June 18th: Last day to buy a Dell with XP, penalty free
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Jun 16th 2008 3:40AM
posted Jun 16th 2008 3:40AM
When the clock strikes midnight on June 18th, Dell will discontinue its sales of XP systems. The move allows Dell to meet the imposed June 30th deadline which requires the industry to cease shipment of XP machines. That is, unless you're in the market for a netbook or nettop in which case Microsoft is happy for vendors to continue shipping XP in order to Update: Details are now posted at Dell.
If you're buying a new machine Vista is perfect for it. It's stable and has a lot of good features. It's lunacy to chose XP.
However Vista is very very bad for an upgrade on an existing machine because it'll eat it whole and have driver problems.
Lots of good features? Tell me some of them.
I've been using Vista for a while now, and although I don't hate it as much as I used to, I can't I'm pleased that I upgraded. Most of the 'good features' that I've noticed seem to be in the form of programs that I don't use.
I don't know dude, I have an XPS m1330, and XP is so much better on it (compared to Vista). It feels much more responsive. XP is just as stable as Vista, IMHO. And I don't really consider UAC to be a "good feature".
Just my thoughts (=
Lots of good features? Tell me some of them.
I've been using Vista for a while now, and although I don't hate it as much as I used to, I can't I'm pleased that I upgraded. Most of the 'good features' that I've noticed seem to be in the form of programs that I don't use.
Vista is notably slower than XP, plus it has ludicrous problems like the file copying one. It makes no sense at all to buy new, faster hardware only to have it clogged by a sluggish operating system that leaves you with a machine which is actually slower than previous generation's ones.
Quick! Someone call the incorrect statement police!
Vista is better than XP for a modern system - it's safer, prettier, has DirectX 10, a much better search function and many other features. In addition SP1 has sorted out the vast majority of problems.
However, the file transfer speed is still a bit slow - although not drastically so - but should get better.
Would I go back to XP? Would I bollocks.
"It's lunacy to chose XP."
Unless you want to use one of the numerous pieces of software that's still no compatible with Vista.
Not on the brand new Vaio my missus just got. Vista is just a little sluggish, and seems to get more sluggish over time (after uninstalling all the Sony bloatware, and installing Office 2003 -- nothing else).
UAC is just annoying, the 3D app switcher just pointless, and the new Aero UI just seems to take up more valuable screen real-estate (on a 13.3" laptop).
It'll probably be upgraded to XP now that Sony have released all the necessary drivers.
Me? I'm just glad I moved to OS X last year...!
@Rich
So... care to name some?
@Richy
What specs has the Vaio got?
OMGD.. I hate Vista its a Joke, Windows XP works fine, I can't imagine using Vista with our older Programs, they dont work with Vista now.
Vista = Loser OS WTB Windows 7 or 8 LOL.
ok ok.... some clearing up to do...
Vista 32-bit sucks. I mean what do you expect from a last minute done OS.
In the other hand Vista 64-bit surpasses in all fields XP, even XP-64-bit edition (ok maybe not networking... but its not slow, its the same speed, form my testing)
I strongly suggest to anyone that uses Vista 32-bit to switch to 64-bit. You can use the same product key. Just ask a friend for any edition (all the disk are the same, the product key is what decide which edition to install) of Vista 64-bit, and upgrade. HOWEVER, you have to make sure that all your devices including printer, scanner,etc.. has Vista 64-bit drivers.
Vista 64-bit is so good, that most problems reported only affected Vista 32-bit. I say Microsoft should have never released the 32-bit edition.
Anyway, a new system containing with new technologies (nothing old), with a video card that can actually render some sort of Cube and basic effects (in other words all Intel video cards, expect for the 3100 model which is more then enough), latest BIOS architecture and motherboard chipset, 2Gb of RAM (if you have bellow 2GB of RAM, you need to disable superfetch and Windows defender (Vista should use about 300MB of RAM) will have Vista running just as well as XP if not better. (for me it's much better) Don't believe me?
http://pages.infinit.net/eps/vista.PNG
(yea Vista running Vista, and no system slow down here)
If you have Vista Business or Ultimate you can access gpedit.msc panel, and you can really customize Vista. Home Premium need to play with the registry.
