The basic problem is that Vista is too much of a resource hog to run acceptably on a low-end $500 “e-mail, web-surfing, letter-writing, checkbook-balancing” commodity PC. Raising the hardware floor to a level where it deters a signficant market segment isn’t in the interest of hardware vendors.
I bet windows 3.11 would scream on my machine. I still mourn some of the lost features of that OS.
From what I’ve seen of Vista, I’m not impressed, but then again, I rarely am by MS.
Yeah, but not because they can’t run in XP. A good example is Geometry Wars. It’s a simple little fun shoot-em-up, it came as a minigame on some console game not long ago. Microsoft has released Geometry Wars for the PC, but you can only run it with Vista- it just flat-out won’t run in XP.
Of course, there’s no technical reason why it won’t run in XP. They just made it only run in Vista so more people would want to buy Vista.
I found a knockoff that somebody made, called GridWars. It is EXACTLY the same game, but with a few more improvements- and it runs just fine on my XP machine.
So far, I haven’t seen a single reason to switch to Vista, and I’m betting that game developers will see it the same way, and realize that if they make their games Vista Only, they’ll be screwing themselves out of sales.
I think it was the part about not getting into any of the websites I typed in. I was trying to give her a list of websites I thought she might need - except none would open.
Oh, and it took forever to start up and open anything. My older G4 laptop was practically streaking* through stuff the Dell had to stop and think about. And think about. And think about…
*No, my laptop does not run around naked!
:: curious ::
Such as what?
That’s not a proper analogy. XP and 98 are roughly as similar as chalk and cheese.
There were few to no games that ran on XP that wouldn’t run under 2000, excepting certain games like Tron 2.0 which had additional levels only for XP users. This was not a technical issue, but rather a marketing one.
That is a closer analogy.
I concede the point, but have little experience gaming with NT or 2000.
DOOM II in 98 and XP was my sticking point. 
We still have a 166mHz Pentium with 95. Nice platform for several old games.
Try Microcenter.
Do they do business in Canada?
It’d be nice if Dell had an option to only have XP installed, and not the endless string of trial software, ‘free’ stuff, and all sorts of crap. I spent several hours removing all this from a new laptop bought by my parents - the very first time booting into XP, I got about six splash/nag screens for this nonsense.
No stores in Canada but you could try ordering online.
Edit: no, that won’t work either. If worst comes to worst, you could have one of us US Dopers act as a middleman.
Unless you want to drive from Toronto to Cleveland.
Anyone interested in the large under-the-bonnet changes in Vista that will be making niftier applications possible, not to mention taking advantage of their ludicrously over-powered graphics cards that are sitting unused for most of the time, should read this really rather informative and comprehensible article. A completely new graphics stack and programming API are not to be sniffed at, and while the end user may not instantly notice the difference, it is substantial. The transparency effects and 3D task switcher are just fluff to show off the new capabilities, which are substantial, and will be taken full advantage of by third party applications.
As for the memory thing, it’s so cheap these days it’s practically free. I don’t understand why everyone always fixates on new memory requirements as a bugbear, when no-one seems to be bothered by the fact that we’ve all got enough storage to hold the Library of Congress, and enough computer cycles to win the computer Tour de France five hundred times a second.
I still wouldn’t choose to install it just yet; always good to wait 6 months or so til third party support matures, IMO. But it’s not just a new skin on XP, far from it.
Yeah, me and Gateway, too. But I think they get a nickel if we decide to buy Norton.
Download the free PC De-crapifier (www.pcdecrapifier.com) and run it. It will list all the extra crap on your PC, and let you choose which ones to keep and which ones to delete.
Was originally written by a Dell customer, but works on Gateway & others, too.
Not on audio tape 
Does dell add all that crap on their business machines too? I did notice that Dell was offering XP on it’s business machines (with the OS disc) before they made the announcement to offer it again on the home machines. Maybe Dell never did quit offering it to business customers. The business machines seem to be priced the same as the home machines, so why would anyone get the home machines?
As for Vista, I really thought that the next generation of windows would take advantage of 64 bit processors. That doesn’t seem to be the case for Vista, does it?
Tiger Direct still have it available, too.
I sent you a PM with a Canadian retailer who still has it in stock. Best Computer in Edmonton.