Comments on: Microsoft: All roads lead to Vista

Free support, PC maker backing, and XP's uncertain future mean one thing: like it or not, Vista is coming to your desktop. Are you ready?

[savagesteve13]

Ironic Photo now that CompUSA is belly up.

Can vista be next?

Come on Microsoft, come out with XP2009 already and ditch Vista like you did with Windows 2.11, WinME and Microsoft Bob. The public is used to dismal Microsoft failures.

[sjalsevac]

Microsoft seems to be self destructing with Vista

For Microsoft to be trying to force users to adopt deeply flawed, terribly slow new OS you have to wonder if they have a corporate death wish. I just had a fellow employee experience a near breakdown because of problems with her new Dell Latitude that came with Vista. After a few months we gave up on Vista and installed XP on the laptop. Now the laptop is humming, running far faster and working well with the office network and printers. Vista has got to be causing billions in productivity losses. It is a dog OS and service pak 1 appears to be a big disappointment. Does anyone at Microsoft really care? It does not seem so. They can drop the price to nothing. I don't want it for my office staff.

[bluemist9999]

XP wasn't quite the same

I had a reasonable PC with 512 MB of RAM. Even in the RC1 days, XP Pro just worked on my machine. I had no driver glitches to speak of, games ran just as fast as they did on my WinMe OS. But it seemed more stable.

From what I've seen, even buying a new Vista-equipped PC, you will probably have driver problems with not totally-new hardware (i.e. a Canon printer I've used for 2 years), and the OS will consume more RAM which I can't use for any applications. In addition, games run 10% slower in Vista.

BTW, Vista needs to "phone home" once a month. If you don't connect it to the 'net in a month (i.e. you turn it off or whatnot), it will shut down, hard, even if it is a legally licensed Vista copy.

I'll buy more XP copies, myself.

[wolivere]

Where do you get this make it up?

Okay when XP came out you rant it with 512mb of RAM. At the time the defacto desktop standard was?

Win2k Pro and Windows 98

I remember the push back when we sent in the request to bump our desktops to 128mb of ram to run W2Kpro.

Most Windows 98 machines ran 65mb of memory. The video cards of the day had 8 to 16mb of Memory, the good old Vodoo had 12mb.A rocking system has the good olf Nvidia TI 3200 16mb video card in it.

Lots of people screamed the house down, that you needed 256mb to run XP, that was a 4 fold increase in needed memory, and you needed? What a 64mb or 128mb video card? To take advatange of the XP? Your smoking crack.

What a bloated OS to need 256mb of memory!!!

So now we are a few years down the road, the defacto standard it seams in most XP box's is 1 to 2gb of RAM. Thats a 12 fold increase over 98.

And most people run 256mb as a min on there video cards with many running 512mb or more. Heck thats 4 times the memory 98 needed to run !!!

So now we have vista, its really happy with 4gb of memory.

But thats only double the defacto standard of the XP days, not the 12 fold increase form 98 to XP.

Its really strange how people forget the days of past migrations, with the very vocal minority screaming the house down.

But back to this post, no driver glitch's with XP>

A quick google shows all those issues. One of the Major compalints of 98 to XP was driver issues. The other major complaint was DX compatibility issues, and lack of game support.

And games run 10% slower in Vista? That is partically true with older games and not try for newer games. This is not much different then 98 --- xp or even Win 3.11 to 95

Its all in the way it handles graphics.

The OS consumes more, yes since its being asked to do more then ever before.

So let me ask if you have 4gb of ram installed, and your running all your apps and you have 1gb of memory in use, whats the difference between that and now using 1.2gbs of memory? You still have tons left over.

And last it does not do a hard shut down, that was changed in SP1.

XP also call's home. But heck lets not get our facts to straight here, it defeats the purpose of fud.

[Leria]

That's bull about the driver problems......

And it consumes NO more RAM while idling than XP did, in fact a little LESS than XP did, coming from me upgrading my parent's old XP Media Center computer to Vista Home Premium.

Also, as to the 'games run 10% slower in Vista!'.... Nope. They run, if anything, faster in Vista, as far as I have seen. I used to not be able to run Doom 3 on my parents PC at anything more than 640*480 and get 60fps.... now, I can run it at the next higher step and get those speeds.

If your device doesn't have a driver, STOP BLAMING MICROSOFT! They are NOT the makers of drivers, that is your HARDWARE MAKER'S responsiblity.... if they punk out on it, don't blame MS for that.

