Microsoft promises to support Windows XP until 2014
By Donald Melanson 
posted Jun 24th 2008 5:38PM
posted Jun 24th 2008 5:38PM
It may finally be starting to move down the availability ladder with computer manufacturers (netbooks and the like aside), but it looks like Microsoft is going to be standing by Windows XP for a good while yet, with it now pledging to support the tried and true OS through 2014. According to Microsoft senior VP Bill Veghte, that support will include security patches and "other critical updates," and he adds that "customers who still need Windows XP will be able to get it," despite plans to stop selling a retail product and stop licensing it directly to PC manufacturers after June 30th. For those keeping track, that'll mean that Microsoft will be supporting Windows XP for a full 13 years since its release -- assuming it doesn't push out that support window again when users refuse to upgrade to Windows 7, that is.
I almost peed myself when I read that last line, and looked up at the huge, two-pane Apple advertisement against Vista.
Which it seems is the only way that Apple advertises. At least when the commercials started, there was banter, and now Justin doesn't say a word, while John makes an ass of himself.
Well, you have to bear in mind that a lot of people won't be buying Surface, and from what we've seen, that's the main perk of 7, rendering an upgrade pointless.
Too early to tell at the minute though, since that's all that has been revealed.
You know if you use Firefox, you can get the ad-block plug-in, that gets rid of most of those annoying advertising banners.
Nothing that uses flash can be blocked as far as i know.
I don't know what version of adblock you're using, but mine blocks Flash just fine.
Actually, there's a plugin called 'Flashblock', been using it for ages.
@Rafer - I run Flashblock and that _only_ blocks flash ;)
Gets rid of the most annoying ads so it's good enough for me.
For those who don't know it, Flashblock displays an empty box for any flash on the page. In the middle of the box is a large "play" button so you can play any flash on demand (e.g. youtube).
do ads make you blind?
They should support it for as long as it is profitable for them to do so. To do otherwise would be bad business and if Microsoft is good at anything, it's business.
You're assuming licenses are still sold. It's only profitable to support nonsales items when looking at brand loyalty many years down the road.
The average computer is only in use about 3-5 years, and yet XP will be at the most 4x older than the computer running it. Where is the progress and innovation?
(now waiting for some smart ass to start a Mac flame war...)
uh... is that a pro-Vista rant? it's hard to tell buried under all that gibberish
And Clak is back... Where u been havnt seen your blatant ignorance in a while.
Then hands up Clak, they're going over your head.
@clak
Liked ur letter to Mr.Gates.
also, tell your girlfriend to put a shock collar on you so that when you come on engadget, you get a tiny, painful shock.
Even the stupidest man is considered wise when he keeps his mouth shut.
clak -- TL;DR
@clak:
dude chill out you are obviously just an apple fanboy trying to push apple upon everyone. If I was gats and recieved that letter I would just laugh. you clearly are just a narrow minded fool who has been brainwashed by apple.
and fyi I use Leopard, Vista Ultimate, and Ubuntu. Out of the three I personally prefer Vista. Its not bad. get over it.
It's a shrewd move because it'll keep the corporate market happy.
It makes me pretty happy.
Mark, you seem to be confusing "shrewd" with "forced to do it because of the massive backlash against Vista". They're not really the same thing.
@cockboy
You seem to be confused between maintaining a market whilst selling a new product. Care to guess how many newly sold PCs have Vista on them?
Oh, name calling already. You are truly a class act. Yes, I'm sure Microsoft is being "shrewd" by extending support for XP for so long because they're just so dang clever. Not clever enough to make Vista work to everybody's satisfaction of course, or this wouldn't be an issue in the first place. But they're definitely shrewd to pick up on the fact that Vista is not being adopted on a wide scale by corporations, which are MS's bread and butter.
Although the fact that Captain Obvious was standing outside Ballmer's window waving red flags may have had something to do with it too. But hey, if your definition of "shrewd" is "picking up on the completely obvious", then sure.
@cockboy
I told you a few weeks ago that you would from that point on be known as cockboy to me. It's called consistency.
Sort of like how people are consistently buying Vista equipped new machines for personal use. As for corporate, you do realise that Vista's adoption rate is similar to XPs? Well, of course you don't, which is one of the reasons why you're such a... well, cock.
Now please: do us all a favour and slam your fingers in a car door.