Also when you get Vista make SURE you have the latest drivers. Not on Windows update, on the actually company website that made the device.
Example: if you have an ASUS Geforce 8800, go to Nvidia website, not on ASUS nor Windows Update.
If I made Vista run smoothly on a PIII 800Mhz with 512MB with a Radeon 7000, then don't see the problem. Granted it was hell to make it run smoothly as Vista, by default enables everything... but it works. If you spend some time with it, you can really make Vista lighter. In my main system, AMD Athlon 64 4400+ Socket 939, Geforce 8800, 2Gb fo RAM, nForce 4 16X SLI chipset, I only disabled Media center services as I don't use it, however it runs way better then XP. And let's not talk about install time, as Vista installs so fast it's not funny.
If you use Vista, also check this free tool from Microsoft called Autorun:
This tool allows you to change what runs at Windows boot, Windows loading, account loading, drivers and more... I can tell you can clean up all the mess that bad drivers installed (ie: on the X-fi, it loads a punch of effect plug-in at Windows startup... I don't use them, so I remove them all, I saved about 1sec at Windows loading)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx
What is new in Vista.. ok lets see.. Windows XP is based on the good old NT dated from 1993 if I am correct, where security was not a high priority for Microsoft. This is why now a 8 year old kid can easily make hacks and virus for Windows. Vista new core is well a bran new core, started from scratch. So for sure some code optimization is lost. But as a software developer I can tell you that when you re-do something it tends to be better, even when your goal is not to add a thing.
Improved (about time) memory management.. now you can use all your RAM unlike XP, where your application crashes (if pagefile is disabled when you reach 80-95% of your RAM). Moreover, Vista manage memory significantly better to a point that even expert agrees that Windows memory management is actuall descent compared to other OS, XP and older Windows was always abysmal (wasn't that a complain?!), every Windows process and core (kernal) is programed to use your multi-core CPU (XP is single core, meaning a Windows process can either go on core 1 or 2, not using both simultaneously), per application volume control (wasn't that a complain that Windows XP was missing?!), A UI that uses a video card like it should, NOT your CPU (wasn't that also a complain?! and the main reasons why gamers usually tend to disable XP them to gain free CPU), instant search, proper search system (no more dogs and whatever crap), flip3D, improved tablet PC features, speach recognition, (may I say it works dam well when you have a good microphone and you configured it well). New Start menu organization.. the second you get use to it, you like it more then XP.Wait I am not done! Folder structure organization... can anyone tell me how many Application data their is in XP? Well in Vista, by default on a clean install, you only have 1, and it is in your profile folder. "Time-machine" like feature that works per files, folder, drive, or hole system (kinda more advance then MAC OS time machine). Auto-backup features, Complete PC backup, improved multiple monitor support, improved wireless system... support several clocks, side bar, easy to backup yourself your computer (again, just backup your profile, it even contains all your application configuration inside, so you won't need to have fun reconfiguration everything). Memory diagnostic tool, Windows repair know diagnostic the problem and repairs it, unlike XP it just re-install a bunch of files and destroy your system, disk Manager, REAL firewall.
ok I can go on...
So... What was new on XP... Theme, wireless manager, minor bug fix, Windows repair, """firewall""" (with SP2)... and.... well that is pretty much it. You did not really complain did you...
Next time, why don't you stop reading Mac and linux fan boy that have no life and create 20 accounts and goes everywhere on the internet that says Vista sucks, and ACTUALLY use it!
Fix:
"in other words all Intel video cards, expect for the 3100 model which is more then enough"
I want to say, that all Intel video card are not capable of doing this, except the Intel 3100 model.
"however it runs way better then XP"
however, it runs way better than XP
"punch of effects"
Stupid Firefox spell check... I mean "a bunch"
"you like it more then XP"
You will like it more than XP
"It's lunacy to chose XP".
Well, I will happily continue to howl at the moon each month! Love XP, hate Vista...
Come on guys, there really isn't much of a reason to cling on to XP on a new computer.
Obviously, if you have ancient software that doesn't work, that's a reason. But for the general public, Vista is fine now.
Take no offence, but this statement can only come out of ignorance.
It's like saying "there's no reason to cling to rubber tyres; just use the newer wooden ones and buy a Ferrari, and you can even go as fast as 60mph".