[open-mind]

Try Macs & OS X. Better and cost less.

At least, that's what a recent case study has determined, as reported by ComputerWorld:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=312300&source=NLT_PRN&nlid=2941

(If news.com splits/breaks the above URL, please try pasting it back together.)

I LOL when I read these paragraphs:

"Less than five months after going public with plans to immediately start replacing its Windows-based PCs with Macs, Auto Warehousing Co. was forced to push back the project by more than a month. That was last December. The reason was not a lack of money, manpower or executive support. Rather, what stymied the project were protests from workers and objections from customers who perceived the technology switch as unnecessarily costly."

""I didn't see this coming at all," says Dale Frantz, CIO of the Tacoma, Wash.-based company. "

"In fact, Frantz says, within hours after a July 16, 2007, Computerworld story about AWC's technology migration plans was published, both he and CEO Stephen Seher received a flood of phone calls and e-mails with questions, positive and negative comments, and even an anonymous death threat."


Death threat?!? I guess Windows zealots really like their platform, even when its more expensive. ;-)

[wolivere]

Ichat

I found it funny that they mentioned Ichat as the deal winner for remote pc support.

What I don't understand is the savings, they run Powerbuilder so okay big cost savings there, but the SQL servers on the back end will remain so the enterprise license agreement will still remain. They are dumping exchange, for mac mail.

Okay maybe some savings,

The new network will see each server as an individual. Hmm I'm not getting that sounds like a huge step back in time to me.

A quick read though, and my initial impression was they needed to fire there contract person. Does not sound like they new what they where doing on there llicense agreements.

Im also curious as to if they included the man hours as a charge in the conversion or not? Seams they have sunk a lot of conversion time, and external resources into making this work.

Are those numbers part of the cost savings? Something just don't add up. Not thats its not a good story, but something just don't add up with it.

[w00fd06]

uhh, not exactly

Although initial cost of OS X is less expensive than Vista, when you consider that every time a service pack comes out for Windows, it's free. Every time the OS X equivalent comes out, it's also free, but you have to pay 100 dollars every year to keep getting them.
Also, Macs are usually not as cheap as PCs, performance wise, if you compare two identical computers (let's say the mac is running Windows, to be fair), Macs cost more. Usually it's because you're paying for the nice-looking chassis, and the glossy screen.

[wolivere]

Its hard to tell if some of these news companies know up from down.

Excuse the verbatim post, but read and enjoy

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=352

In the Talkback section of my earlier post on XP versus Vista adoption (Who?s choosing XP over Vista?), several commenters pointed to a PC World Techlog post by editor Harry McCracken that they believe contradicts my conclusions. Here?s what Harry had to say:

On January 30th, Microsoft released Windows Vista to consumers, who have been adopting it in ever-growing numbers. But those numbers have been creeping along rather than rocketing: As of now, Vista ? is used by 14 percent of visitors, while 71 percent use Windows XP?

How much of an accomplishment is it for a new version of Windows to get to 14 percent usage in 11 months? The logical benchmark is to compare it to the first eleven months of Windows XP, back in 2001 and 2002. In that period, that operating system went from nothing to 36 percent usage on PCWorld.com?

Well, that settles it, then. XP was a huge hit in its first year and Vista?s a flop, right? Of course, that wasn?t what PC World was saying one year ago, when it published this report from its parent company?s IDG News Service back on November 27, 2006:

Up to 15 percent of PC users will move to Vista within the first year that the operating system is available, said David Mitchell, the software practice leader at Ovum Ltd. ?That would make it the fastest-moving operating system ever,? he said.

By comparison, between 12 to 14 percent of users switched to Windows XP during the first year of its release, Mitchell said. [emphasis added]

That prediction sounded about right then, and one year later that analyst seems to have nailed the actual number.

So, PC World, which is it? Did 36% of the market switch to XP in its first year of release or was it 12-14%? I have no doubt that the stats Harry posted were accurate as far as his website metrics go, but I think those statistics say a lot more about PC World?s website and its unique readership than they do about the larger market.

Everyone knows a crystal ball works better when you?re looking at history from five years ago. Those 2002 numbers in particular don?t reflect the Windows marketplace as a whole. Does anyone really believe that 36% of the market at large adopted Windows XP in the first 11 months after its release? I certainly don?t remember any contemporary reports of XP?s success one year after its release (except, of course, in press releases from Redmond). Instead, I remember headlines like these:

Windows XP Slow to Take Hold - CRN, Oct 11, 2002

On the first anniversary of Windows XP?s release, Microsoft has little to celebrate.