Okay, well as long as you think name calling constitutes a valid argument. Maybe you need a juice box and a nap? Anyway, who cares about personal machines? Did you forget what you wrote in your first post? Here's a hint: "corporate market". You say it was a shrewd decision for MS to finally notice that Vista wasn't taking off as fast as they thought it would, causing them to extend support for XP until 2014.
Really? That was a shrewd decision? Or was it just the obvious thing to do to maintain their corporate userbase? As I said, doing it because they're "shrewd" is not the same thing as doing it because they pretty much have to.
Wow Mark, you're a dick. I'm just trying to imagine what kind of person you are off the internets, and I've got it narrowed down to:
a) Dude with backwards baseball hat who yells at friends for not drinking enough at bars while inappropriately hitting on the waitress
or
b) Nerdy gamer dude who got picked on too much in highschool to be able to develop social skills and thereby ends up thinking trying to be a bullying ass will make him look good.
Could you help me decide which it is?
@ jollyIlamma o waeva,
dude you don't know the histroy between Zak and Mark(and other Window users), so just just let them talk things through.
And as a Mac-user why does Zak have to comment on a Windows article?
To all the stupid people going into articles about the the thing/companies that disappointed you and you hate now, you don't need to go back and bitch about it.... No matter what evidence you provide to support your arguments, you personal opinion shows through...
I work for a Fortune 10 company and they just rolled out XP about 2 years ago. We still have some people on Windows 2000. So, it will be another 5 years before they get to Vista, if ever.
@jollylama
Definitely a).
Why, what are you going to do about it, soft lad?
@cockboy
Please, for the love of God, look up the corporate XP adoption rates for 2001-2007.
Seriously.
Is it weird that this headline fills me with unspeakable joy?
Is it sad that you can't take the time to update your computer to today's technology to run Vista correctly or is it sad that you blame Vista when many people are running it with very little problems?
What will people do when software companies decide to not write their applications to be compatible with XP anymore? Software increasingly, over time, requires the need for a more powerful machine and OS. Yet, people moan and groan that Vista is utter garbage. I believe that the Apple marketing has done a good job on informing the public of what Vista is like. If you were working for Apple Inc., wouldn't you be happy because of the wonderful marketing done that has set people's minds when they haven't even used the OS yet? That is just awesome and sad. As a tech, I see people tell me Vista sucks and yet, they are asking me what OS they should get for their new machine. The next question I ask is, "Have you used Vista yet?" The common answer is, "No, I just heard that it was different." Sad, pitiful people who hate change and technology.
*This rant was written on a Vista machine, next to a Ubuntu Server and XP machine.
Jon, maybe he'll cross that bridge when it becomes 2014
@ Jon
That's why i have vista on seperate partition, the theory if the market shifts to Vista before Windows 7 comes out then I'll be ready to go.
PS: a quick google search will reveal an easy way to dual-boot XP and Vista.
"...assuming it doesn't push out that support window again when users refuse to upgrade to Windows 7"
Oh snap!
I look forward to a force install of Service Pack 52!
You do know Apple's working on its fourth service pack for Leopard, right?
Mark, I think you meant to say that apple is working on a fifth service pack for Mac OSX.
Nah, Leopard's different from Tiger. It is however awaiting the launch of it's fourth service pack in July though.
Curiously people slag Vista off without ever mentioning this though, despite just how craptastic Leopard - or Leoptard as it came to be known - was on release.
So they're not releasing 10.5.4 then?
OK.
@clak
You continuously reference Microsoft fanboys, but I have never seen or heard of one. I've seen loyal fans of the Xbox brand, but not Microsoft as a whole, and certainly not Windows.
I think most people at Engadget don't dislike Apple, but rather, dislike the specific type of people who are their loyal-for-life, elitist customers.
Let the OS bashing and flaming begin.
I wish Microsoft kept up support Windows NT4 and Windows 2000 as much as they do now for XP.
There are companies still out there with NT4 machines as the OS is quite stable and very fast. Probably the same reason for XP, the stability is very good.
Why doesn't Microsoft just release their old OS'es to the Public Domain, so others can utilise the benefits. I cannot see them losing XP in the wake of Vista. But if Microsoft stops supporting old OS'es like 98 why can't M$ at least make them free to third world countries?
Because Bill Gates is a philanthropist. Ergo, any criticism of MSFT's business practices is insensitive. QED.
I would like to remind you that this is NOT how to do proper business.
When doing business, morals, ethics, is on the side...