Why should a bloated, slow - not to mention buggy - operating system be "fine" now? Because we have computers that can finally run it well? Wouldn't you rather have the same machine and run things much faster?
And not to mention, if you take "the latest games" out of the equation, Ubuntu is good enough for the masses as well.. I have installed it on several of my friends PCs who do nothing but email and web surfing with their PCs and I get nothing but praise for how clean and fast things are.
"It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours ? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal."
This is all great news.
The Windows users should finally start buying machines that run Vista, I mean at this point I see no any reason for people not to like Vista except for the fact that they will need a week or so to fully get used to it.
After using Vista for a year now, I can't even explain how miserable and disgusting it was for me to use my friend's XP laptop! I was pissed at every action it did; it was like a cave man compared to Vista.
People, especially PC users, stop nagging about problems that were showing up more than a year ago; stop reading news papers and asking IT departments about Vista, they will always say it is not the time yet! They just copy each other's talk without even really giving Vista a full try.
As said before, running Vista on an old machine could mean troubles but I really believe that DELL has done the right thing by adding Vista to these new hardware.
Everything now is compatible and much easier in Vista.
If you have any concern, I'm welling to answer your questions, right here. :)
Keep these discussions clean and useful.
It is slow (bought a new laptop with it on about 5 days ago so Im not talking about old stuff). Startup & shutdown are particular areas of slowness.
UAC is so incredibly unuseful and annoying. Same applies to all files downloaded/from external drives - it wont let you run them without blacking out the screen, waiting for the UAC box to popup, clicking accept/go/whatever, waiting for the UAC to disappear & screen to go black, waiting for the screen before to popup and waiting for whatever you were doing to carry on doin whatever you were doing. If the UAC popped up & disappeared instantly it wouldnt be nearly so irritating. Also, if it only actually popped up for things that NEED admin it would make it much more scarce (I know, this is entirely MS's fault but they are the ones who chose to implement it in the way they did).
Finding a good, free firewall that's compatible with Vista (again, not entirely MSs fault but MS must have done something to Vista to stop them working). PC Tools Firewall Plus and Comodo Firewall Pro are 2 that I found eventually.
Everything's moved! Makes it so difficult to find anything in the control panel.
When you double click a network icon it doesnt take you straight to the properties, you have to wait for several different windows and click multiple times (just makes things take so much longer).
There is no equivalent of sudo - if you want to run chkdsk, you have to go on the 'net and find the workaround of running cmd with ctrl-shift-enter (I think thats the key combo anyway). Which is really annoying if you've just typed in a long command line because there is no persistent history either!
Cant think of anything else right now, but Ill be sure to let you know!
@ csudcy:
1. Make sure you don't have anything running at start up that you wouldn't use (crap-ware).
2. UAC: Go to control panel, user accounts, then switch it off. Very simple, and works like a charm. (I have it off)
3. Firewall Software: Check out Norton 360, McAfee, or Windows Live OneCare (which I use, and works like magic).
4. Network Icon: It is a matter of getting used to it.
5. CMD commands: I didn't get you, but I used the CMD a couple of times and had no troubles with it!
I really wouldn't mind having to do 3 steps to open my network connections' window when I have much more features to enjoy inside Vista, and the other stuff is just something you'll get used to sooner than yo think. I was enjoying XP, I shifted to Vista, got angry for the first two weeks, then realized that I can't thank Microsoft enough for including so much features in Windows, I really mean it!
Zone Alarm works fine for me too as does Avast anti virus.
So, you are saying that I should dump what I have now to install something new and configure it to act like what I have now... What world does that make sense?
I completely agree with Saad. I have two computers that are running Vista and they work great. I have had no issues in the past 6-8 months. I cannot imagine going back to XP.
I disagree that Vista is all bloatware, because this is the direction of software evolution, with better/ more capable softwares (which are often bigger). I am sure that we could run windows 95 on any junky computer and boot up real quick, but I am sure that we would not want that either. Vista may have some bad choices (not in my opinion), but it is definitely a great piece of software that can run on most midstream computers today. I would definitely skip XP on future buys.
95 to XP is a huge step up in terms of stability, file encryption, and network connectivity. XP to Vista is a step up in what, the UI? Completely unnecessary.
