What Microsoft are missing is a killer feature. Sure Vista looks prettier but all that bad press about cancel/allow and high-end hardware mean people will upgrade when they buy their new system.

Businesses are taking the safe option and using their downgrade rights to keep XP uniform on the desktop.

I have a new shiny Dell machine with Vista Business downgraded to XP, for fun I installed Vista and compared it to XP. No real difference, work is not quicker, pretty doesn't make any difference in Excel (Calc but still!).

Kubuntu however loves it, as you may guess I am using 3.5 and without Compiz and it really flies. Of course there's no antiviurs or spyware scanner.

Overall I am using Kubuntu for everything except games, which XP does nicely. In time I may have to switch to Vista, through strong-arm tactics like DirectX compatibility, but for now Vista is not for me.

I speak to a lot of IT and non-IT people and it's the IT ones who are not upgrading. This in turn effects their users who are convinced that if "Tim the IT guy" says Vista is crap, they'll keep XP at home too.

Bill, 'cause it's all down to him.

The problem with Vista is that the hardware hasn't kept pace. Microsoft fills up the "user experience" and requires more and more CPU power to handle the load. Now that people have done their "upgrade cycle" and bought more hardware (the Y2K "scare" prompted most of the previous cycle), they don't want to do the same thing again.

The hardware vendors (and chip makers) don't want to make "faster" since (rightly) they feel that the "XP-speed" is good enough. If they go faster, the machines just comsume more and more power. Now that laptops are getting to be more prevalent, users don't want bulkier kit to supply the power.

The bottom line is that Microsoft is on the wrong side of the "power curve". They got away with riding the curve while Intel made faster chips, but that doesn't work now. The chips haven't gotten faster recently (to any degree) and now we see how clear the "glass house" is.

When they make Vista developers run on old '486 hardware they might get somewhere. Better yet, ASR33's for debugging. It might humble them, but that is VERY wishful thinking!

"where Microsoft tricked ordinary people into liking Windows Vista, caught their reactions on "secret" camera and then posted them online."

What's the bet that the marketing genius at M$ got the idea while searching for 2girls1cup?

Mine is the dirty trench coat with the bottoms cut out of the pockets.

Eye candy is like a flashy paint job on a car -- its actually quite nice provided the car itself works. If your car didn't work then no matter how good the paint job is, its useless. Same with a computer -- no matter how nice the interface is its got to work.

So far Microsoft has failed to show any convincing argument about what Vista does better than XP. It may have fewer bugs, it may be more secure, but functionally it doesn't appear to do anything better than the older system. (Especially as the first thing you do to it is strip it of all the garbage that comes packed with it.)

I've added Tux as a warning. Linux hasn't got the Vista eye candy but its stable, fast, easy to use, easy to maintain and quite secure. Which is really all you want from a computer.

Admittedly I'm not your typical user, but I still wouldn't touch Vista. I was happy with Win2k at home for a few years after XP came out, and even now only run a copy of XP in a virtual machine under Linux. My son has XP Home as a games machine (games for small children, so not even performance-hungry). My wife has a Mac.

I remember the days of fast. Amiga OS running on a 7Mhz Motorola 68020. Why? Because the OS was ultra efficient... Much more so than todays bloated crap. I can't help but wonder what would happen with todays hugely powerful hardware if MS had of gone for a lean, mean Windows and gotten rid of all the processor zapping guff. Software running at quite bonkers speeds. Its not as if they haven't got enough money to hire an entire army of coders to re-do Windows from scratch... however with the focus on efficiency, eeking out the most operations per second (and then finding a way to better it!) and (small) size. Other operating systems have proved you can have eye candy and still leave some processing time spare for the stuff you actually want to do. Jeez, even the Amiga could do that.

However as we all know these days this is nothing more than a pipe dream. MS and the hardware vendors are locked into a mutually beneficial upgrade cycle. One which neither would fancy being broken.Think of the blind panic from hardware vendors if Microsoft released an ultra-efficient OS that made the absolute most of new AND old hardware. It doesn't help when all but the geekiest of people don't realise whats going on and what is actually possible. The kind of Magpie people that are only interested in Shiny things and dont see the benefit of being frugal simply because the have 2Ghz+ processors, 4Gb of RAM and 500Gb-1Tb hard-drives.

Actually I don't wanna think about this because it depresses me slightly... Oh, and don't mention Linux (or its variants). I know what its capable of but I just can't be arsed faffing round with it. Unfortunately Windows works (usually) straight out the box and I don't have to piddle arse around (that much) with it...

Thats it, it has depressed me... I really can't be arsed now. I'm going to reminisce about my old Amiga and its glorious efficient ways.

//Mines the one with "Deathbed Vigil" on the back

Of course these people would like it. They're everyday Joes, who walks around like sheep and care not about DRM. I'm sure it'll fall apart if the people gathered were tech savvy and asked about DRM.

Information Week says that Microsoft doesn't just have a video of the users who doubted Vista using "Mojave",. They are reporting that the "users" were simply shown a demo of what the OS was supposed to be able to do. Any OS can look good as screenshots and canned demos. What's the real deal here?

I started laughing when I reached that part, and didn't stop laughing until I nearly choked to death on my coffee.

When are Microsoft going to finally withdraw Vista and give everyone XP SP3, Apple or Linux vouchers so users can obtain an OS that, well, works?

Think I'll re-read the article just to give myself some more early-morning merriment!

