[harishankar]

I like your review.

My laptop came with Vista Ultimate OEM, so I was spared the installation procedures, but yes, what annoys me about Vista is the huge memory footprint.

Vista is a monster.

What's worse is that while Microsoft officially supports "downgrading" Vista Ultimate OEM and Business editions to XP, the actual hardware on the laptop prevents the XP installation from working properly. This has probably something to do with the BIOS.

[questio verum]

Moe,
I wasn't worried about an 11th hour conversion, but I was, ah... a little concerned when I read that you were entertaining a Vista rant. I was curious as to how you'd treat this one, and what conclusions you might reach. To be honest, I thought you'd be evaluating it for a little longer. Like maybe a week. Or at least 3 or 4 days. Then again, I really don't know how long you evaluate for one of your rants on linux. Funny, the preconceptions an idle mind can develop.

That you found it problematic is not surprising. This is the OS that has even long-term MS devotees scratching their heads. Late last year there was an amusing incident where a published author, blogger, and Vista evangelist offered a reward to the first person that could offer a fix to allow his Vista machine to 'see' his network. A fix for a problem that neither he nor Microsoft could resolve. A problem, incidentally, brought on by installing Microsoft's own SP1. When you mentioned in your rant the failure of Vista to remove MS's own cruft after doing the update dance, I thought of this and smiled. Not a mean or cruel smile. Just a smile. I am thankful that a linux community was around when I was ready for a change. I'm glad they've been there quietly plugging along... developing, improving, adapting to challenges, and slowly, methodically building a first-rate alternative to broken, overpriced OS'es. Without linux... well, that's a vision too depressing to contemplate.

qv

[techieMoe]

Originally Posted by questio verum

Moe,
To be honest, I thought you'd be evaluating it for a little longer. Like maybe a week. Or at least 3 or 4 days. Then again, I really don't know how long you evaluate for one of your rants on linux. Funny, the preconceptions an idle mind can develop.

I originally intended to use it for a week or so and see whether it grew on me, but the issues I was having precluded me from really doing anything *useful* on my laptop, and the idea of having essentially no laptop for a week overrode my plans.

[Artesia]

Oh, so the "Get Help" feature does actually work sometimes, that's nice to see. I guess. I tried that on a couple of occasions and it always came back with "Microsoft was unable to find a fix for your problem" or words to that effect. It didn't even point me in the right direction or anything.

I know that some people love their Vista experience, but I wonder how much of that has to do with how much they actually tax their computer. If all they do is surf, check email, and look at their photos, and are trained to just hit OK on any dialog box that pops up, they won't see a lot of problems unless they cross into hardware and connectivity issues. That, and being impressed with the fancier-than-XP-graphics.

Anyway, that was definitely fun to read. I also would have enjoyed reading about a week's worth of testing, but subjecting yourself to such torture is asking a lot, I know. Thanks for sharing!

[jayd512]

Great rant, Moe! And your conclusion about Vista is pretty consistent with with everything I hear about it from people I know who have it on their machine.

[bigvoo]

I still have vista in my newest machine, I only use it to edit video, and fix problems with the router/gateway when it acts up...when i first got it, I thought i had a hardware problem, it takes about 4 minutes to boot up, and some times it won't shut down at all...have to dynamite it, to turn it off. it works o.k with my video editing software, but there are things I can't even do in vista, that i was able to do with xp. I'm so used to ubuntu now, I' don't care that much about learning it anyhow.

[Redman]

Good work Moe!
As always a rant to my heart

I especially liked the bit where users accept they have limited rights to their computer.
Too bad nobody reads these things, 'cause then people would have woken up earlier...

[ozar]

Originally Posted by techieMoe

I've been curious in light of the unprecedented negative publicity around Microsoft Vista. The rants I've done on it were all for the pre-release versions, certainly well before Service Pack 1, which supposedly fixed a lot of problems.

The opportunity has presented itself (by way of a friend of a friend who works for Microsoft) to secure a legitimate copy of Vista Ultimate Edition 32/64 for a very significant discount ($20USD). I intend to take this opportunity.

Thanks for the review. I've personally never tried/used Vista, but will admit that I've been curious about it.

The $400 price tag means that I'll never get the opportunity to try it because I simply refuse to pay such a prohibitive fee for it, and won't allow myself to become guilty of pirating.

I certainly don't blame you at all for opting for the $20 package though, and would do the same, myself. A price of about $20 to $30 is the most I'd ever pay for Vista, or for another copy of WinXP for that matter. I have a newly built, high-spec machine on hand, but refuse to pay for yet another copy of Windows.

It's "Linux only" on this box, and I plan to keep it that way!