windows xp or vista???

[Fyron]

Originally Posted by capnq

Damning with faint praise...

Yay for selective quotation that ignores stated benefits!

Originally Posted by santiago

But I'm not going to run out and and buy it because of those items. I don't even know what most of them are.

I did list several of them. Here's another one: 1st class 64 bit support, including requiring hardware vendors to make both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of drivers to get WHQL certification.

Much like XP vs. win2k, there really isn't any reason to go and buy Vista to upgrade an existing machine (unless you are a crazy tech enthusiast). Obviously, upgrading a win98 machine to win2k or XP was an incredibly good idea, given that the whole win9x line was one of the worst set of OSes ever developed. Also like XP vs. win2k, there isn't really a whole lot of purpose to going and downgrading a new Vista machine to XP. I'm not sure there will be any point to upgrading an existing Vista or XP machine to Windows 7 when it comes out, either.

Certainly, MS has failed to market Vista properly, but its not like it's winME or something; the OS is pretty solid after its initial birthing pains. The same thing happened with winXP, win2k, etc. They all started out with major flaws and bugs and were improved via patches and service packs.

[capnq]

Originally Posted by Fyron

Also like XP vs. win2k, there isn't really a whole lot of purpose to going and downgrading a new Vista machine to XP.

So, you think the people who've already downgraded 35% of those machines did so for no good reason?

[Fyron]

I can't seem to find any real data to back up that 35% figure. It appears to all lead back to a blog post about a survey of a self-selected group from Infoworld's "exo.performance.network community." Self-selected surveys result in completely useless statistics.

There is some legitimate data from NPD showing that retail box copy sales of Vista were down compared to XP in the first 6 months of sales, but that's not very relevant data either. Retail box copies have always been a very small fraction of total OS sales. What we need is hard data from the big PC vendors showing exactly what they've been selling.

Given the negative utility of the Infoworld data for inferring general market trends, I'd think it's fairly safe to continue assuming that the vast majority of non-corporate computer sales continue using the default operating system, without any effort taking on the part of consumers to choose something else. Corporate sales are a different beast, naturally, since corporate IT has very long upgrade cycles during which they keep everything using the same set of disk images. A lot of them are still just barely now upgrading from win2k to winXP.

[Azselendor]

Vista had 4 main failures, as far as I can see.

1.) a really bad roll out marketing campaign
2.) It's primary competition was windows xp
3.) Needed to ship with SP1 on launch.
4.) A successful apple ad campaign that set an image for vista before vista could for itself.

#2 and #4 are really the deal breakers for vista. Vista didn't provide a reason to upgrade and I only have it because it was on the computer I bought in june. Otherwise I'd be happy with XP and possibly migrating to ubuntu right now. Apple ran a pretty sharp campaign (Mac vs PC) that define vista bad and apple as simple is now doing the same to define Windows 7 in a poor light.

I think what microsoft needs to do is declare peace on all of its corportate fronts and in the confusion, give steve job a swirly and stuff his *** into a trashcan again. Otherwise known as pointing out steve job's and apple's flaws.

Let's take apple update which updates your computer with new software. Sure, you have itunes for your ipod but it'll install safari and quicktime under the disguise of an update. That's like microsoft bundling Internet explorer with..... Windows!

Or how about the ipod/iphone/itouch comes out with a new feature or two that it should've had from day one. I couldn't understand why people keep buying new ipods every year until I realized it's to get trendy new colors and that feature that wasn't in it before. In comparison, microsoft made all the new software for the zune 2 freely availible fo zune 2 users. If they'd drop DRM lockdown, I'd buy one today.

apple is built of a linux core, so why not save money and buy a cheap intel-based laptop and install ubuntu on it for free (total cost roughly 500-700) and get the same results with PC support. Apple and macs are way, way over priced for what you get for something that in a few years will be throw-away technology because of apple's product lifecycle mentality. Like your printer or mouse or keyboard when it breaks.

Apple isn't cool. It's consumerism at the highest levels. I don't want a desktop with fancy smanchy animation built into the core, I want a meat and potatos desktop to get to the job done, one that'll take a beating and keep on running (until it crashes), and -best of all- run video games.

[Fyron]

One could argue that the traditional "Apple tax" is much reduced these days; comparable non-Apple hardware (ie: not your $300 Fry's specials) costs about the same. The primary problem these days is that there is no mid/low end desktop machine. There is the laptop line, the Mac mini, the retarded all-in-one iMacs, and the high-end Mac pros. All of these are priced fairly competitively with machines from other OEMs (HP, Dell, etc.). Apple apparently refuses to sell a mid-range desktop machine though, in favor of the iMac, creating a gap. The problem is not that Apple machines are more expensive, it's that Apple doesn't compete in the budget market. That, and they don't let you roll your own.

One could also point out that $5-700 laptops are horrible pieces of hardware not suitable for anyone that wants to do anything mildly complicated with them. Fine for web browsing and other basic tasks, but **** for anything performance-driven. It's definitely worth it to spend a few hundred more to get into the faster processing range, saving all sorts of time and frustration down the line. Furthermore, the Linux software ecosystem is quite lacking for desktop use, whereas Apple has enough clout and history to get versions of important productivity software. Plus, you'll need Windows anyways for running those games you like..

[PvK]

Stick with XP, or Win2K, is what I have been doing.

[AgentZero]

apple is built of a linux core

I wouldn't be a proper weenie if I didn't point out that Apple's operating system is Unix-based, not Linux-based. OSX's kernel is based on the Mach microkernel which was developed to replace BSD. Interestingly enough, the lead programer on the Mach kernel has been working for Microsoft for close to 20 years. Zany!