Imagine going to a store, and you see a product and it says next to the price. "Nha! don't buy it, it really sucks! You see that hinge there, yea it will brake. It will be in liquidation soon, if you really want it, it will be 80% off. But it would still be better for you to get the product next to it...." Yea, I admit, it would be nice. No more cheapo products, however so many companies will close their doors.
Oh sorry forgot my end-point.
If money is to be made... then it should be taken. If Microsoft does this, people would stop buying their product wait until it gets free, and get it for free. A sacrifice you do once (by staying with the same OS for all these years) but after that you can just update for free on every new release. Also third world countries are not cut out of the world... so anyone in the world could get it easily.
"When doing business, morals, ethics, is on the side..."
How tragic is this that our whole world decides the fate of individuals, culture, and ecology on cost benefit analysis? Fuck that, time for a new paradigm.
I guess this is cool, maybe I'll take the plunge now. Does anyone know if the XP Home / Professional full versions for System Builders are a viable option for Dual Booting in something like Boot Camp?
in Xoviet Russia, camp boot *you*
Yeah you can use the system builder versions for Boot Camp.
Cool, thanks a lot Zak :D
Is Vista really that problematic for people to migrate? I use Mac at work and home so I can't say... But it must be a pain since people want to stick with XP (which is a pretty solid OS)
Then again I was running Win95 on my PC up until 2002 when I switched to Mac.
no...vista is amazing once you have it! people just won't try it cause other tards are saying it's bad and they haven't even tried it! it's really annoying to hear people complain about vista....i'm writing this on a vista machine and it's the first one i've ever built. i have not had one problem with vista finding drivers,programs, or anything else to be honest. if people bash vista then that just means they haven't tried it or didn't even have the right hardware
I had used Vista on my laptop (the one I'm using right now) and it honestly did cause a lot of problems. It was fairly slow (even with a 1.8 Ghz dual-core processor and 2 GB of RAM) and the process for the taskbar crashed at least 5 times per day. The weird thing is, it was at least usable before I installed SP1, but after I installed it everything got really buggy.
@knightsray:
Sure, it "works okay" for you. I mean like, it works, right?
Now, imagine it working more faster, with what loss? Motion blur when you move the window.
Yes, I'm sticking with XP.
I'm running vista on a 2.2 GHz centrino duo with 2 gigs of ram.... runs fine, except that the battery life is shot to hell (tablet PC). So, when I buy a new desktop I'll put Vista on it, but I'm going back to XP on this because losing half my battery life just does not cut it. But I want to make it clear, performance wise Vista works like a charm... power efficiency however, not so much.
my friend just switched back to xp from vista just like i said he was going to the day he bought it
You know, I was gonna type up some long winded rant about how Vista really isn't bad, but I don't really care anymore. Now that Apple has put its very capable marketing machine directly against Vista, it's probably over. How does Microsoft counter that? "No really, it DOES work" isn't all that great a counter-campaign.
I find Vista very much to my liking. I prefer it to XP. I know a lot of people don't, for various reasons. It's too bad that many of those reasons are based on misinformation and hyperbole, but so be it. I'll continue to be happy using my OS of choice, and I hope the rest of you do the same.
Wow... you can haz a stretch? Vista failed because Apple has a good marketing dept? You guys need to get out more.
I said *now*, you dipshit. I was referring to the tag team anti-Vista adds we've been graced with on the site today. Personally those are the first direct anti-Vista adds from Apple I've seen.
Vista hasn't caught on for a lot of reasons. I think the reason it still isn't catching on is the initial bias, and like I said, misinformation and hyperbole. I don't know a single person that uses Vista and dislikes it, but I know a lot of people that won't try Vista because of 'what they heard.'
Clak,
You saying you were a "dedicated windows user" :: Hitler saying he had a Jewish best friend in grade school.
We get it. You don't like Vista. Stop prefacing your trolling by telling us how much you loved playing games on XP and how much sex you have with your girlfriend.
Microsoft is losing ground in the gaming market because of the popularity of consoles.
They're losing ground to the likes of XBOX then? WELL DONE.
Well, Auro and Aqua are just inferior copies Compiz Fuzion.
I've been using Vista since day 1. I started off a bit weary and with alot of crashes...every single one of which was caused by pathetic drivers from nvidia.
To this day I still use Vista despite being able to boot into XP. I never run into any problems with programs I use. I havent had a crash in about a year thanks to nvidia fixing most (not all) of the bugs in their drivers.
True Vista is not the greatest OS ever made but its not anywhere near as bad as people make it out to be. It became cool to hate on MS and in turn even cooler to hate on Vista. I know quite a few people who run it and not a single one of them has ever complained and asked me to come over and fix something they broke.
