pc's, it just a lot more streamlined and does everything I need, and runs nice and quick on on 1-2Ghz machines.

If I'd had my way and installed 2000 on all the machines at work back in 2000 (instead of win98!), we'd still be running it now ! And would have save £1000's in upgrade costs.

Vista apologist really are in denial. The fact is the exact minute MS decided to involve marketing in the development of what was supposed to be the evolution of an already pretty good and Stable OS, in that instant the project went down the crapper.

There's just not too much a pretty window can do for an User past the 50th time it's seen. More if you're a corporate user and what you want is productivity and security.

They also screwed up that part. Sure I want my OS to be secure, but if I have to stand 10 UAC questions every second I'd rather stick to a good firewall and xp or even better, a linux distro, no contest.

Microsoft better wakes up to these realities soon enough, as linux isn't yet a real contender, but it also isn't an ugly duck anymore. Actually, when compared to vista it looks like a pretty good alternative.

This is coming from an XP user: I really don't like the misconception people have, that the "extra" RAM Vista uses is a bad thing. Your system pages in and out memory as it needs it, reading from disk if it doesn't find a copy already in RAM. Vista saves you loading time by pre-caching frequently used program data and services, so that programs don't need to load that data from the disk anew. Think of it as someone laying out your clothes for you to pick in the morning so you don't need to fish around in your closet. 

Should your system ever need that memory the OS is using for caching (assuming other programs and services are not actively using it), Vista can instantly flag that memory as available and give it up to the requesting program. In effect, Vista is not stealing or overusing your RAM, it is just *better utilizing* it than XP. Afterall, if your RAM isn't being used 100% all the time, it's being unused, and therefore wasted.

I'm not a Vista apologist (I don't even use it), but please, stop spreading these misconceptions. Vista does bring a lot of good things to the table that have been sorely lacking in XP. If you're not ready for the switch, as I am not right now, fine, but don't damn an OS for things you really know nothing about.

hi

let's check the following differences:
linux / opensource:
who can take responsibility of the code / program? who's working with hardware vendors to make drivers? where are the choice of applications? can we run DVDs & other copyrighted media?
macintosh:
who's got that much money to pay for this phantom religion anyway?

everything has pros & cons; anti-vista fanbois have vomitted the cons, let's taste the pros:
a. hardware drivers
b. games
c. software packages with support
d. google developing software 1st for windows
e. opensource monkeys aping windows in UI & other useability scenarios: to "convert" a successful windows user, anti-windows fanbois have to beg that non-windows OS & applications are just like windows!

microsoft has been in business far to long before the demented anti-microsoft fanbois were born. microsoft is growing up & paying hefty taxes for the US economy. 

opensource fanbois: grow up.


"vista sucks, vista is a big failure, vista is dead": if these mantras keep your anti-vista blood flowing through the corroding veins, so be it.


I have Vista installed on my laptop and have yet to have a problem with it. I have tons of games installed, WoW, warcraft 3, sims2, black and white 2 and many others plus almost 2g of music and the thing runs fine. Heck I can even listen to my music, gab on msn and play WoW all at the same time and it runs like a dream!!!

I just have to say in reply to the pro Vista guy. People shouldn't just base their opinions on gossip, you are right when you say that. But, I don't think you realize that everyone who doesn't support or like Vista is just jumping on some kind of bandwagon. Some people can actually think for themselves and these people are probably making the best choice for their own needs. Like the guy with the gaming and indexing issues... Did you read the entire post? He also runs XP on this system... without any problems! XP suits him best, pay attention. That is true for many people. And there are a few that are fine with what they got and see no reason to deal with what sounds like a big hassle and expensive upgrade. Not everyone wants to upgrade to 4-8g of ram. Sry, it isn't worth it to everyone. So, if you like your Vista, fine. I'm glad it actually made an UPgrade for you. It obviously isn't for the majority of PC owners though.