I’m not melodramatic. I didn’t like having to relearn where Microsoft arbitrarily changed things and have to pay for the privilege of losing productivity for absolutely no good reason. I also didn’t like the new DRM’s intrusion into all aspects of the OS and the performance hit that causes. And I didn’t like having to figure out if the machine I bought had the OS that did what I wanted or could run the version I’d want if I could figure it out. (There are, what, 5 versions of Vista?) I’d rather have kept the status quo with a new XP machine, but Microsoft took that option from me. I bought an iMac instead.
Maybe I’ll send a my receipt to Redmond in protest or maybe I’ll just send more of my cash to Cupertino when my XP-based laptop dies. Decisions, decisions.
This has been my experience with Vista thus far, and that of all the people I know with Vista, and all the customers who whom we’ve sold Vista Laptops. In fact, we don’t have any XP-loaded laptops, and even if we wanted some we couldn’t get them.
The only people I’ve heard whinging about Vista have been
Cranky Old People who hate change; and
People with weird specialised applications that have proprietary software written in 2000 and not updated since.
The only downside is that some of my old games won’t run without some buggerising around, and the way things are developing for me with work and my writing, that’s probably not a bad thing at the moment.
Okay, so you haven’t had any problems with Vista. How does this justify the claim that if you don’t like Vista, you simply don’t buy a computer with Vista on it? The latter does not logically proceed from the former. Not by a long shot.
Because while it might be hard to get an XP machine right this very second OMG we’re all gonna die! it is possible to get one.
Indie computer shops all over the country (and Dell, the biggest mainstream manufacturer in the world) still offer XP computers. If you don’t like Vista, you don’t have to get Vista.
Permissions - repeatedly having to confirm that YES, I really do want to do that action, and I’ve already told you twice, you stupid fucking OS.
And sometimes being told that I don’t have the authority to delete or move a file that I own, on my own computer, when I’m logged into n account with administrator privileges.
Select “run as administrator” from a menu? Why the hell should I? What is up with that? All these years I’ve been running apps by double clicking on the icon, now they want me to run them from a menu. It just goes against the grain. Look, if I’m logged in to an account with admin privileges, then if I run something, just assume that I want to run it as administrator, OK?
Not compatible with third party apps? Hell, it’s not compatible with some **Microsoft ** apps that work on XP. And what about older apps that were bought for XP? It’s not the developers fault if they failed to foresee Vista’s compatibility issues.
And it’s a memory hog too.
I just don’t get why it must be the case that all these people are complaining over nothing. If lots of people are complaining, all at the same time, all about the same things, doesn’t that kinda indicate that there might just possibly be a little speck of merit in their arguments.
This is exactly the point of the petition referenced in the first post. To keep XP available. It’s already hard to get (Dell only offers it on business-class machines). Microsoft plans to make it impossible.
What things are improved in Vista? (This isn’t a rhetorical question–I seriously haven’t heard of any real-world benefits to it, which is why I’m still refusing to upgrade) So far most of what I’ve heard is reduced speed, DRM BS being shoved in, things being moved around that have been in place since 95, and ‘security’ features so annoying that they get turned off, defeating the point.
Justin, you’re arguing against the point of this thread–which is that that choice is being taken away. Right now I can drive down to Target or Best Buy and pick up a fresh copy of XP off the shelves. If things go as planned, the next time I upgrade my computer (one of the next couple being a new mobo) I may have to get Vista, regardless of if I want to or not.
I guess I just don’t see the point. A petition is not going to sway Microsoft. Cold hard cash will sway Microsoft. If people want to buy it and MS doesn’t want to sell it, nothing can make them. And that’s their loss.
But there are still plenty of XP discs out there right now. And again, Vista is not the big bad monster people have built it up as. It may not be perfect (and individual needs seem to be at the heart of whether or not Vista is perfect), but it’s not “broken” for a huge percentage of the computing world.
The ONLY 2 reasons that I am running Vista on my main computer are
I upgraded to 4GB of RAM, and XP won’t support that much (I know about XP x64, but its compatibility with hardware and software is even lower than Vista), and it’s enough power to run Vista, as long as I don’t actually try to play any games on it.
I got a used laptop for Christmas, which has XP on it. Since my HP scanner, which not only does NOT have Vista drivers, (but if you choose Vista from the pulldown menu, it says they will never release them, and then hotlinks you to a page where you can buy a brand new HP scanner which I’m sure will also be abandoned when Windows 7 comes out!), I’ve been using it primarily as a scanner workstation. Before this, I was unwilling to give up my ability to scan just so I could run the newest OS.
Really? Because that wasn’t my experience last time i bought a computer (which was, admittedly, over three years ago now).
I went to two independent shops, both of which have good reputations for honesty and good workmanship. I had purchased my previous computer from one of those shops, and had also taken it in for repair on a couple of occasions, and had always been happy with their work.
But when i was shopping for a new box, neither of these shops could give me a “similar price” to the mass market PC sellers, at least not if i wanted equivalent processing power, hard drive space, memory, etc.
And i don’t mean that they were a bit more expensive. I mean they weren’t even in the same galaxy. I was actually willing to pay a bit more in order to support local business, and in order to take delivery of my computer from the same people who would fix it if something went wrong, but the price difference was just too big.
Here’s the breakdown (ca. 2004):
Dell Local Geekstore
P4 3.0GHz P4 2.8GHz
1Gb RAM 1Gb RAM
160Gb HDD 2x120Gb HDD
GeForce FX5200 GeForce FX5200
1 x DVD-RW, 1 x DVD 1 x DVD-RW
WinXP Home WinXP Home
17" LCD Monitor NO MONITOR
$1,199 $1,699
So it would have been $500 more at the local shop, and i still would have needed to spend a couple of hundred bucks on a monitor.
I can also do a basic $499 tower/monitor package, it wont be sexy but it will run.
We are also one of the cheapest games in town here. We are looking for happy repeat customers, kinda the “shear a sheep many times instead of butchering it once” system.