Will I buy Windows 7? Not sure yet, this time I'll take a little wait and see time instead of buying on day 1. I will however sit down with it and try it for an extended period of time before i write it off like everyone does with Vista.
jeez... i mean, that's a well worded post and a reasonable position, but it's weird how the best praise i ever hear is "c'mon it's not THAT bad"
riiiiiight. support of removal ;)
"The first negative things I heard about Vista when it came out were from IT departments in large corporations complaining about compatibility and stability."
Funny, I heard those same complaints from *everyone* when XP came out too.
Hm.
Apple really has a great marketing department, and has put it into people's heads that Vista sucks, ergo it must suck.
I mean, all the Apple ads don't even tell you anything about Mac OS, they just tell you that Vista sucks (like the ad at the top of this very page).
wow.. you guys need to rotate in more new talking points, you're just repeating each other even within the same thread now
The first negative things I heard about Vista when it came out were from IT departments in large corporations complaining about compatibility and stability. Many of them to this day will not switch to Vista, and it's not because of Apple's marketing team.
To illustrate, it would be like running/supporting Windows 95 today.
Except the fact that XP is more reliable now than 95 was 7 years after its release.
Though, that could be because XP is more advanced than 95.......
Although the blogosphere is having a field day using stories like this to "prove" that Vista is failing (what's a bandwagon for, if not to jump on it?), Microsoft's support offer here isn't that much different than its standard support policy put into effect almost 6 years ago. This policy offers support out to as long as 2 years after the N+2 generation has been released, which means 2 years after Windows 7. Based on reports that W7 is due in 2010, that would have put XP support out to 2012. This latest story extends this by a couple of years, or about 18%. Not a huge change of policy. Interesting that virtually every story fails to mention the standard policy even if only as a general point of reference.
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy
You know what'd be funny? If Veghte came back tomorrow and said: "Oops, by XP, we meant Windows 7."
"For those keeping track, that'll mean that Microsoft will be supporting Windows XP for a full 13 years since its release..."
Very succinctly put, Donald. Pretty stunning number.
As long as they support it till July 16th of this year, I'm happy. That's when I leave crappy Windows XP and get an iMac.
Balls.
What do you gain from switching from XP to Vista?
Well for me, I gain the ability to use 8 GB of RAM. Then again, I laugh at people who use 32 bit Vista. If you're going to use a 32 bit Windows OS, use XP 32. But if you're actually interested in performance, then use Vista 64. Because of Microsoft's more aggressive policies towards drivers, it works with the hardware I use daily far better than XP 64 ever did.
This was all typed up on an octocore Mac Pro with 16 gb of RAM by the way. Oh how I love being agnOStic :)
There are other improvements beyond just the 64-bit version, basically every facet of the UI has been streamlined and refined and made more user friendly. I personally think using Vista is generally more pleasant than using XP.
But I'm glad you're not mindlessly bashing the OS, at least.
I agree with you about all those other enhancements for the general user experience, but that's generally something subjective. Being able to use way more than 4 GB of memory is not :)
Considering the poor support for the current Vista, how can anyone believe XP will be supported for years to come?
The reason Mac O.S doesn't have many problems, is the fact that they only use certain hardware configurations e.g. Nvidia, Ati, Intel, IBM, SiS etc etc, Apple only use certain configurations.
that's pretty nice.
I used to have XP and I still miss it.
I like the look and feel of Vista, but Vista hates MapleStory...
Other than that...
No, popups do not come up whenever you try to open a program (at least a Microsoft one).
@vileta2 - uh, errr, yeah, you might read your own post if you're looking for one. No MS fanboys? Did you actually -read- any of the posts, or did you just go looking for clak to get on the bandwagon? Sheesh. Typical MS fanboy - following the herd.
My Vista machines at least shut down properly, all the time, unlike my Leopard C2D Mini, that still has intermittent shutdown issues.
While I do think OSX is an overall better OS than Windows, I find it funny that for a company that controls the HW, they can't even get it turn off properly at times. Maybe by July with 10.5.4.
Yup, Macs just work.
I dont think anyone really believes Vista is a total POS, but it does have some pretty major issues. No amount of fanboyism can deny that MS should have made a WAY better product with the time/energy they took making this thing.
So, I will say that Vista isn't total shit, but for a company as big as MS & for the time they took on it, it's mediocre. They know they screwed up, why else keep extending support for XP/talking about Windows 7 THIS soon??