A lot of the people in that hidden video look like they normally sleep in a cardboard box with a bottle of thunderbird.

When do we get the 'I Can't Believe It's Vista' branding ?

please insert your childish "linux/mac rules..microsoft sux" crap below.

...he would have over 50% of the PC market now if the dumb idiot had opened OS-X to run on any PC a year ago. If you could have bought and installed it on any PC, legally, with Apples blessing, Apple would have totally, and finally, killed Microsoft.

But Jobs is too self-centered and egotistical to have seen that reality. He's still into his microcosm kingdom mentality, and that has bought Microsoft the time it needs to return to business as usual. It only a matter of time now. What an idiot.

For a small moment there, it could finally have been different.

So MS went and hand picked some non-Vista users. They then focus on the parts that work, and make an effort to not let them see the annoying, broken or horrendously slow parts.

Did they cover these topics with their test subjects:

* File sharing speeds?

* Unzip speeds using the built in zip tool?

* "Domain" logon screen?

* UAC's wonderful interface?

I doubt it. Those are known bad points about Vista. And 90% of the complaints about Vista *aren't* about the appearance. They are about the experience in certain common situations.

Do you want to let me have s3x with your hard disk, it's nice too. I come from country with people with bad disks, we can fix.

So Microsoft sets up a controlled experiment where Vista doesn't seem to suck too badly. This is from a company that has a history of covertly sponsoring independent "research" that ranks MS products superior using questionable methodology.

Do a real experiment. Put Vista on a box, let them use it for a month, and then put XP back on it. See if they want to switch back to Vista.

I am one of the people on the viral video. Microsoft duped me, not only about what I was seeing, but also how my image and words would be used.

What was demonstrated to me was very LIMITED in a highly CONTROLLED environment. I only got to see a few features that were already embedded on a very high end computer. These were demonstrated to me by a product ambassador.

Now, when I saw that I was in a commercial, I was shocked. I did not give them permission to use me to sell their product. Additionally, my evaluation of their product was limited. My comments were about how the product SEEMED under VERY CONTROLLED conditions. I have no idea how reflective of the real product their demonstration was. I don't know, and I in no way endorse their product.

Were my comments applicable to the entire Vista operating system? Absolutely not!

Microsoft twisted and spun. The product might be okay, but I have no real idea.

And I feel violated.

So if you want to be violated, get Vista. I know I never will.

http://aryenow.blogspot.com/

As was shown in Microsoft's antitrust trial, they are very good at ermm... working up a video to show what they want 8-). I saw one of these clips -- it's like one of those HP ads where the pages, photos, and videos just FLY into the computer and arrange themselves into a nice slideshow and/or school report. Microsoft managed to edit out all the epic fail of Vista out of the video..good PR I guess but I don't think it'll trick anyone.

And, although you can certainly get 2GB dual-core machines, I think people now are seriously interested in using Moore's law the other way, getting say a single-core with 512MB for almost nothing and saving on electricity to boot. Which obviously Microsoft clearly didn't expect.

I notice "Microsoft" is only mentioned in small text at the bottom of the page. Having said that, while the videos themselves smell strongly of astroturf, the site seems quite representative of Vista - visually fairly polished but slow as hell.

If you have an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft, you pay for a number of licenses in your company.

If you buy PC's there is already a license on it (OEM-license).

So on every PC there's 2 licenses.

Is that taken into account?

I've seen this before at a previous workplace of mine and I've actually conducted a similar experiment myself. We had a number of machines setup and running KDE in Fedora and had the appearance set-up to resemble XP, it was mainly to find out how plausible it would be to move to Fedora instead of XP.

The more tech savvy of the group picked up on it pretty quickly but were quite pleased with how things worked and looked.

It would be interesting to see something similar done by either the Apple or Linux camps and see the results. Theirs would have a more reliable breakdown of numbers and percentages, and should show MS for fools.

'Never let the truth get in the way of a good story'. That's a sexy interface on the Mojave site, and the reactions are well presented (edited?), enough for M$ to produce its own reality distortion field, maybe there's even enough hype-r drive in there to produce a parallel universe in which Vista is truly a great product. Don't stand too close.

This is the reason that vista is useless, it has become a drm system, not an operating system to help people work or play.

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

The beginning of the end.

M$ used to laugh at Apple and now they are running scared.

They know far better then the majority of people just about to post drivel below me that the writing is on the wall.

Apple are kicking butt and I will enjoy every moment of the blinkered windoze mediocrity loving masses demise! HAH!

Well I have SP1 installed on '''er inchagre's" PC and did not notice a blind bit of difference.

Still got the horribly slow bootup, still got the mysterious disk thrasing on a theoreticly idle machine, still got the absurdly erratic quick, quick, slow user interface response.

SP1 installed suspiously quickly (nice to no something runs fast eh!).

From all this I conclude that SP1 is just a fatter than usual monthly bug fix which has been relabled a "service pack" for marketing reasons.

I bought a laptop last year - 1GB memory Celeron-M 1.6Ghz processor, Intel integrated graphics. It came with Vista Home Basic on it. Which equated to practically no eye candy, low performance when more than a couple of apps open and very poor performance when accessing external USB2 hard drive. I used it for a while out of curiosity then installed my usual Slackware Linux on it.

Result - now running a full whizz bang eye-candy Compiz-fusion on top of KDE and can have Firefox, Open Office and numerous other apps. open and usable whilst compiling in a terminal window with a Video Running in Xine for good measure without any apparent slowdown, disk transfers are faster and wireless network is more reliable. All the while all the whizz bang of the eye-candy is working away nicely.