I disagree. I have been running Vista 64 on my work system since March 07. It works OK. I have spent many hours tweaking the configuration, turning off all the lame security crap. Vista is usable.
I have a couple of Dells at home, one with XP and one with Vista. The Vista one is very flaky. It is only 5 months old and came pre-installed with Vista. The other system is much more responsive, is 6 months old and came with XP.
The vista box has twice as much RAM, an a dedicated 256 MB Nvidia card.
It's not so much that Vista is crap, it's that it really doesn't do anything that XP doesn't do, and it does things slower.
I've been buying a new Dell every year or 2 for the last 10 years.
No XP means Dude, I'm getting a Mac...
Saad,
We already know you're biased towards Microsoft on everything they do.
This is all great news.
The Windows users should finally start buying machines that run Vista, I mean at this point I see no any reason for people not to like Vista except for the fact that they will need a week or so to fully get used to it.
After using Vista for a year now, I can't even explain how miserable and disgusting it was for me to use my friend's XP laptop! I was pissed at every action it did; it was like a cave man compared to Vista.
People, especially PC users, stop nagging about problems that were showing up more than a year ago; stop reading news papers and asking IT departments about Vista, they will always say it is not the time yet! They just copy each other's talk without even really giving Vista a full try.
Seriously guys, grow out of this girly talk running around.
As said before, running Vista on an old machine could mean troubles but I really believe that DELL has done the right thing by adding Vista to these new hardware.
Everything now is compatible and much easier in Vista.
If you have any concern, I'm welling to answer your questions, right here. :)
Keep these discussions clean and useful.
Saad Rabia = Microsoft Evangelist.
@ CosterMonger: An Evangelist? I don't think so. I don't see any perfect company out there for me to be their evangelist, but I don't mind showing my full respect to software or hardware that is good and deserve some attention, every once in a while. ;)
What? Where? Who?
I agree, great news.
It's been interesting to see the paradigm in OS's shift from "progress for the sake of progress" to "familiarity before all else" as people got a little TOO used to XP.
My biggest Vista peeves:
-hiding away essential commands like "start run."
-paranoid level security out of the box.
-click-per action ratio.
-Three different flavours that make it difficult to know what's on what computer.
As for run commands, you can do them in the search bar in the start menu. I had to look that one up too. Its still not as perfect as the run command but it works 95% of the time when you're forced to work on a vista machine.
to get run command thing on start menu, just right click the start menu, properties, start menu customize, find the box for run command, then check it off
Your strike through of "stifle Linux's penetration into consumer computing" is so funny. Linux will never, I repeat never, be a viable consumer desktop product until there is 1 Linux, and not the proliferation of variants that continue to confuse. It's about time that the "geeks" of this world remember that they are a very real minority, even though they are the vast majority on blogs and forums.
No matter how good or bad the latest and greatest OS from Microsoft or Apple is pronounced by the "geek squad", Mr Consumer will continue to buy mainstream products. He's never heard of Linus Torvalds, but does know of Mr Jobs and Mr Gates.
Agreed. But I think Ubuntu is going the right path. Linux is not yet the most "user-friendly" OS around.
Ignoring the fact that Mac OSX runs on an open source unix kernel, and that any web server worth accessing runs a unixy operating system.
Ubuntu will emerge as the "1 Linux" you speak of. And the other distros will still exist and will look on approvingly. I think you are too hasty in your ruling out of linux.
Now, if Windows were to drop the NT Kernel and adopt a unix/linux kernel.... porting between linux, Mac OSX & Winux would be trivial (I think, not entirely sure... if the porting between Linux & OSX is as easy as I think it is.). That would mean software that was available on all distros!
Honestly, I don't think it's that funny. It's quite clear that Microsoft are shipping XP for cheap PCs in order to maintain their stranglehold on the desktop computing market. I entirely agree that Linux really could do without the multitude of different distributions (I am quite certain that Linux advocates will disagree with me, and I do understand why) in order to make a purchasing decision easier for the customer, but these systems were already selling quite well before Microsoft turned up, so I don't think the unknown OS was a barrier (heck, I bought a Mac before they became "cool" again because there was good information to show me that it would do what I needed). As long as the netbook manufacturers provide good information that shows what the PC can do, that should be enough for Joe Consumer.