Less than 10 percent of Microsoft?s installed base has upgraded to Windows XP since its release last October. That matches a 2001 Gartner prediction that nearly 75 percent of all corporate PCs would still be running Windows 95, 98 or NT Workstation by the end of 2002.

The adoption rate for the installed base of 250 million Windows users is ?pretty small,? said Rogers Weed, vice president of Windows client product management at Microsoft. ?We?re trying to kick-start some momentum.?

In fact, all this coverage is thoroughly predictable. Microsoft tries to build up hype in the pre-launch phase, and then customers adopt products the way they always have, as part of the PC replacement cycle. It was true in 2002 with XP, it was true in 2007 with Vista, and it will be true several years in the future, when the next Windows release finally rolls around.

[JCPayne]

Windows 2000 was my LAST Microsoft O/S. THANKS TO UBUNTU LINUX.

Thanks to Ubuntu Linux Windows 2000 was my last Microsoft O/S....

http://www.ubuntu.com/

[wolivere]

Have they fixed the black screen of death?

When you install Ubuntu on a nice LCD with a nice NVIDIA card do I still need to disable the splash?

Does it still force some LCD's into a perm sleep mode that can only recitfied VIA an RMA or reprograming the LCD?

Does it still Kernal panic on Flash drives and crash?

Does it still loose its x config on random reboots?

Do the fonts still make your eyes water over time, and make browsing in Firfox migraine inducing?

Does the really cool video features still turn even your high end PC into a slug and crash?

Can I make WoW run, at an even 1/2 decent frame rate with reliable sound?

Does Video play back still look washed out?

Does fast forwarding in videos still disconect you from the media?

No? K

Thanks

[jordandw]

Amen, brother

Win2k continues with patch/security upgrades from MS and continues to do everything I want from it on every PC I (built) own. That for my money was the last great MS OS. I expect it will be until 2010. The next great OS for me will be Ubuntu Linux. Goodbye MS -- old friend since '84. You abandoned me, so I shall you. Hail open source -- the OS for the thinking man -- or at least the OS that allows me to think for myself and is then quite happy to leave me alone.

[nmatera1]

What! what! what!

You just said you use linux. I love my kids imac g5 and i installed leopard on it but it ran real slow when my kids would try to play the sims. i just reinstalled tiger back on which was a pain. I dont use the imac that much but i do watch my kids use it cause you have to keep an eye on them. Also you bought a power mac those computers our 2500 dollars. If i went out and bought a 2500 dollar pc probably dell 4 years ago i could have configured a monster machine with pentium extreme processor and it could run windows ultimate. i dont waste my money on 2500 computers though and im not going to start now.

[jlm429]

Vista... NOT the ME of this decade

ME ran on the old DOS based kernel (blue screen of death) while Windows 2000 was running the NT kernel. XP and Vista use the same kernel for business/consumer versions, so they aren't going to dump it like they did with ME.

Just give it some time, it will get better. MS deals with alot of backward compatability baggage so for better or worse, it takes them time to stamp out the bugs.

If you need to buy an OS today and are afraid of wasting your money - then go buy something else or run Linux.

Or waste your time flaming a Vista article.

[The_Decider]

Good stuff

Too bad Vista suffers from the Blue Scree of Death(TM)

[protagonistic]

RE: Microsoft: All roads lead to Vista

Shouldn't that title have read "All roads for the clueless read to
Vista"? :-)

[Scott Gardener]

Hating Vista is fashionable but unwarranted

Vista faltered a bit when it first came out, but its stability problems are certainly nothing like the Windows 98 days, and most of us transferred over with very little hitch.

For me, the biggest problem I had was with some partitioning software in order to set up a dual boot to XP, in case Vista turned out to be the flop that everyone seems to think it is. The partitioning software was itself buggy anyway, and once I got it working, I ended up deleting my XP partition after about seven or eight months of not using it.

I did notice some sluggishness with my desktop system, but it's an older system, and I first just attributed it to running an Athlon XP with Vista, with all the Aero graphics turned on. I could get some improvement by dialing down the gee-whiz visuals. I just installed SP-1, and the sluggishness is completely gone.