And before you label me, yes I do use a Mac most of the time, but I'll also be the first to tell you that Leopard isn't all that either & Apple dropped the ball on it too (Snow Leopard next year anyone??). Maybe not quite as bad as Vista did by putting all their eggs in one basket & taking for hell & ever to develop it, but its still not great.
Good, we can continue to run XP at work with out worry until Windows 7 with SP1 comes out without having to deal with the hassle of upgrading.
I am eagerly awaiting my Lenovo R61, I will be dumping the pre-installed Vista for linux though.
This is not new news. This is, in fact, very OLD news, which was announced quite a while ago.
Why has Engadget joined the team with all the other anti-Vista press members? Is Engadget really that desperate for viewers?
lets all email engadget and get clak banned for life, just for being annoying
Only until 2014. Damn. How will be able to upgrade from Windows 7 SP2 when it BSODs every hour or so?
I agree with you, Forrest.
Either we're extremely gullible or marketers are extremely smart (...or possibly both).
The best lies are derived from the truth, so the problems with Vista aren't totally unfounded, but they're usually blown out of proportion ...and it also has to do with old dogs refusing to learn new tricks (...and use the proper hardware/software).
Ironically, XP caused the same furor when it came out; however, I understand Vista has a harder road because of the economy, new/old OS choices and a rejuvenated competitor out for revenge (Apple).
As I type from my trouble-free Vista laptop, it saddens me that some will never give it a chance, but hey, on the other hand, it's not the end of the world if you use another OS. As long as you're happy and it suits your needs. There is no such things as one size fits all. I only wish folks would stop rushing to judgement, when you haven't taken time to sufficiently learn what you're judging.
BTW, Clak you're an old dog/dik
"Refusing to "upgrade" to windows 7" Upgrade, not as in a change for the worse. This must be a mistake.
"Resistance is futile, convert to linux"
What is it with the Craptista fan-boys? Do you really like the DRM infestation that much? Despite the 10% to 20% overhead in resources that it takes to limit you in what you can do with YOUR computer? How about the spyware infestation that reports back to MS your daily usage of what apps you use and web pages you've visited? Or even better, the EULA for Craptista that gives MS FULL rights to access, alter or even delete ANY files on your computer. If you are a business that stores confidential customer information or trade-secrets, do you really want to use an OS that gives another business full rights to your data? But to get back to the performance loss due to the massive resource mismanagement that is a key "feature" of Craptista.
There is a rather interesting article out there with benchmarks showing that even Office apps like Word are hideously bogged down in Craptista. Same PC: One running XP SP2 and Office 2007, 250MB Word document load time 39 seconds. Craptista (err, I mean Vista) loading that exact same Word document took 85 seconds. What corporate office would want THAT kind of performance decrease from a supposed "upgrade?"
Oh and for the record, except for a short trials of OS/2 Warp and BeOS, I have been a MS user since DOS 3. I currently run XP Pro SP3 and proudly had XP Pro since over a week before it hit store shelves because of a close friend that was an exec at MS in Redmond. Given the choice of forced migration to Craptista or switching to another OS, I was already looking at Linux. WINE is tha bomb. It can get even better DX9 3dMark scores on some tests than XP. lmao ;) XP has been the best OS MS has released to date and Vista is NOT in any way, shape or form an UPGRADE from that. Loss of functionality (no more backwards compat w/ 95/98/etc) combined with severe drop in performance and increase in resource requirements instead make it a serious DOWNGRADE. So, why oh why would I want to buy that crap? Oh! Wait, I know! I'm supposed to take all those losses (including to my wallet) for the shiny Aero interface! Oooooo! Pretty! I think not.
This decision on MS'es part was one done in desperation after virtually non-existent retail sales of Craptista and Intel's recent internal memo became public. No more, no less. I do NOT count new PC sales because of the shell game MS has pulled with that. MS has REQUIRED that all new PCs shipped be shipped with Craptista whether the customer wants it or nott. It's in the contracts with all of the major PC makers. Even people who order XP OS PCs from them get Craptista included as well. So MS has seriously game'ed their Vista adoption numbers.
The more realistic numbers to look at are corporate and end-user usage surveys. For example, check out Steam's Hardware Survey gathered from over 1 Million gamers to see that only 15% of gamers are even using Craptista vs 80% XP. I think that's the info that developers look at first at foremost. Not MS'es marketing generated numbers. As such, Craptista has hardly any development going for it outside of Redmond.