My own personal opinion - for the good and bad of vista, I'm not buying a more powerful laptop just to run an operating system that adds no apparent value for me.

"...Analysts that criticize Windows Vista are either crazy or unreliable. Who can you trust? Microsoft."

Bawhahahahaha someone pick me up off the floor from laughing my arse off at such delusions!

HP also offers pre downgraded XP Pro machines with upgrade to Vista options as does Fujitsu Siemens and several other manufacturers. The best bit is that they are no Smell.

I can help but wonder if these people who fell for MS's trick were admins or users. A simple browse of the control panel and any attempt to change anything would of told you the OS was Vista.

Oh and a flame icon as I am sick of positive Dell comments

Nobody cares about operating systems - they don't actually do the work you want done. That's done by the applications. The best thing an operating system can do is not crash and keep your data and working environment relatively safe.

From that basis, it's fair enough for a new PC to run Vista - provided of course that the user doesn't have to learn new stuff, and that it will support all the bits'n'bobs that person (or organisation) wants to interface it with. Oh yes, and that it runs the applications you actually want to use.

That's where the problems start, Vista gets in the way. The ideal operating system would be completely invisible: just doing it's thing quietly in the background and not getting between the users and their objectives. Even worse, as an operating system it doesn't offer any compelling new benefits (note: not features) that a large group of people actually need. This isn't Apple, so eye candy doesn't count, guys.

This is where XP was successful, not because it was particularly good, but because it's predecessor was not up to the job. The problems and unreliability of W2K - even with 4 service packs, meant that people were willing to shell-out for XP and the advantages it gave: not getting in the way, not crashing and letting them get on with their work. That it would also run their old hardware and applications without having to buy new "XP approved" versions helped a lot, too.

So far as the future goes, there are no operating systems "killer apps", the lack of backwards compatibility for both hardware and software is a major disadvantage and crushing hardware requirements are the last straw. Until the people in charge of Vista Mk2, or preferable XP Mk3, realiise that, like a good butler the O/S should only be noticeable by it's absence, and that it's neither a feature nor a benefit in itself, they will always be competing with the "good enough" older stuff.

My favourite quote from the release of Vista was from an obviously non-technical woman looking at the Aeroglass interface. When told that Vista had cost $10Bn to develop, her response was "Is that all they did?" Pretty much sums up the whole world's response.

Not only are users downgrading their installed Vista license to XP, and manufacturers shipping Vista licenses pre-downgraded, but by the magic of deferred revenue recognition, Microsoft treats tens of millions of XP sales from BEFORE the release of Vista as Vista sales (because they came with some sort of right to upgrade).

The danger with the Mojave campaign is that it will make consumers think MS are liars.

If only Microsoft would apply the same level of energy and determination to actually *fixing* the flaws in Vista, instead of just talking, then Vista would indeed be great.

But all Microsoft deliver is yet more verbal diarrhoea!

I know that it will take days to backup my 90 GB of "stuff" and several weeks to sort out the niglets with all the devices on my laptop and the scanner e.t.c. but even then a move to Ubuntu+WINE looks more & more attractive compared to a lifetime of waiting for files to die, disks to defragment, the repetitive search for the craplication that blocks hibernation and for Microsoft to fix Vista!!

Can't you see the Emperor Fester's fine new robes, the scintillating stitching, the rakish cut, such resplendent finery.

Only and idiot would say it looks like a sweaty naked fat man throwing chairs and doing the monkey dance.

;D

"From what we can see in these very edited videos, there's a lot of focus on wowing users with eye candy"

Well, there's one problem. I am a proud Windows XP user. It is a man's operating system, for men. Apple produces a child's operating system aimed at children, and the various different flavours of Linux are basically autism in computer form. If Microsoft had emphasised that Vista was a nuts-and-bolts rewriting of XP, a rugged manly all-weather heavy-duty operating system, I might have gone for it.

Instead, there is all this nonsense with Vista Aero and DRM, which puts me in mind of metrosexual Peter Mandelson types with big LCD televisions, who wear tight t-shirts, you know what I mean. And also screeching middle-class girls who want to have a little animated kitten on their desktop.

I don't want to have anything to do with these grown-up children. I want a man's operating system. For men. XP with all the graphical nonsense turned off, that runs faster and feels like a brick, and that isn't tainted by the hippy free software cult.

Blah blah Vista pish blah Apple Mac fanbois rule etc etc Microsoft gonna fail soon blah aren't Apples great? blah blah blah

Repeat ad infinitum and nauseum/turn in to flame war.

/Story comments generator ends

I know this is going to look like trolling, but Vista x64 SP1, running on new hardware, with the eye candy and UAC turned off, is actually not a terrible OS. I've only managed to make it blue screen once in six months so far.

There's even (shock horror!) bit's I prefer to XP.

Everyone else I know who uses it hates it though.

No doubt running on a supercomputer.

Never seen the speed of performance mentioned here on my machine.

Had it not been for Rome Total War.....

Mojave experiment quote on using the 3d Flip

"i like how you can flip through the different windows, cos with me im always minusing"

a perfect example of someone who needs to be shown alt & tab on ANY version of windows.

these poeple would be impressed if someone showed them copy and paste.

Paris... cos shes thick

Thats the time Vista survived on my laptop.

