Vista has been out over a year now, so it is not quite that bad. For the record, Vista works fine with my HP LaserJet 1012, circa 2004 and my HP Photosmart C5180, circa 2006.
Actually, the one good thing about Vista is that plug and play with my printer (much older than six months) worked perfectly - even easier than XP.
CMC +fnord!
I just ordered what is currently the very cheapest laptop from ebuyer.co.uk - an HP 520, which comes with a free upgrade to 2Gb. I fully expect it to cope with Vista, but I’ll let you know how it goes.
Not only is MS supporting XP for corporate clients until 2014, that many manufacturers will still offer XP as an option, and some Vista licences allow you to ‘downgrade’ to XP yourself if you wish (and can find a disc to install from). So it’s not like you will be marched to Vista/Linux/NetBSD/MacOS or whatever at gunpoint - you can still stay with XP for a good while if you wish. It may just cost you a bit of extra money and some selection choices.
You all have been incredibly helpful! This is exactly the kind of information that I needed and didn’t know that I needed. And I know that not everyone my age is as computer illiterate as I.
Putting all of this together, I’m going to hold off on the notebook and hang onto XP as long as I can convince Zeldar that that’s the way to go. I will be interested in seeing what you have to say about Vienna when it’s available. If that is a green light then it will be good for my brain to learn something new. Don’g be surprised if you get lots of questions from me. When I feel comfortable on my husband’s computer, I’ll pop for a really good notebook (or “scratchpad” or whatever they have by then).
You devil! I saw the answers someone else gave, but I will tell you all that I remember. I was trying to think if there had been a Windows2000. I know nothing of an ME. I definitely remember Windows98 and Windows95. And at least one of those was a real bomb, but I don’t know which one.
I’ve been told that my little Dell is more powerful than the computer at the publishing house where I had my second job in 1967. It was in a huge room that was kept cold. We spoke in hushed tones. True story.
Thanks everybody!!
Voyager, always good to pick your brains!
I look forward to all your questions, Zoe. I won’t be able to answer any of them, but like you, I’ll learn a lot from the replies.
OK, we won’g
Heh. 
Has Vienna (the system that’s being worked on as Vista’s successor) been renamed Windows 7? I’ve been seeing references to that name in stories about Gates’ retirement.
Yes
I don’t want to pick on a granny, but searching absolutely is fair! That’s why it exists. Now I’m not going to blame you and suggest that you could have easily searched Microsoft’s site, because we’re all here to ask questions and learn, and God knows I ask enough questions that a quick Google search would have answered for me. Only… searching is fair.
I still don’t know the Tiffany answer though, because as you might suspect, the answer just doesn’t interest me. 
wow the misinformation flying around here is top notch. Too bad we’re in GQ.
- “Oh noes, Vista hides my file extensions!”
Uhm, so does XP after install by default. You probably changed this a long time ago, and now assumed that’s how it worked for XP since install. Well It doesn’t. And you have to do the same exact thing in Vista as you did in XP to show file extensions. Do I think this should have been enabled in both XP and vista as default after install, you bet. But please, people, stop complaining about how vista differs from XP in imaginary ways.
- “Oh noes, my 6 month old camera won’t work with Vista!”
Why do you feel the need to outright lie? Vista is compatible with most hardware. Personally I’ve had no problems with hardware newer than 4 to 5 years. Beyond that, the responsibility of making old hardware compatible, is not Microsoft’s but the manufacturer of said hardware. If they can’t be arsed to write a compatible driver for Vista after years of Beta and 2 years of retail, then they won’t be arsed and you should complain to them.
My mom handles vista just fine, heck my grandma went from windows 98 to Vista and haven’t heard any complaints about it, specially after SP1 and the reduction of the whole prompt thing which wasn’t so bad before and it’s no big deal now (and which can be turned off completely).
Hmm, from a place touted to fight ignorance, and most replies here are nothing but full of ignorance, how very sad.
Vista is just fine, simple to use and feature full (and includes some handy new features to boot) as XP, and even more stable and reliable thanks to SP1. As long as your hardware specs meet the requirements I’d recommend it.
The problem with constantly changing the interface all the time and making future versions of an OS extremely modifiable is whenever you use a different computer you have a learning curve in front of you just to find the simplest features.
“Hey Mom, where’d you hide the clock?”
“How the hell do I open windows explorer on this thing?”
And such.
Or the famous procedure for shutting down your computer. Putting the stop control under a button labeled “start” seems just a little counter-intuitive.
I figure I might as well give my positive input on my personal experiences with Vista. After using it daily for about a year now, it’s really and truly not as bad as some people would have you believe… Sure it’s slower than XP, but that’s because of the new graphical interface. Sure it takes up a lot more RAM (as much as you have actually), but it has a very good reason for doing so. Sure, you need a pretty fast computer to run it at a decent pace, but to me that’s just a byproduct of new technology and new operating systems that require that new technology to thrive.
You were able to run XP on just about any basic computer built in the past decade or so (perhaps an exaggeration), but Vista will likely require some upgrades if you don’t have a PC built within the past few years. Is that a bad thing? Who knows, that’s a judgment call. I know for some it may be good as it’ll force them to ditch aging, old (and occasionally insecure depending on how savvy the user was), slow machines.
I’ve only experienced a few blue screens of death, but those were due to memory management issues (hardware related). Other than that, I’ve enjoyed no viruses/spyware/bad things because Vista’s security is significantly better. The interface is prettier (not that I care too much, because if I cared about form over functionality I’d switch to a Mac). And for me, Vista’s version of Windows Media Center alone made it worthy of my upgrade.
What I find most funny is all the people that swear by XP while hating Vista, especially because when XP was released, it too was often panned as a crappy OS when compared to its predecessor, Windows 2000. Just give it time (and a few service packs, the first of which has already helped fix a lot of complaints), and Vista will soon be the suitable replacement.
Glad you told me this, because here I’d been using Vista daily at work and home for close to a year, and still laboring under the mistaken impression that it furiously sucks balls.
LOL!
I have Vista on a cheap computer I bought. It had 1 GB of RAM and it sucked balls. I’d run out of RAM just surfing the web. I added a half Gig and now it works… okay. I don’t care for Vista, although I don’t exactly dislike XP, I still prefer Windows 2000.
Well you’ve convinced me! Some anonymous internet person thinks Vista sucks balls, what more proof can the OP possibly require!
I just priced Vista at amazon.com: $186.99. (And no doubt, it’s cheaper elsewhere.)
Then, I scrolled down to read a couple of 1-Star customer reviews. I’ll stay with XP Pro on my desktop (XP Home on my laptop).
XP performs ably enough to meet my meager expectations. I am nowhere near savvy enough to handle all the problems that can arise with Vista.
Why ask for trouble?
What problems do you foresee exactly?
I’m a PC gamer. I live and breathe in a world of cutting edge hardware and beta drivers. That’s nothing the average PC user has to deal with, and I’ve had no problems with Vista.
Now If you have XP and you are not upgrading your hardware, and you are not a PC gamer, I see no reason to upgrade to Vista (nor do I see a reason not to if you want to upgrade). XP is an excellent, solid OS if slightly less reliable/secure.
If you’re buying a new PC that ships with vista on the other hand, There is little point to putting XP on it. You’re downgrading to a less secure OS based on nothing but the ravings of internet message board posters half of whom don’t even know what they are talking about (as illustrated above).