MS knows ALL of this and so they had no real choice but to extend the life of XWhat is it with the Craptista fan-boys? Do you really like the DRM infestation that much? Despite the 10% to 20% overhead in resources that it takes to limit you in what you can do with YOUR computer? How about the spyware infestation that reports back to MS your daily usage of what apps you use and web pages you've visited? Or even better, the EULA for Craptista that gives MS FULL rights to access, alter or even delete ANY files on your computer. If you are a business that stores confidential customer information or trade-secrets, do you really want to use an OS that gives another business full rights to your data? But to get back to the performance loss due to the massive resource mismanagement that is a key "feature" of Craptista.
There is a rather interesting article out there with benchmarks showing that even Office apps like Word are hideously bogged down in Craptista. Same PC: One running XP SP2 and Office 2007, 250MB Word document load time 39 seconds. Craptista (err, I mean Vista) loading that exact same Word document took 85 seconds. What corporate office would want THAT kind of performance decrease from a supposed "upgrade?"
Oh and for the record, except for a short trial of OS/2 warp, I have been a MS user since DOS 3. I currently run XP Pro SP3 and proudly had XP Pro since over a week before it hit store shelves because of a close friend that was an exec at MS in Redmond. Given the choice of forced migration to Craptista or switching to another OS, I was already looking at Linux. WINE is tha bomb. It can get even better DX9 3dMark scores on some tests than XP. lmao ;)
This decision on MS'es part was one done in desperation after virtually non-existent retail sales of Craptista and Intel's recent internal memo became public. No more, no less. I do NOT count new PC sales because of the shell game MS has pulled with that. MS has REQUIRED that all new PCs shipped be shipped with Craptista whether the customer wants it or nott. It's in the contracts with all of the major PC makers. Even people who order XP OS PCs from them get Craptista included as well. So MS has seriously game'ed their Vista adoption numbers.
The more realistic numbers to look at are corporate and end-user usage surveys. For example, check out Steam's Hardware Survey gathered from over 1 Million gamers to see that only 15% of gamers are even using Craptista vs 80% XP. I think that's the info that developers look at first at foremost. Not MS'es marketing generated numbers. As such, Craptista has hardly any development going for it outside of Redmond.
MS knows ALL of this and so they had no real choice but to extend the life of XP until at least after the next Windows release cycle. It was either that or possibly lose their market-share to MacOS and the open source movement that had already gained a 35% increase in market share among businesses and government institutions since Craptista came out. Besides, many businesses and governments are often WAY behind the releases anyway. I worked as a Senior Tech at Wells Fargo's NOC for over 5 years (1999 - 2004) and we didn't even migrate corporate desktops from Win NT4 to Windows 2000 until 2003. We even still had some offices running NT3. The plan for migration to XP wasn't until 2006 or 2007 when I left in late 2004.
Wow, the dang thing screwed up my post somehow and duplicated part of it. I just noticed it. Too bad you can't edit your posts. Ignore the extra repeated part.
vista is fine if you have the right hardware to run it. Clearly, it's not going to run smoothly on an entry-level piece of crap. I am currently using a 6-year-old desktop with XP Pro on it, and a 2-year old laptop with Vista Ultimate on it (both were at the very top of the line when they were new). Ultimately, I prefer Vista. What does Vista do better than XP?
1. Task manager -- when you press "end process", it actually DOES end the process. Also, the task manage interface is a lot better in my opinion.
2. smoothness- while some things may be a bit slower, at least they are more smooth and graceful, and less choppy than XP. I have never experienced in Vista a window that half-closes, or that drags itself across the screen and leaves a trail of itself. that bugged the shit out of me in XP.
3. General ability to run for extended periods of time. I have to reboot my desktop about once every couple of weeks, and the only things I ever run on it are email, VLC and the occasional web browsing. My Vista laptop, on the other hand, is currently running a total of 50 tabs in firefox, email client, excel, word, VLC, foobar, winRar, and Audacity, and is running like a dream. I haven't rebooted my laptop in a couple of months.
As for drivers, I have yet to find a device for which Vista has no drivers. SP1 works fine for me. UAC can be turned off. Aero can be turned off (the W2K theme looks better anyways). Really, if anyone is truly bitching about Vista, and not just doing it because they want to be cool, it's probably because they have no idea what the heck they're doing.
also, @ people who complain about DRM..I hope you know that there are other better media players out there that aren't WMP....