First of all I would like to put that into context. I am a self-confessed linux fanboy and had steadfastly refused to purchase, or even try, Vista. However, a new laptop included with a mobile phone contract that came pre-loaded with vista arrived, and so I thought I would give it a go. At the very least I planned to dual boot.

Expectations were low as this is a low spec laptop, 1gb RAM etc, so I fully expected slowness. What I did not expect was just how much this thing could annoy me. First of all there was the fact that I had to perform at least 3 reboots in the first half an hour of owning the thing for no real reason that I could understand. But the reboot that broke this fanboys back was after an auto windows update while I was logged in as a normal user, not admin. All of a sudden I get a popup box, the computer has been updated and will reboot in 4 minutes, with the cancel button greyed out. All I had access to was the "reboot now" button. Well, I don't know the OS at all, presumably I could have switched to admin and cancelled this happening, but any OS that reboots itself like that is off my wish list.

Next up, I didn't like the pre-install. Crappy partitioning, loads of pre-loaded bloatware that I didn't need, and no install media. Recovery disks are all thats available, and they apparently put the machine back into its original state, ie removing any new partitions/OS's you install.

Whats the use of that. I bought the OS, I want it to use it as I please. I contacted the vendor (CPW, they just order the laptop from ACER, so have no install media). Acer wanted to charge me 50 quid for the recovery disks. I have yet to hear anything from Microsoft.

After 36 hours I had had enough, vista is no more, this is being written to you via debian. I am not blind, debian support for this particular laptop is not stunning, my wifi does not work out of the box so I will be sorting that out this evening. I do know that I won't have to reboot while I do so however, even if I compile new modules for the kernel, as I can load them on the fly.

In short, all the rebooting and preventing me from doing what I want, when I want to do it, means that Vista has no place on this, or any other of my machines.

I'll lay my cards on the table -

I hate Vista.

I like XP.

Fond memories of Windows 2000.

I'm still in the experimenting stage with Linux (so far taking 10 years since RHL 3)

Never tried OS X.

I appreciate it's your paraphrasing, but is Microsoft's brilliant PR strategy really to insult any journalist who has ever criticised Windows Vista?

Poor lass being used as a Mojave Experiment guniea pig ( Row 1 Column 4 ) can't have her say! The gullible jock to her right keeps interjecting. Maybe she said Vista sucks compared to her granny's Mac?

Biggest reason not to switch to Vista is that nobody in their right mind will fork out $$$ for new Vista-compatible versions of software when their old software works just fine with XP.

There are loads of fanboy/paidboy websites in the net which claim how superiorily compatible Vista is. These are just crap and lies. For many software they have done the "depthful" testing of starting the software to the startup screen. But the incompatibilities might only show up when you're into using the software 11 levels deep. But they are true incompatibilities nevertheless, with the software hanging terminally.

Copy the dataset to the same software installed on XP and tada - NO PROBLEMS.

MS simply shot themselves into both feet by making Vista incompatible with XP by default. Had Vista been an upgraded, streamlined and modernized XP on steroids it would've been a huge hit. But XP is the gold standard and if Vista is not compatible no person in their right mind wants it.

Everything above excludes fanboys and other mental kids who never paid for their warezed software and for whom Aero 3D Flip is the most important thing in their computer "use".

the chap sat opposite me was fed a breakfast of Vista SP1 first thing on Monday morning ... by elevenses time he was sat looking at a Blue Screen of Death ... first one I've seen in a good while.

His PC is now healthy again, but only because he was able to remove the SP1 update.

Think I'll stay with XP, for now anyway.

Why don't they show us happy Vista users preferring Vista to XP running on the same 2-year-old hardware, say a 2.8GHz P4 on an i915 MoBo with 1Gb RAM? Perhaps, because they can't, even with the full resources of the MS corporation to tweak and spin things?

Because that's the sort of hardware that many users have purchased and expect to get another two or three years of useful life out of. Which they will, if they don't migrate to Vista. It would be different if Vista offered any wonderful must-have new features that people really wanted to upgrade to and were willing to buy new hardware for ... but it doesn't. Just glossy eye-candy and a totally un-necessary and time-wasting rearrangement of all the basics that we used to know our way around. And a built-in coffee break every time we boot it.

If you think that's unfair, connect electricity meters to the XP system and the Vista system with the same hardware, to show how green Vista is NOT!

Why do all new PC's come with Windows?

I already have a licence... (I bought it seperatly not an OEM)

And I dont want to buy it forty times!

just like I wont buy music I already have on Record Tape & CD!

Originally they pushed the eye candy.

Still they push the eye candy.

There is Nothing on Vista anyone would miss. There is nothing extra it does over XP. It in the real world of social exploits is no safer.

My 6 year old laptop with a never re-installed XPpro outperforms all but the insane spec high street laptops running Vista.

I upgraded original 512M to 768M RAM and typically it still uses less than 512M. Peak today so far is 313M.

I run Visio, MS Project, SQL, IIS, Word, Excel, Skype, Bluetooth, WiFi, SCSI scanner via PCMCIA, Civ Beyond the Sword, Settlers Heritage of Kings, TurboCAD, various filter design, Schematic/PCB, Video Editing, paintshop pro 7, Google Earth, 3 versions of Linux via VMwareplayer (That eats more RAM!). Filezilla, Pigeon, Firefox, IE7, Thunderbird, nero 6.1 (upgraded built in DVDROM/CD writer to dual layer DVD writer), DSP based Software Defined Radios using internal and USB sound devices simultaneously, VB6/C++ also studio.net, Netbeans/Java IDE programming, SharpDevelop. MS Services for UNIX AND Cygwin .... And much much more.

