Windows Vista has been battered, says Wall Street fan A leading Wall Street cheerleader for Windows Vista has taken the gloss off a new Microsoft website encouraging customers to give Windows Vista a go. Bernstein Research analyst Charles DiBona says a year of negative publicity combined with the ability for users to downgrade to Windows XP means that "almost no feature of the …
MS will cheerfully let you downgrade it to XP anyway, just as long as they can claim to have shifted another unit. The fundamental thing that the whole Vista debacle has exposed to the world at large is that MS really can't compete against such stiff competition as, erm, itself. Still, while so many business boxen are tied to some form of Windows, do they really care?
I have a naughty copy of Ultimate. Still wondering if I should install it. XP Pro works fine. I see very little reason to 'upgrade' or even shove on another partition and dual boot it. Might do though if I am REALLY bored.
Corporations don't want Vista. They want to wait and see if Windows 7 is all it's cracked up to be.
Where's my Balmer icon?
It's kind of funny. Those of us that use Vista don't seem to have any strange trouble that is typically talked about in articles like this. The naysayers seem to be the ones with journo badges, linux/apple fanbois, and luddites.
Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I haven't had a single problem with Vista since installing it nigh on 12 months ago...and I know I'm not the only one. All the people I know having problems 'with Vista' are amazed to find out that their problems are actually hardware and/or non-Microsoft related.
"All the people I know having problems 'with Vista' are amazed to find out that their problems are actually hardware and/or non-Microsoft related."
Come on Ben, your average punter doesn't see it that way. A working system gets 'upgraded' to Vista and it stops working. Whose fault is that? I suppose next you'll be saying it's the punter's own fault for expecting a product that works in return for their money!
Anyone's fault but MS eh?
"Shot using Microsoft's trademark video techniques of potted sound bite, dizzying zoom, wobbly camera, and sped-up action sequence, the viewer quickly forgets to think and is slowly lulled into accepting Windows Vista. According to Microsoft's site, Windows Vista is safer, easier, more reliable and more versatile... than?"
Safer than.....
must be talking about safer than windows 98.
although 98 probably runs faster on significantly less hardware and all without asking stupid questions all the time....
Even Paris asks more sensible questions than vista...
Not battered enough yet..
I would like to applaud Sony, for finally releasing the XP downgrade drivers for its Vaio line of laptops!! Yay, now that useless pile of expensive plastic in the corner can be a productive machine again! (we won't let our cherubs be exposed to Vista just yet)
If Vista had been recalled, it would have been a better product launch.
If Vista had been banned, it would have provoked more people to use it out of spite.
If Vista had worked as promised, it might have been intentionally purchased!!
Just for your edification: google "define:vista"
Definitions of vista on the Web:
* view: the visual percept of a region; "the most desirable feature of the park are the beautiful views"
Which sums it up beautifully for me!
Yes but have you gained anything from buying VISTA?
Is the gain enough to shell out to update 10,000 desktops in your company?
>All the people I know having problems 'with Vista' are amazed to find out that >their problems are actually hardware and/or non-Microsoft related
If you upgrade to Vista and your hardware stops working it isn't necessarily Microsoft's fault - but it is still your problem.
I have given Vista a number of goes now, first after release, later after a number of updates and patches were available, and then when SP1 was released. All tests were done across multiple machines with single core procs, 1-2 GB of RAM and Nvidia GeForce 6xxx GPUs. And Vista just sucked a rock each time I looked at it.
However, I have recently purchased a new machine (Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of RAM, GeForce 8800GTX), and Vista actually runs...Well...Well! I'm rather surprised. So the conclusion I've come to is, unless you're buying a grunty new machine, there is no conceivable way Vista is worth it. And I think the key word there is "grunty", ala see the whole 'Vista Capable' class action lawsuit. I think the sticker should have said "Will run Vista so slowly, you'd wish you bought a Mac".
I use Ubuntu (guess that makes me a "fan boi", right) and several other Linux distros as well as XP and Vista, including two identical laptops that came preloaded with Vista Home Premium. The XP desktop will stay with XP because it does what the user needs it to do. If there is a NEED it will get upgraded...to Ubuntu. One laptop is now a Linux testbed. The Vista machine has been nothing but problems from day one. BSOD while just sitting with nothing running, a flat refusal to defrag using the built in utility, slow to boot, slower to shut down (when it WILL shut down) and the questions, the never-ending questions. Why is that machine still loaded with Virus...I mean Vista? Simple, the Autistic child who uses it likes the games. She knows when it goes south, it's getting Ubuntu. And she's fine with that because, guess what? SHE HATES VISTA outside of the game suite and Ubuntu makes does eye candy that her machine won't do with even the overpriced Ulitmate upgrade.
Tux - Because when Linux has a major error, it gives me information I can use to fix the problem, not FATAL ERROR: (2023:000:0000:0000x0_0x000)
Oh come on now..."gluttonous hardware requirements"?!?! i mean really. NO ONE complains about the Mac OS. They have LITERALLY been forcing people to buy new computers every two-three years. This is the FIRST Windows OS that doesnt support the 486!! The mac has REQUIRED firewire and a G3 processor since OS 9. Oh yeah, ur motherboard doesnt have firewire? Buy a new computer! Thats the Mac way...take it in the a$$. Why doesnt anyone point this out? Wait, i just did. But then Mac users are used to paying through the nose every 2-3 years for forced upgrades.