I do have to report one gripe about SP-1, though. My Soundblaster Extigy is no longer working. I was limping along with it anyway, a four-year-old USB sound card box that was great for its time, but one thats original software install disc was long missing, and a device that Creative has decided to stop supporting. It's probably time to replace it anyway.

But, this does bring up the best legitimate Vista gripe, that it forces upgrades by refusing to work with a lot of older hardware. From a stability standpoint, it elminates bloat, but I'd like to see at least basic functionality support for devices older than three years but less than ten. My PDA from 2002 didn't need to use Vista to stream wireless videos through a bluetooth connection or remotely run space shuttle missions, but it would have been nice to have been able to use it for basic calendar syncing. Not supporting older hardware and software seems like a way to sell new parts, not to mention add junk to the landfill.

That issue aside, and I consider it a significant one, Vista itself behaves pretty well. With the press it gets, you'd think it were Millennium Edition all over again, but it's not. Vista runs fine on every computer I've seen running it, though no one in one's right mind would put it on anything more than two or three years old, with at least a Gig of RAM and Athlon 64 or Core or better CPU.

XP was such a huge improvement over the 9x platform that it's no wonder that people today are afraid to leave it. But, Vista is hardly the holy terror it's made out to be. I've found life with it over the past year pretty good--not counting all the personal crap that has gone on for me, but Vista is not likely to have been what killed my dog or caused my mother-in-law to need heart surgery. 64-bit computing has been more evolutionary than revolutionary, but the redesigned previews and aero graphics have been nice.

[The_Decider]

It is better then Win98?

That is your argument?

Vista is years behind modern OS's.

[Renegade Knight]

Lucky You

Vista for me was problimatic and still is. Never before Have I had more problems going forward with a new windows. Each generation was better than the last (I did skip ME) until I hit Vista. I like Vista features but dislike it's issues. I keep bumping into them. Right now it's some doggyness running multiple applications (like I have always been able to do under windows) to the point I can take a break and come back. Before it was sync issues, Media Center issues, Stability issues, Driver issues, Direct X issues and so on.

A year in and it's almost working right. Maybe you had good luck. Many more than under XP didn't and don't. Oh and I dived in and didn't look back,but that means I'm still fighing Vista.

[fguv]

Thanks to Vista I am a new MAC convert!

I guess the title says it all. I am an avid computer user and have
purchased more than 10 computers since 1996, both for my
academic research and for home use. Windows always lacked
features that, as a user, I thought was a no brainer.. I would
always yell at my computer asking why it was so stupid.. Yes I
eventually came to think that XP was an OK OS, but now I realize
that that was merely me lowering the bar year after year until XP
came to cross it (OK maybe it was getting better by a bit).
Anyway, it was never a smart machine that knew that 90% of the
time I needed 10% of the features it offered.. Those features
were always buried with another 90% of junk that nobody ever
seemed to need and I never even understood what they were for
(and I have a PhD!)
Anyway, now all of this is behind me as I have joined the ranks
of MAC OS fans.. Everything that for years I yearned for,
apparently already existed in a clean, simple, elegant package..
I also totally reject the claim that Windows' problems are
because of the wide range of hardware they have to support. My
new MACs (and yes I bought 4 of them in the last 1 month!)
work with every piece of hardware I have and MUCH more
smoothly than XP or Vista ever did!
Enough said: Thanks Microsoft for making me an Apple
customer (and by the way I also bought an Apple TV and am
planning on an Iphone purchase soon!)

[ralfthedog]

Conversion frustration.

One thing I think needs to be made clear. Every convert I know has gone through a stage of "This bites the big pickle. I want to go back to Windows." Changing your OS can drive you nuts at first. Just sitting down for a few minutes in front of a mac will not make you a convert. Spend a few days and you will never want to go back to Redmond.

Linux and the different flavors of BSD are by far the best server operating systems. OS X has the best desktop user interface. If you just want to play games, go Windows.

[kalyank]

comon dont be kids anymore

i have been using vista since feb 07, and i was really happy with it. i was definitely impressed with the fast improvement microsoft has show(xp took much longer to improve.) i never experience crashes of hang ups. mac is for those who want to keep everything simple. if you think mac is better than vista,then take a look at linux which looks even better these days. with a mac you have to drain your purse frequently for every application you want to use, but for windows there is always a free app for everything you wanna do. i dont care about support google is my best friend and not even apple can compete with it.

[ralfthedog]

Lots of free apps for the Mac.