NO AV, but MSClient disabled on any direct Internet connection and periodic check with "silentrunners.org" tool.

15 different connection options / device etc in "Network Connections"

2 hardware profiles to allow boot with alternate network configurations.

Upgraded 30Gbyte drive to faster 120GByte drive with out reinstall of anything by putting both on a desktop via adaptors and boot with Partition Magic. Is that possible on Vista or does DRM/security trip you?

1.8GHz P4 CPU Dell Inspiron 8200 "laptop"* with Ultrasharp 1600x1200 screen and GeForce 4 (440 Go) 32M graphics.

*Well it looks like a laptop.

MS has passed the Event Horizon. I've used NT since 1994 and MS has gradually broken it. They seem to have people that only understand Win3.x ->95->98->ME and candy driving the Development. Vista was the inevitable outcome. Win7 will be no better and offer nothing of value.

..."We've made a big turn around on the application compatibility story, and we're just getting started".

Er, shouldn't you have started BEFORE releasing it to customers?

It fact, shouldn't you have started AND finished, AND gone back to improve it AGAIN before releasing it?

Anyone at Microsoft listening?

No?

Paris, because she doesn't always control her releases either (although she's quick to catch up).

Ok the average windows lover is about as intellegent as a goat specially the ones that can't tell that they are using Vista.

not to mention if they did tweak it enough to through intellegent users off the scent they probably were very impressed as we were with longhorn with an alpha/beta release with lots of promises. Not release software thats missing everything advertised in the development cycle.

Microsoft, just start flinging poo at each other please and leave O/S dicissions to us. What happened to "the customer is always right"

Clueless Joe on Mojave/Vista: "It represents a lot of things that you could only dream of..."

I used to think that dreaming of teaching an ex-girlfriend to make goats-milk cheese was pretty weird, but obviously some people have more serious problems.

Paris, because the best way to combat odd dreams is to keep your brain in standby all the time.

Show any plebian user a modern Linux distro with some fangly-dangly "compiz" wizardy. Then, in front of their eyes, switch is about to look like OS X, Windows, whatever. Just have the tissues handy.

Once Linux becomes usable by the mainstream home user (and it is slowly getting there*), it is going to have Windows for lunch.

I have seen the future - it smells of fish and goes "Awk!"

Hmm....how can I convince the g/f to let me buy another system.....

*Note to the fanboi legions: Linux is good, but still the preserve of the enthusiast for now. It is not as "cuddly" as OX S or Windows just yet. Home users (i.e. non-enthusiasts) want an OS that "just works" and lets them email, surf, watch TV, DVDs etc without any grief. Still too much mucking around with bash scripts etc required IMHO.

Nobody buys Microsoft products because they are good. What counts is how well they run legacy software. Nobody cares about advanced features.

Microsoft could be successfull by providing a small barebones operating system with optional modules to meet dependencies certain applications have.

Punchline: Use propaganda and try to make it 'cool' by getting all 'young' and using video.

Has anyone seen whether the Apollo landing set is in the background?

Is it webcam grade, or have they got the "Bill's leaving video" production company in to do professional, but made to look candid?

"As we all know, most PCs soon begin to slow down in the real world."

Is that because most PCs run windows?

I know of no other OS that needs a periodic wipe and reinstall just to keep it running properly. Whilst some of the blame lies with application vendors who are constantly putting quickloaders, updaters and other such cruft into the startup sequence, a lot of the blame must lie with MS.

""I am very capable of taking midline hardware and making XP screamingly fast on it, out of box. Once I start loading software and Active X objects and web components and spyware and spyware fighters well then everything gets sloowwww," the ex-MVP said."

Yes. It will. Strangely though, other operating systems don't suffer from that, maybe because they don't try and preload world+dog into RAM or just get broken, slow and somehow dirty.

A man who sold a piece of complex legal software on the back of a power point presentation. Made up of screenshots and done in such order that it looked like the software was finished and in use.

When in fact it wasn't anywhere near completed.

He had it done to a fine art of talking and clicking to the next slide so it looked like it was used.

So if he can do it... I am sure M$ can use the same marketing techniques to show a bunch of slack jawed yokels that Vista can work.

There are plenty of commentators on here claiming they will never touch Vista. But yet at the same time claim they 'know' its rubbish. How exactly?

That site smacks of desperation. And it's cheesy!

Stick anyone in front of Vista and they'll all like it because it's just comfy Windows XP with eye candy.

It's like showing an existing Ford Focus driver the new model, whilst carefully making sure they don't notice the BMW dealer out of the window, across the road.

They don't know any different.

I try to avoid the comments because they always make me angry at all the MS bias and bigotry, Not Today!

I have been using Vista in 32 and 64 bit forms since before it was released. I have run into very few app or driver compatability issues overall (and mostly with vendors not releasing any x64 drivers). I strongly suspect that situation was blown way out of proportion by morans on teh intertubes.

That being said, yes you need decent hardware to run it. Yes, XP runs better on slower hardware, but then, we've said that about 2k and XP, and 98 and 2k, and 95 and 98. See the trend?

I can't watch Apple's commercials, they just make me angry. The outright lies they say are just outrageous. I try to like Macs, I really do (I have about 150 of them at work), but they are so backwards and counter-intutive you can never expect the same thing twice.

