Paul Cartier said:
I have a licensed version of Vista "Ultimate" edition which is causing
me more frustration than I have had since the first Windows version and
Millenium edition.
There are so many basic things which simply do not work - and which worked
perfectly well in Windows XP and even Windows 2000 !
SO MY QUESTION IS:
Before I waste time ploughing through newsgroups and effecting dark
registry hacks to solve all these (often almost trivial) issues:
IS VISTA WORTH THE EFFORT ?
The reason I ask is that I have heard one or 2 (but not enough to be
sure!!) mutterings that Microsoft are going to let Vista die a "quiet
death" and concentrate on the next major version !!
Can anyone enlighten me one way or another ?
P. Cartier
If you want to be on the bleeding edge, Vista is for you.
If you want usability, familiarity, production grade, then stick with XP at
all costs. Vista isn't going to reach the same maturity as XP any time
soon. SP1, while it is progress it isn't earth shattering.
Compared to all before it, Vista's adoption is going to very slow, cohersed
and many are going to resist. MS has already extended 32 bit XP sales
getting the double dip from consumers, they will try to keep that going as
long as they can. Most business are frowning hard at Vista and with their
RTU licensing, XP still overwrites Vista on each PC going to normal end
users except for a very few companies.
I am not aware of any commodity PC at the major retailers that comes with
Vista and cannot run XP or Linux. The only issue you could have is if the
PC has 4GB or more of RAM, you will only see 3.1 to 3.5GB of RAM as MS does
not retail ship XP 64. They should ship XP 64, but Microsoft knows more
about what you want than you do.
The only reason Vista adoption has gone as far as it has, is that it is the
only way you can buy a commodity retail PC is with Vista. Traditional PCs
sales are down, as the Vista revolution never materialized, and now show on
the balance sheets. Reflected in INTC and AMD stock prices. MSFT however
double dip consumers who choose to downgrade, keeping their sales buoyant
for the moment. But even MSFT is going to hurt if they stick with no more
XP.
So there you have it. My outlaws hate it, and what saved me is I
recommended against Vista. My wife hates it. While I am a bleeding edge
kind of guy, this is too bleeding for me. I can't get all sorts of stuff to
work. So the new PC is only of entertainment value. The old XP on the dual
X2 is going to remain my main PC. No expensive license upgrades required
either and already configured the way I like it.
I need a commodity laptop, but am deferring the purchase until I can get XP.
(No, I don't like over priced Dell business solutions).
Microsoft knows how many Vista has shipped. Bet they would not want to
publish how many license keys they haven't seen on updates and how many they
see then disappear after 30 days or so.
If I was the CEO of MSFT, I would make the "new" Coke and Classic Coke
business analysis required reading to marketing before I would acknowledge
you as an employee. They screwed up big time. And Vista is going the way
of Me, Edsel, "new" Coke and OS2.