@kamu
Porting between Linux and OS X is probably easy enough if you want to work with X-Windows, but native Mac applications run via a different windowing server, and with APIs not found on Linux. Aside from using Java, or deploying as a web application, I don't think porting between Linux and OS X is going to be simple, particularly if you are starting with a Cocoa-based application on the Mac. That said, it clearly is not impossible given the current crop of cross-platform applications.
Vista hasn't really bugged me, part from the early peeves at the start when i got my laptop, and at SP1 (who didn't) but that was sorted quickly, and now its running faster then it was, but that may be to do with having to replace the MB.
Only problem i have now is that my copy of Vista its telling me that Its not a genuine, but thats to do with MaxDATA.
Endgadget, shame on you for not spinning this into an article about Apple. Okay, I'll start. Bootcamp will run XP and Vista... Whew, wouldn't have made it through the day without putting Apple into one of your Non-Apple reports.
even as a mac user, that was pointless
and i got ur failed attempt at sarcasm, but like i said "failed attempt"...
This whole disgussion is pointless - the very fact that there is enough of a demand for new machines with a previous generation OS means Microsoft has failed miserably.
I jumped on the vista bandwagon with a top of the line Vaio last year, ran it for 6 months, sold it and bought a Macbook Pro - Ive never looked back.
Put it this way - try and find a single forum where people are downgrading from Lepard to Tiger...
And no - I'm not an apple "fanboy" OR a power user, but a consumer who account for the majority of new PC sales today - Internet, bit music/video and word processing (yes, i DO use Office on it!)
When will people see that Mac's are the way to go - Everything just works!
In all honesty, and to play devil's advocate here, I have contemplated going back to Tiger, in similar fashion to the way in which I contemplated going back to Panther. I haven't done this simply because I've come to depend on the additional features that the current OS provides, but this isn't to say that I'm entirely happy. Searching, for example, was often a lot faster in Panther than it was in Tiger despite the addition of Spotlight. Equally, Tiger currently is pretty solid whereas Leopard continues to suffer from bugs, such as its mishandling of proxy server PAC files at the moment that causes .mac syncing to go nuts and iTunes to crash when visiting the iTunes Store.
So, while we like to mock Vista, let's not forget the old adage that those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. The Mac is not the perfect platform, at least until Apple fixes the various bugs that still exist in Leopard 8-months after its launch.
Really? I use Vista on my Vaio and it works wonderful. Vaios are top-notch computers, and I find it a bit hard to believe that it couldn't run Vista very well.
Soon, a place that rhymes with "Birate Day" is going to have SOO many seeders on the XP torrent
man am i happy im still running windows xp professional on my dell . . . anyone who upgraded to vista the day it came out should have waited . . . anyways go to the closest computer software shop and get a noobie salesman or woman to sell u a copy of windows xp . . .
That link is to the Home and Home Office web page. I think XP it will still be available on the Latitude, Vostro, Precision Workstation as the XP/Vista downgrade thing. How degrading.
Dell will be allowing us to get XP Pro on the majority of their Business line. All you have to do is choose "Windows Vista Bonus". Its the same price in if you were to choose the XP Pro Upgrade from XP Home ($99). Basically they factory "downgrade" your system to XP Pro for you. They give you media for both XP Pro and Vista Business. They support both OS's for the length of your warranty. So your getting 2 OS's for the price of one upgrade. Its kinda cool.
This will go on through Dec. 2010! 2 more years for those die hard Vista Haters.
This program will be for: Optiplex, Latitudes, and Precision Workstations.
Wasn't sarcasm, more like a humor. Go read some of the comments in Engadget's iPhone coverage and you might get it.
"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see." -- John Lennon
Ah, good old microstuffed.
They still don't realise that THIS kind of shit, forcing suppliers to withdraw XP is EXACTLY why people are pissed off with them!
I WAS considering buying a new system this year, but not now. I do not want the Vista 'experience' thank you very much. I'll just carry on with the old shit I have.
Again, playing devil's advocate, the withdrawal from sale of old products when you have a replacement is normal. Apple, for example, never sells old versions of OS X, and I'm not seeing options to download versions of Ubuntu other than the current one (this, I will add, after a 10-second check of their site, so I may be wrong here).