Anyway, enough ranting. Get over yourselves. Accept change. Stop being such tools. No MS is not perfect and makes stupid decisions, but then, what large company is?

I have and will only ever use Microsoft products because the alternative just doesn't bear thinking about.

This means that I cannot view this website... do they have a Silverlight version. I mean silverlight is just so cool & great & beats that Adobe flash shite.

Hey I know, Microsoft, why don't you do the same thing, but showing people the difference between Flash & Silverlight... Let's see it blow them away!

I Vista was rubbish. I didn't buy a new laptop with Vista, because I had read a lot of features were not as advertised. I won a competition and Microsoft gave me a laptop with Vista on it (seriously) and, in all honesty, it lives up to the reviews. If I could push a button and roll it back to XP SP2 and have all the drivers in place, I'd do so in a second, but at the moment I need it just to work (am using proprietary windows software that wont run under WINE, and yes, I know, dual boot, NTFS support etc..., but this is not my primary computer) and once I finish with it, it's so going Unbuntu. I've just had enough.

And it's all well and good telling people that this new piece of software has a brand new feature that keeps you safe, makes your life easier, makes it prettier and prevents malicious programs from causing problems in a little test environment, they are going to say "Great!" (and if they don't you just lose their video for the marketing campaign).

Yet once they get their new system home, have disabled the application control features because they broke their favourite software, none of their music or movies will play for "Security" reasons (DRM), the pretty user interface has disabled itself (again) because it might run slowly and they have to keep going through sub-sub-sub-menus to access options they change a lot that used to be three clicks away (but you don't need them anymore), they'll realise they have been sold a donkey.

Regardless of Vista's flaws or glories, the fact is you can't call it journalism to say:

'That 180 million total is licenses sold and does not equate to end users, especially not when companies are downgrading to Windows XP and Dell is offering Windows XP ....'

Without saying what amount of those 180 million have been downgraded. It doesn't tell us anything. If a half million people downgrade, its a nothing story. If 90 million downgrade then its a whole other thing.

Or another example:

'A major block was the lack of third-party hardware or software support. '

Hrm, lets see, certainly from my experience the only things I had problems with regarding driver support were my sound card (Creative Labs) and a Canon scanner (that was 6 years old and Canon had already said wouldn't be supported in Vista). I can't help but blame Creative for the driver issues. Most every other hardware company I make use of managed to get drivers out. So again, if you've got no figures for what percentage of problems people had with lack of drivers, stop using it as a cudgel. It just makes you look silly and you only impress the slobering haters who would agree with you if you said Microsoft developed a time machine so they could support Hitler.

Without some sort of figure for the downgrade or stats for the hardware issues (or at least links to them), please stop using what amounts to anecdotal evidence to support a Microsoft bash.

I'm all for bashing any company you choose, just use actual facts to do it.

""Wanna see fast? Install [Windows] 98 on modern hardware, doesn't mean it's a secure or well-built OS."

That's been my argument in sticking with 98SE and I've convinced friends and family of the same but nice to see it said by an MVP.

Security is easy enough to fix with free third-party firewalls and whatnot, and thanks to Firefox many security holes are closed in a jiffy. The OS is built well enough for what I'm doing.

Why would I want to give Microsoft hundreds of pounds and invest in faster and better hardware to run a slower and more bloated OS which doesn't deliver any added bonus beyond prettiness ? I run Classic Theme anyway when I have to use XP/Vista anyway.

Jobs opened up what is now the Mac OS to PCs for a short period somewhere around 1993, back when it was known as NextStep and its main PC competition was Windows 3.x. It bombed. Given that the OS is now designed around knowing in advance which combinations of hardware it may be run on, it'd need extensive work to support the things that generic-hardware folk have to deal with, like installing and upgrading hardware drivers, occasionally having to much around with different versions of different drivers where one has a bug that plays off another, etc.

Because of DX10.

I run dual boot systems Xp / Linux for work and Vista for DX10 games, thats it.

Now if someone would come out out with an open source equivalent of DX10 which is supported by the games manufactures, I'll uninstall Vista.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they get angry with you and then you win.

"They" being MS, you can insert your own "you".

"Nobody buys Microsoft products because they are good. What counts is how well they run legacy software. Nobody cares about advanced features.

Microsoft could be successfull by providing a small barebones operating system with optional modules to meet dependencies certain applications have."

Unfortunately that would not work well for them imo. Microsoft Makes its money from OEM's, I mean really how many of you would WANT to buy Windows if it didn't automatically come as part of the machine?

As a user above has said Microsoft is increasing the bloat to force us to upgrade our hardware, and upgrading our hardware feeds them more money in the form of a new OEM.

people are sick of upgrading, with the carbon cult focusing on energy efficiency, AV Joe public doesn't want a hungrier machine with a new bigger processor, he wants something efficient.

One question which comes to mind is how many XP licenses were sold early on where the PC was then used to run Win2000?

I know this was the norm at my company during XP's early years.

Nuff said!!!

*looks around for Sam the spelling and grammar checker before submitting*

Win 2000 was a nice incremental development from NT4, XP was a quantum leap in bloat. Vista ? Unless you absolutely must have DirectX10 I can't see the point.