I use NeoOffice for my Office Applications. CyberDuck is probably the best FTP application I have ever used. Firefox and Thunderbird are the best email and web browser applications on the market.

From what I have seen, the same free apps exist for Linux, Mac and Windows. The ports to the Mac look to me to be the cleanest of any platform.

[ToddWBeaver]

Vista Works, but Frustrating

I've not had many issues with Vista, except for the need for faster hardware to get good performance.

But I'm often frustrated by the minor changes -- where did this or that feature move to? For example, how do I change the logon icon for my user accounts in Vista?

I sometimes have networking issues, too. I'm often unable to see the other devices on my home network.

One particular frustration was the requirement to install Visual Studio 2008 using the Administrator account. First, the Administrator account had to be enabled. Then, I had to logon as Administrator to do my installation.

Office 2007, however, is a completely different story. Avoid it like the plague.

[BigGuns149]

Good and accurate post.

I think your post is one of the few accurate assessments of Vista I have seen on cnet. I think the biggest thing that frustrates people about Vista is some of the changes seem arbitrary. They don't seem to serve any purpose. Most of the issues are minor, but a nuisance nonetheless.

[focusnozoom]

XP doesn't have to be pretty

If you want something pretty get Ubuntu and add compiz-fusion

I use XP in classic view and it's awesome. So clean and fast. I don't care about bells and whistles, I just want something that will work smoothly with my games and software.

But I heard vista does have some nice shortcuts though like the start menu search, but my computer needs at the moment doesn't require vista.

[FutureGuy]

here's for starters

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/pretty-vista.ars
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/vista-under-the-hood.ars

its only like 10 to 15 pages long.

[Anysia]

Sorry, not taking the "Road To Vista"

I use too many 'legacy' devices. Expensive ones, like my Deep Space Imager, which I have read on our discussion group, has major problems with Vista compatibility. I can't afford to suddenly have these things not work.

With XP, I know it. I know it's issues, and how to fix them. It's not the devil I know, it's the OS I know. And I won't change it unless there is no way to avoid it.

[opost9]

Simon (Microsoft) Says.

It's amazing! This article says we'll all go to Vista even though, so far, Vista is the downgrade. Consider:
"Let's face it: XP may work, but it's not pretty." Really? I didn't notice. I do notice that Vista changed a lot of the "look" -- to be prettier I suppose. I think it's ugly. Gratuitous bells and blinking lights signifying nothing.

"I've been running Vista on three machines for well over a year. Compatibility issues are beginning to disappear." *Beginning* to disappear?? Wonderful!! Just what I wanted. A year (or two) of compatibility issues. Why not just run the thing that has *no* compatibility issues?
"My wireless network connection no longer mysteriously vanishes, and other random glitches appear to have been fixed."
Big whoop. And only a year to accomplish this miracle.
"Still, maybe I'm setting the bar too low. Should we expect more from Vista?" In short, YES. It should WORK and it should be COMPATIBLE. Until it can offer that, get outta my face. Microsoft, in its marketing genius, has somehow suckered millions of people, including the major hardware vendors, into believe that they *must* have the LATEST THING (and pay for it) even though it offers no earthly benefit for most of them. It's time we all woke up and refused to go along with this racket.

[Odinsg1]

Ford vs Chevy vs Toyota vs Dodge etc etc etc

Some of these arguments have very little to do with reality. I have Vista and XP set up to dual boot on one of my machines and Vista runs most applications faster. So I KNOW the comparision in real world use is valid. I've had a small home based computer repair business for 15 yrs and in the last year I have not had one single support call for people with Vista machines except initially for some networked printing problems which have since been ironed out. But I do continue to get a steady stream of calls from people with improperly secured and updated XP machines that have problems. I also get calls from Mac owners but I don't support Macs because there just isn't enough of a market. What I regularly hear from them is that they can't find anyone that fixes them except the dealers. This tells me Macs DO have problens, just like PC's. I also build computers to sell and the prices for components today has come down so much that I can easily put together a decent system for $700 or $800. NOT high end, I don't clain that. But I regulary build systems with Core 2 Duo cpus, (currently using E6750 or E8200 when the suppliers have them, 500 gig drives, Ausus or Intel motherboards, 512 meg vid cards. a couple of gigs of 800mhz ram and Vista Home Premium or XP Pro. Plus case & ps, a DVDRW and a card reader. Two other points I never see mentioned. The people who rushed out and bought Macs based on the scare tactics of the media who later put them in the closet and went back to their Windows machines (I know several) and the fact Apple has switched to Intel chips. With Macs now being Intel based, the differences in the underlying hardware are diminishing. Macs are a lot more like Wintel machines now than they ever were before. And the differences in the OS's is like the differences between a Ford and Chevy. On the surface they look different but under the hood, there are many more similarities than differences. Bottom line is some people prefer Fords and some prefer Chevy's (or Lexus or Bugatti's for that matter). No single machine or OS is going to be for everybody!