Clearly it would be preferable that Vista was a great product and therefore there would be no question that a new PC with Vista would be better than a new PC with XP. However, Microsoft aren't going to help themselves by continuing to sell XP such that they need to continue to support it for longer, along with Vista. That they've continued to sell XP at all for so long since Vista's release is honestly surprising.
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes
Click on "More >>" for the version you want. Click on the download link contained therein.
@Andir3.0
Hmm, I thought those 10-seconds of research was time well spent but evidentially I was wrong. Good call.
Arguably, it's under relase notes and not downloads... so I guess I can consider it obscure :p
tbh I don't mind vista, ran it back in beta 2 days and was a nice OS in it's own, but s**t did it make my PC feel like it had hardware from teh 80's.
If you got teh money for a decent spec PC (and I've seen it run on a high speccer) it works faultlessly.
Me? I jumped ship to teh Linux bandwagon, no need to upgrade your PC if there's a new release ;)
Debian pwns ^^
Wow, big Debian fan here. Recently did a asterisk computer. S#$t F&*k, after I installed Debian, three hours, it took me three hours to figure out that I needed to delete xorg.conf so that x could see my video card and monitor... That was after I failed to manually edit xorg.conf and put the computer into a state where it was trying to launch x, but then failing, so it would try to launch x again. Which kinda sucks, because I never was able to get it to work properly with my kvm switch so I ended up doing it all cli anyhow, and I certainly didn't want to mess with samba after all that, so I did all my editing in vi.
That and asterisk was out of date, so I had to rebuild it. So after apt-get install all the development tools, I was back to ./configure make make install for configure. Well after I installed subversion... because no version I could just download seemed to work so I eventuall had to install the complete build environment.
But all things considered, linux has come a long way since I first started using it 15 years ago. But yeah, its still way off on the horizon for use on the desktop. wayyy wayyy off, naw, is never gonna happen, it will be what it is now, forever. A curiosity for computer nerds.
So yeah a one off linux computer install is very nearly beyond the capabilities of a "linux expert", but yeah, other than that its starting to get not total suckage in that capacity...
i was going to switch to vista until i heard that programs like EndNote were still having compatability problems... :/
Can you add to the article that this seems to be for the consumer side. On the business side we have this deal for the Optiplex line of systems as well.
Thanks! [Dell Business Customer]
I support PCs for way too many hours of my already short life.
Vista is a nightmare, created by idiots, not to make IT any easier, but 'just because it's new'.
So take your DX10 and your UAC and your other Vista-loving, and go jump off a cliff.
XP pwns you. Vista is the Millenium Edition of Windows XP, and the sooner you admit it, the better.
I recall Windows XP being terrible, and was called ME2, and that Microsoft doesn't know how to make Operating system anymore. And they should what they do best... Encarta.
Now you like XP... hmmm..
Why don't you Actually use Vista next time. If you have problems blame your hardware manufacture that refuse to make proper Vista drivers, probably so that you buy their better model.
Sorry but many companies like, Hauppauge, HP, Lexmark, Creative, Intel... really cash in on this vista thing.
I don't remember that at all. The only problem I had migrating customers to XP from 98SE when it came out were driver issues. ME was hated for lack of stability as an operating system as well as the constant need to defrag. XP alleviated those problems under most circumstances in the business environment as well as adding extra features for networking. So with XP we waited for the first SP to make sure manufacturers were ready to support devices plugged into the machine and everything was fine.
Vista on the other hand has no business oriented features over XP except for their silly upgrade to XP's security center and on-the-fly defragging. Since most of my customers use Norton Corporate tied to a central server I don't care about the OS knowing the virus scanner's current state, and since most of my customers don't change their computer's software configuration more than once a year the systems rarely need defragging if ever.
How could ANY computer be considered "Penalty-Free" when it contains ANY version of Windows ?
Ha!
I don't see the problem of continuing to sell it, I for one would and will purchase XP until Vista has matured fully, but by then Microsoft will sell you Windows 7 that 20% faster then Vista, and 20% fewer bugs (because we were to lazy to patch them on Vista).
Vista at its launch, should never have been launched.