None of the above do much more than NT4 (except maybe active directory). If you were buying for a corporate entity that isn't a games house, how could you justify canning an installed base of XP and rolling out a new, underperforming O/S that does nothing the old one couldn't, and the increased costs for har hardware replacement and staff training. With most workplaces trying to hold down IT expenditure, you'd have to be nuts....

a lot of people moaning just cos it's MS no doubt. I'm a software engineer by trade and have been for about 10 years now. I've used all sorts of OS's in my time, OS/2 (yes really!), Solaris, Win 2k, XP and Vista. I can honestly say I like Vista.

Yes the UAC can be a bit overbearing at times however it has it's uses. For example, one big use I can think of is to save retarded users from themselves. I've lost count of the number of machines I've had to rebuild/rescue due to users clicking willy nilly (sometimes literally!) on anything they see - UAC does help to make them think twice about clicking on stuff they shouldn't be.

Speed & reliability, well, I run it on my home machine and it's fine. I haven't had a huge deal of issues, one or two I admit and one big bugbear of mine with Vista home premium (i know i know) is some advanced things have been disabled (ie advanced user settings etc) but my experience of XP was worse. Reliablility wise, Vista has been far far far more stable than XP ever was. And my experience of XP was pretty decent to be fair, my machine would stay up and running fine 24*7 for 2 months at a time but put under load and it would struggle. My vista machine on the other hands been gobbling up the strain without showing many issues.

Don't get me wrong, Vista has it's problems, but so does Vista, Leopard any other OS you can think of. Nothings perfect but in my sole opinion (and remember: this is my opinion) the whole "VISTA IS TEH POOP" message is mainly led by OSX loving media types who can't wait to jump on the "lets hate on MS" bandwagon.

end of rant. thanks for (not) reading...

typo alert:

Don't get me wrong, Vista has it's problems, but so does Vista, Leopard any other OS you can think of.

should be

Don't get me wrong, Vista has it's problems, but so does XP, Leopard any other OS you can think of.

Boss interrupted me losing my concentration.. I need a cattle prod..

If I bought a computer with Vista on it, got entirely fed up with it and after much searching and struggling to find all device drivers managed to 'downgrade' to XP .. how do I get Microsoft to take 1 off the number of Vista licences installed? Every little helps.

Actually it was my wife's machine, and she did last about 6 months with Vista, but in the end her patience eroded to the point I just had to do something about it. I did take the precaution of building XP on a replacement hard disk in her laptop just in case I couldn't make it work, but in the end and after considerable help from Sony Vaio forumites who had blazed the trail, it works. And it is like a different machine .. so fast, stable, runs all her favourite applications, no strange display bugs in many applications; it stays out of the way and lets her get on with just using the computer.

Take a granny Linux user with no significant technical skills (there are plenty).

Give her a new motherboard, CPU, Memory, graphics card and generic (properly licensed) Vista installation pack - All the things you would need to get Vista working on a reasonable linux machine (might need an new power supply for that graphics card).

Offer a significant bribe (say 3 months pension) if she can make a dual boot Linux/Vista machine, send and receive email, write a letter and watch a DVD with each OS within a month. Ask her how much time it took to get Vista usable, how much of the bribe went on technical support, the value to her of all that new hardware and which OS she actually prefers. Do not ask over the phone. Ask in person. If she wants to beat over the head with her walking stick because Vista trashed her working Linux installation then stand there and take it like a piñata.

If Vista can pass a test like that, then I will accept that Linux is not yet ready for the masses. If MS users think my test is to harsh, then remember most newbies first try Linux with a free Knoppix or Ubuntu live CD. If there was a Vista live DVD I would let you use that in the test.

Perhaps the reason you cannot buy MacOS DVD's for generic PC's is that it is not practical to make such a DVD easy enough to use by Apple's target market.

"Microsoft Makes its money from OEM's, I mean really how many of you would WANT to buy Windows if it didn't automatically come as part of the machine?"

I bought Windows on it's own - or rather, I bought MCE and I only paid wholesale price. However, I only bought that because I wanted a jukebox and not a computer.

The only reason I use Windows on my main desktop is because I've had problems getting Linux to play nicely with the onboard graphics - not a big problem given that the next upgrade cycle will see that mobo in the jukebox with MCE.

Ben Lambert, you should not care if we hate Vista. That's what we call 'emo'.

We'll bash Vista because it's a dumb OS with dumb DRM.

Why do you care? A shareholder perhaps?

"The latest manifestation in this unfolding campaign is the Mojave Experiment, where Microsoft tricked ordinary people into liking Windows Vista, caught their reactions on "secret" camera and then posted them online."

To be honest that bit made me laugh... hows about... ms get a single core laptop with 512 mb of ram running windows vista... lock bill gates in a room and force him to use it to do a days work on it... of course the hidden camera covertly positioned...

Now that would be something id pay to see...

"We've made a big turn around on the application compatibility story, and we're just getting started."

There's your problem! They're only getting started on things which should have been FINISHED before Vista ever went to market (like the entire bloody OS).

MS has passed the Event Horizon

I think you mean "MS has jumped the shark."

Only person I know who likes Vista as Vista 64 running on a screamer

that's so fast you don't even SEE the special effects...so much for that.

so much for glitz

I think Steve Ballmer would be more entertaining. Put a high-def video clip of some chair throwing on the laptop, mark it as protected content and tell him it is Apple's next advert. He can have as many other PC's as he likes as long as the DRM works.