[djchrysys]

keeping XP

As an electronic musician I will be keeping XP for a while, the software companies support it and its more stable also its nowhere near the resource hog Vista is and I need all the head room I can get since audio and video production demand it so no switch here any time soon.

[Shig2k1]

Not true 64bit, no drivers... Vista is lame

I tried a vista migration on a fresh drive. I thought, yeah! 64bit computing... might as well get full use of my quad-core 64bit system. After installing it I found that most of the drivers I needed for hardware didn't exist, and it wasn't 64bit through and through.

Vista is a stopgap same as Millenium Edition, there's no reason to upgrade.

[BigGuns149]

x64 drivers are pretty common actually.

That seems odd to me. I have used Vista x64 on and off since the public betas and I haven't found much of anything hardware-wise that x64 didn't support. You must have been particularly unlucky. I gotten a full set of drivers for several desktops with different hardware. I have even seen old HP Laserjet 5si's print from Vista x64. On most newer hardware not having 64 bit drivers is the exception, not the rule. Whether the drivers perform as well is another matter, but to say there are no drivers is a whole load of BS.

Finding x64 for laptops is a different story, but since all the commercially available chipsets I am aware of don't support 4GB+ it really doesn't hardly matter anyways.

Software on the other hand is a different story. Even now, virtually all software that I am running in the task manager at this moment is 32 bit. Even Adobe's CS3 Suite is 32 bit. Except for 7zip there isn't much software that most average people would ever use that is 64 bit.

In the sense, that most of your software isn't 64bit, then no you aren't experiencing much benefits from your 64 bit CPU. As time goes on more and more software will move to 64 bit though. There are already CAD apps that are 64 bit, so I wouldn't be surprised if CS4 is 64 bit only. Buying a 64 bit OS, is a bit like buying a dual core processor three years ago: you were buying yourself a slightly more future proof system. You generally weren't buying it for improvement you could see today.

If you are looking for machine that you will use for about 2 years 32 bit Vista is probably a better choice. 64 bit applications probably will start to reach the masses by then. 4GB of RAM is dirt cheap now, so software developers designing software for release in 2010 can reasonably expect 4GB to be the norm by then and 4GB+ to be common enough to make a 64bit version.

Sorry, to burst your bubble, but Vista isn't ME for several reasons. First, ME wasn't obsolete by design. Microsoft was already well into the development of Whistler before ME even came out. Windows ME was an afterthought and the support issues showed it. Vista seems almost perfect compared the unstable OS that ME or Windows 95/98 were. Windows 7 won't come out for another 2-3 years. Windows 2000 had already came out six months before ME so it wasn't like Microsoft hadn't released a new product that year. The analogy to ME isn't apt at all.

A better analogy might be comparing Vista to XP actually. Windows 7 will come out a minimum of three years after Vista. In all likelihood Windows 7 won't be released until 2011, so I think your hope for a quick turnaround on something better is a pipe dream. When XP came out it was pretty despised for being bloated/slow compared to Windows 2000. Windows 98 users complained because they preferred of the single user environment or how Windows 98 had better game performance. The complaints mirror those of Vista.

The only thing that changed about XP was that the driver support got better and hardware that made XP purr became cheaper and cheaper till the point that even some of the biggest critics of XP weren't bothered by the bloat anymore because it ran fast enough.

I imagine if history repeats itself the same will occur for Vista. Around SP2 a lot of people will finally adopt Vista because decent hardware for Vista will be cheap the driver support will have 2-3 years of improvements till the point that the hardware vendors can't squeeze much more out of the hardware with better optimized drivers. 1-2% will move to linux and 2-3% will move to Mac. The vast majority will forget that how bad Vista was for the first few months and will say that they will stick with Vista for years after Window 7 comes out and the process will start anew.

Few people really ever follow through on their promise to dump Microsoft products.