[RobLinux]

Good links, developing an OS is just too expense to throw away and start again. The EU estimated that it'd cost almost a billion Euros or something to re-develop Linux from scratch for instance.

[retexan599]

I am a 70 year old great-grandfather and Vista and I are getting along quite well. I ditched my XP computer last summer and have never looked back (or needed to). I also migrated to Office 2007 and love that as well. Yes, I had to learn some new ways of doing things, as I did when I migrated from W95 to XP five or six years ago but I am having fun with Vista and learning lots of new things. I like a lot of the built-in features of Vista, such as:

-it automatically defrags for me.
-Automatically backs up my files [yes I had to learn that an external hard drive was a necessity for that].
-I am converting and editing my old VHS tapes to DVD with Windows Movie Maker and Windows DVD Maker, built in to Vista, works great.
-I have bought a graphics tablet and learning to sketch using the Inking feature of Word 2007, as well as OneNote 2007 and Windows Journal; works great.
-have not needed to reinstall the system or recover it even once yet since May 2007.
-UAC keeps me from doing foolish things to my system, thanks Vista!
-the snipping tool is very handy.
-searching for files and folders and the stuff in them is a breeze with Vista; indexing is a great feature.
-tabbed browsing in IE7 - a big help.
-lots of handy performance monitoring tools; I am an engineer and appreciate the data presentation.

Before I took the Vista plunge, I did my research and made sure I have plenty of RAM and computing horsepower. I am now well set up for another five year run with this operating system and hardware, as I did with XP back in early 2002. Onward and upward.....

[Compiler]

- Feature set in Office 2007, works the same in XP.
- I've not had to reinstall or recover my XP PC in about 2-3 years... oh wait, I never had since I built it.
- UAC.... ugh. Need that sucker to warn you when renaming a desktop item. Like "Microsoft Office Word 2007" to simply "Word 2007" because M$ wants everyone to know that YOU'RE using MICROSOFT OFFICE. Looks silly to see desktop icons you can't read since they say:
Microsoft
Office W...

Microsoft
Office O...

Here's their info sheet... http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/pr...635841033.aspx

- Indexing has been around a long time... still, the SEARCH function of Vista is restricted... it will NOT search everything. You'll need something like Agent Ransack for that. But the Seach box in the Start menu is kind of cool - there is a 500k add on for XP that'll do the same thing including the vista menu look.

- Tabbed browsing was first on OPERA. Give it a try, it kicks IE7 in the rear When you hold your pointer over the tab - you'll see a thumbnail of the tab. Also the ADD tab is easier on Opera than IE.

Glad you enjoy Vista.

[Compiler]

Originally Posted by Dyonas

Something that I see a lot of is people comparing Vista and XP directly and that's pretty pointless. Vista isn't a small revision or a little change from XP, it's an entirely new OS. Yes it looks like XP to the user but it isn't anything like it underneath. XP is basically Windows 2000 with patches, which is NT with patches etc... If you're going to compare Vista to XP you might as well compare XP to Windows 3.11, they are not the same underneath and have much different requirements because of that. I don't think Vista should be pushed out with systems that aren't capable of running it smoothly but at the same time it is NOT a bad OS.

Er, no. Windows2000<>XP<>Vista are both very simular and are based off of NT 5.x
XP is a skin-job of Windows2000, it came out about 2 years after W2K came out. Vista is still nothing more than a skin-job with a boat-load of DRM built to make sure you're not pirating anything. So while the programmers might have cleaned up some junk from XP - they screwed it up with bloat ware and DRM... so its slower.

XP uses a completely different kernal than Windows3.1 - to compare those two together is very misinformed. Besides the simple fact that Windows3.1 isn't even an Operating System - just a GUI shell than ran on top of DOS.

XP ran pretty good on those 800~1000Mhz PIII CPUs... as long as you had 256mb at least - but 512 was still recommened. (Windows98 PCs came with 128mb on AVG back then)

Look at the tools and such, much of VISTA has the same exact tools and such as XP/2000. Only differences; DX10 is locked to vista, skin-job, DRM, UAC and prettier windows over the old ones which were easier to use in XP.

It's taken a long time for XP to get to the place it's at now, Vista will get there in time but right now it's the same old story of "I like <old> it's much quicker than <new>" but what do you expect? XP wasn't as fast as it is now when it originally came out and lots of people wanted to stick with 98 or 2000.

When XP came out, support for Windows98 lasted for a couple of years... Up until a few years ago - you could still buy Windows2000 without a problem. M$ has jammed vista down everyones thoats... a broken product... over a previous OS that has been around since 2001! The previous OSs were replaced every year or two.

My issue with XP back then it was new (and still now) is the activation crap and other junk that deals with EULA, end user privacy, etc.

Vista is not "great" because it does nothing that is actually an improvement.