The premise of this 'Mojave' scheme brought a smile to my face. An entire website devoted to try and counter a perceived public bias and apathy. By it's very existance this is proof positive of this whole Vista folly. None of the footage was spontaneous and of the cuff, and some of the comments from those taking part was just asinine. All stagemanaged and scripted and not very well at that.

To tell people to try Vista before they criticise it is one thing (can't argue with that if you can try before you buy). But to then turn round to those that have purchased legitimate copies of Vista and don't like it with the response of 'Well your just wrong!' and 'You don't get it!' gets my goat.

The people in the know are either sticking with Windows 2000/XP or moving to Linux. And those with a little extra cash are jumping ship altogether and getting a Mac. None of this is what Microsoft expected because of their short sighted arrogance.

Build a better Windows and the people will come. Give the consumer what they ask for and not what you want and you will salvage something of your now sullied reputation.

Is it that impossible a task?

It seems I'm failing to be a good internetter.

I don't see any real gain from upgrading to Vista, so I'm not going to pay for it. I'd rather see a less bloaty, faster OS than a more encompassing one with better features.

But try as hard as I can, I can't find bile and hate within me about it. I want to be like everybody else and hate Microsoft with all of my being, but I'm just ambivalent.

"Do a real experiment. Put Vista on a box, let them use it for a month, and then put XP back on it. See if they want to switch back to Vista."

Haven't bother to watch the Mojave videos (I have a severe allergy to MS marketing drivel) but I'm assuming they allowed the users to do little outside the pre-installed confines but go onto the Internet, look at their favorite sites and check their e-mail. A public kiosk is a lousy way to conduct such and experiment, because even the luser-est of families uses their computer as more than a dummy terminal for teh Interwebs.

Did they let Mom and Dad open up Quicken/Money/whatever or even go onto their Online Banking? (the scourge of IE7 and Norton alike - I've fielded too many tech calls where somebody's Online Banking was jacked up because of IE7 or some firewall)

Did they let older brother, whom we'll call Jason, install and play his copy of Doom III / Crysis / Insert Hot New FPS With Whizzy Graphics Here Tournament Edition?

Did they even try to install little sibling Sequoia's copy of Reader Rabbit (or whatever poorly programmed edutainment software the kids play with these days)?

My guess is a big, steaming pile of "Nopity nope nope" to all of the above.

ANY OS - XP, Vista, Linux, OSX, hell even OS/2 - works like a trooper if you use it in the mental confines that the creators expect you to. (i.e. never installing any 3rd party software because you don't NEED any of course, never poking your nose around in the Big Bad Control Panel or other settings area, never installing a printer, scanner, or other peripheral that isn't an optical mouse, never going to any website that isn't Google, Hotmail, Facebook or the like, etc.)

This having been ranted, Nat the IT Guy is sticking with his typical response to Vista.

"Keep XP. Keep it until a noticable portion of the software you buy or download gives you an error message saying 'This program cannot be run under Windows XP'. Because that would be the only compelling reason to upgrade to Vista."

Norton,Symantec & HP slows down computers, not Microsoft.

doh!

It just needs to do something useful that XP doesn't. The reason I haven't deployed more than a handful of the 700 Vista licenses I have is because the work to do so, (upgrades, changes, testing, support, training etc.) cannot be justified in the benefits gained (nothing really tangible, it just looks nicer but works slower).

Until this ceases to be the case, or(more likely) XP ceases to be well supported, I and most other business IT guys will have a very lukewarm attidude to it. Microsoft might be able to claim xxx,xxx,xxx sold but how many liceses are actually deployed and activated, much, much less I am sure.

Owen Clark

whether Vista-lover Mikey-boi has been caught up in this massive MS-inspired 'outing'?

Given that he claims to have a self-built PC, then he must have committed the pre-meditated crime of installing Vista (then pleads criminal insanity????)

.

.

For those not yet 'outed':

.

Euhhhh, does that mean there are 'in-the-closet' Vista-lovers too, carrying depraved acts like keeping their OEM-installed OS on their new hardware? With something that sick, given the new police state, there'll never be publicly-available photos to prove it.

.

.

New trade opportunity:

.

Supplying under-the-counter photos of happy and/or oblivious Vista users; and

Putting up postcards in phoneboxes of the same.

Dude, it's 2008. NOBODY (as in, the average Joe) used computers in 1993. Ever stop to think about that?

People have, despite the thickheaded idiot Jobs, successfully loaded the latest OS-X on modern Intel machines. It's obvious that it works. It's a short hop to code it so you can buy it and throw it in your existing PC and go.

More importantly, people would have a viable alternative to Windows on THEIR EXISTING HARDWARE. No need to spend money on an yet another machine, an overpriced one at that. Had people had this option a year ago, it's pretty safe to say Apple's stock value right now would've been through the roof. I'm surprise

Paris, because you SOOO missed the point.

Are you still waiting too?

Honestly, for me the "Wow" started when I tackled my first Linux install.

There was pleasure with that pain and it just keeps on giving.

I couldn't go back to Windows if my life depended on it.

Being an IT professional it actually could too.

Paris, because she you probably doesn't need an overpaid marketing guru to tell her when the "Wow" starts.

Or maybe she does?

Your jealousy is showing. Why dont you come out and say it, comeon everyone is doing it today, come out of closet and swear that MS sucks. Even though you dont even use it. You guys are so preditable, see a headline about MS and you come in and bash it. 95% folks, 95% continue to use Windows even after all your campaign of smear and lies. Give it up. MS will lose only when they stop making quality software!