I think this is insane that microsoft is pushing people into an operating system they dont want, regaurdless of weither it is "better" or "slower" or whatever, we are CUSTOMERS and if we do not like a product we shouldnt have to change just because a company says so. i recently switched to a Mac because of all of the Vista drama. I am not a fanboy but i really do love the whole mac experence, esp for a home machine. i think that, which is already happening if youve been to a best buy lately, there will be a huge shift in domenince of the consumer computing market towrads non-windows machines, and towards Apple or Linux. this is a good thing, we should not forget who is in power here, we chose what we buy, when we buy it, and why. Not Microsoft. Send a message to big M and dont go vista.
Every software company is guilty of the same thing...
A new version comes out, and drop out immediately support for the old version. Very few companies even support their older version.. and usually it only for a couple of months and slowly remove it. So, I don't see the problem here.
Ah so you love Mac... ok well next update on MAC OS (after snow leopard) prepare to change your system, as upgrade is not a question.
Already PowerMac CPU will be dropped on the next update that offer nothing more then bug fixes (based on what Steve job said). And go, pay your Service Packs. Apple moto: let's make a buggy OS, and fix everything later for 3-4 versions, and slowly drop support to ensure everyone keeps buying our new system.
I am not saying that Mac OS is bad or anything. I am just saying that Apple is just as guilty as Microsoft. And what you feel on your mac is probably a psychological effect that you have as Apple has a nice image compared to Microsoft, like a placebo effect of some sort.
Vista VS XP test
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2303830,00.asp
Vista pretty much equalled and surpassed XP.
Awsome, this is one of the very few test that was perform (comparing XP against Vista) that was properly made. Most review sites, even good review sites, cripple Vista by disabling key core feature and start saying how Vista sucks. Yea... lets do a race you and I, and I'll cut your leg leave you bleeding to death... I wonder who will win...
I had a Vostro 400 from Dell for my work PC and Decided to go with Vista Business. All was well in the first month or so, then I randomly began getting program crashes over and over again. I had to restart my computer about 5 times a day to get all of my programs to run in one boot up.
After having enough of the program crashes I finally formatted the thing and all "seemed" well. About 10 mins into reinstalling my apps, drivers, etc I got crashes again. My updates continued to fail back to back. I kept getting update errors that I could never seem to get resolved.
After another format I got blue screen every time I booted the PC. I called dell and they sent a repair tech to come and check out the hardware. They replaced the RAM and hard drive with an entirely new Vista partition and it worked for about a day and then blue screen again......
I am now running windows XP without flaws and headaches. These errors were post SP1 as well. After installing SP1 I got major crashing issues. I am not sure how relative this problem is amongst Dell PCs in general, but I would NEVER buy another Dell with Vista on it. Once I saw that they were stopping the sales of XP on their systems I was uneasy. I sure hope they have all of the kinks worked out of their systems now.
I personally have a customized Lenovo PC at home with vista home premium which runs like clockwork. Vista is a great OS, Microsoft and other companies just have to work out the consistency issues.
Jared you probably have something that is bad on your dell computer, you should send it back by calling Dell. I know I know they will make you pass through procedures for 2 hours, before they decide to RMA and send you a pre-paid box to put your computer in. But computers is a nice investment, and should not suffer from it. It has nothing to do with Vista.
The reason is that Vista does NOT like if your system is not working at 100%. One reason is that, Vista now doesn't like approximation value and then has perform error correction on every peace of binary numbers it gets... it's waits of computer power. So it wants exact value.
If you have installed software on your Dell machine running Vista, then that is probably the cause. You probably installed a software that does some Windows hacking to give you something (usually these program are very badly made and should be avoided at all cost) and it doesn't like Vista. Or it could be that a Vista drivers that Dell put inside is buggy.
Also I know that the only system you should buy form Dell is the XPS series or high end business class, else you are up for trouble.
Translation: Buy a bunch of copies of XP now, wait a while, sell them and make the cash money.
I thought we went over this one a year ago? Anyway in my estimation Vista is crap end of story, Maybe the ultimate version, might be a good alternative to xp, but xp still stands the test of time, and dell was very accommadating to still offer it as an option, its unfortunate that microsoft is discontinuing it. at least they still offer the classic start menu, you will always have that.