1992 - MS-DOS > Windows3 (A junk GUI for PCs) improvement, but still garbage compared to MacOS and AmigaOS. Man people were stupid to think it was holy.

1995 Win3.x > Win95: This was a nightmare, very buggy - but was actually an OS. Required reinstallation every 3-6months to keep it running good.

1998 Win95 > Win98: 3 YEARS to get this dog to run good. Win98 was like a dream compared to Win95... Slight visual improvements. Win98se was even better still.

2000 windowsME: this dog was so crappy - that most computer makers went back to Windows98se!

2001 Win98 > WinXP: Common users are finally off from an MS-DOS based OS. IMprovemd memory and disk functions. Still took about 2 years to get kinks worked out and compatibilty.

Vista does nothing to actually improve the functionality to the end user. As in an article about Vista... nobody is upgrading. It just comes with new PCs. The adoption rate in % to the user base is SLOWER than when XP first came out.

I never heard many, if any people - talk about "forget Win98, I'm going back to WIn95!" Same for WinXP. So Microsoft is making money sellin Vista and then selling WinXP to install over vista... that's real smooth!

[namenotfound]

Originally Posted by Compiler

- Tabbed browsing was first on OPERA.

Actually, tabbed browsing was first in 'Netscape', which was created by Mozilla, which later made 'Mozilla Suite' (now known as 'Seamonkey') and 'Firefox'.

So MOZILLA was first to have tabbed browsing, not opera...

[davehc]

Originally Posted by retexan599

I am a 70 year old great-grandfather and Vista and I are getting along quite well.

Before I took the Vista plunge, I did my research and made sure I have plenty of RAM and computing horsepower. I am now well set up for another five year run with this operating system and hardware, as I did with XP back in early 2002. Onward and upward.....

Here.here!
Since this thread started (Gosh it seems a long time ago!!!) I have felt the title was either a macho, or an age, put down. - I am 74.
Whilst I have had a deal of experience, including Vista from the Beta days, I also use Vista as my one and only OS - 64 bit and 32 bit installed.
There was a learning element involved, and I admit to a little fine tuning. Both OS's run as well as XP did (to my memory!) I would see no purpose in going back to XP. This (old) brain is now contemplating moving emtirely to 64 bit - again without going back.

[RootbeaR]

Originally Posted by brite750

..ok, yeah I'm sold, sign me up.

Okay, here is your sign.

[Compiler]

Sorry... Tab function was an add-on for Mozilla back in 2000, but it wasn't standard. It wasn't made a standard function until OCT 2001 on a beta (pre 1.0) Mozilla. Netscape and Mozilla are two different things (slightly). In DEC 2001 - Opera 6.0 had tabbed browsing standard built in. So keep in mind, that Opera doesn't usually have beta versions out for the geneal public.

It wasn't until SEPT 2002 that Phoenix/Firefox had tabbed built in.

JAN 2003 = Apple's Safari
MAY 2005 = M$ IE 7.0

So Mozilla by 2 months before Opera as having tabbed built in...

[namenotfound]

So that's exactly what I said, all you did was clarify. Mozilla had tabbed browsing before Opera.
It doesn't matter if it was standard or an add-on, the point is who had the capability first

[Compiler]

Well... neither of them then in certain ways. Opera had tabbed windows - but apparently not the browser window itself.... its been so long. Read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabbed_...abbed_browsing

There could be confusion about the extact 1st - since they both came out about the same time.

[steppenwolf]

with new real player its easy to record off internet

works better than xp i think for playback

[Compiler]

Playback of what? Audio? Windows Media player has been junk since 7... sure its pretty, but its just more bloat.

Media player Classic is the BEST video player for Windows... for audio - I'd still go with WinAmp and to some degree iTunes.... but I prefer the smallness of WinAMP.

[Compiler]

Some current facts about Vista: Depending on the report, it is estimated about 20% of new Vista computers are upgrade to XP after purchase.

Less than 8% of internet users are using Vista: http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
If you look at the log, less than 2% was Vista 12 months in the past.

Companies are sticking to XP systems longer... this means that the PC manufactures are making less sales as well.

What does suck: I'm about to purchase a notbook. The odd thing is that for the same brand - the XP version cost more than the Vista version but the stats are different. same CPU and feature set - but XP: 1gb / 80gb HD. Vista = 2gb / 250gb HD. XP = $900, Vista = $700?! So I'll be getting the Vista version and installing XP on it myself. This is pretty much with any manufacture who is selling notebooks.

[Skivvywaver]

XP and Vista run about even on my machine with vista taking a slight lead. Nothing worth mentioning really but Vista is a little faster here.

A couple of screenshots. Enjoy.

[Skivvywaver]

Yesterday I had just defragged and rebooted XP. I just did the same with Vista and Vista is a little faster still. Like I said, about even but Vista has the lead.