Vista is Microsoft's method of forcing a world wide hardware industry out of business. By using it's new OS architecture as an excuse to force hardware to be emulated in software for the ultimate end to reduce all functions to a on CPU function. Once this is achieved the computer is reduced to nothing but a near thin client. At that point all the same functions can be done by a Microsoft server and not on the computer itself thus the completion of putting of 90% of consumer hardware based technologies, out of business, putting all processes into Microsoft's control on it's servers instead of the users own machine. This gives Microsoft complete control over all user data, all computing, and they can charge any price for your access to it. You can have access to your data if you subscribe and they have the power of saying no to anything you do.
Ultimately people don't like it and it's no surprise any OS that takes a step toward taking control away from it's users and a global industry in any way will be met with Resistance. No matter what you believe we want our computers to be whole and remain in our control to be used at our own discretion.
When vista RTM was first released an MVP friend gave me one of his evaluation copies to evaluate. I used is as my main OS for 8 months before dumping it and going back to XP. When I first got it I was open minded and prepared to be impressed. Even if I didn't like it myself, it seemed inevitable back then that it would be widely adopted and so I would have to learn it in order to be able to fix it.
My box is pretty old (2.5 athlon with a gig of ram) and although the general overall performance was a little bit sluggish, it was not too appallingly bad. The eye candy was nice but I turned it all off after a couple of days because i wanted the extra 5% or whatever of performance. The UAC nagging might be OK for end-lusers who don't do anything more than bashing out reports is MSWord but as far as I was concerned it was just unremitting torture. Not acceptable.
The nice things were the big thumbnails, the improved picture-and-fax-viewer (does anyone ever use it for faxes by the way ? what is a fax, mummy ?) the excellent spam filter in OE7 (MSmail 7 or whatever it was called) and the cursor going to end of the filename rather that the end of the extension when renaming.
There were a few other small small detail improvements too such as the big alt-tab previews but sadly all these pluses were canceled out by negatives such as the missing menu bar (DUH !) the hidden network connections folder, the command line shutdown being crippled and general application compatibility. The new search seemed unnecessarily complicated too.
One of the most annoying things about XP and previous Windows was the lack of a folder size column in explorer. I imagined that that would be finally sorted out in Vista but it wasn't. Worse still, the third-party folder size utilities I use with XP didn't work at all in Vista as the neccecary API's are removed.
One of the worst windows features has always been a habit of hiding important things in really stupid places (like emails stored in C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{1D2A742B-69D9-4BCE-ABBA-1F45BFF465C1}\Microsoft\Outlook Express) but unfortunately with the advent of Vista's virtual folders and its roaming profiles this has got even worse. Many more folders tended to come up as 'access denied' too, even though I was administrator (with the extra fixes to make me 'real' administrator (which was another puddle of shite I had to wade thru to get anything done))
The final, and maybe biggest problem of all was the "calculating time remaining" bug. A flagship OS which that is not capable of reliably performing basic copy/move/delete operations is almost unbelievable, but MS Vista was that OS. This bug seemed so big that MS couldn't ever even admit it, let alone fix it. I never found out if there was truth in the rumors that it was a DRM mis-feature but in the end this disability was the final nail in the coffin.
At first I was prepared to be impressed by Vista but having used it for 8 months I was impressed only by what a bloated mess it was, and how little extra real functionality it offered.
...bloated, annoying, expensive, overly made up, too glossy, gushy, full of empty promises and prone to asking stupid questions.
Looks good but you wouldn't want to actually have to work with one all day every day.
The price is far too high for what you get - the same Microsoft crap browser, notepad and a slightly better designed email program and that's it. They didn't learn from Linux and its huge array of extra software, they didn't learn from Linux and its far superior security model and they didn't learn from Apple's superior design. They trail everyone, copying other people's ideas (badly) then attempting to sell them as their own at bloated prices. It's only because they are protected by the US Gov and already have that "freight train out of control" movement style that keeps them going. If they were a startup they'd be laughed out of the market place.
MS should admit to what they do best - provide a platform for games, and then stick to it. Leave operating systems to people who understand them.
Now that is what Vista should be, with very new hardware it runs OK, but code bloat and extra features have caused it to chug a bit. Strange when those extra feature are promoted as a reason to buy it.
Now Apple have announced that the next version of OS X is going to focus on speed, small foot print and reliability maybe Microsoft will copy them, and sort out Vista, after all it is only the OS it should only really be running your programs, do that nice and fast and make sure it doesn't crash and they will have happy customers. Microsoft have seemed to forget that.
I blame Balmer, then again I blame him when it rains.
I got pissed off with having to reactivate XP , and then to add insult to injury I had to do it using an INDIA based site (help site ?).
The hard work trying to communicate with the indians , who probably tried hard, but their INDIALISH meant a very hard exercise .
The sad thing is that I purchased an HP Officejet Pro L7580 printer, and had to use
a help line in INDIA also , which was an useful as a broken leg, My friendly local computer man fixed my problem for me.
For me , Microsoft and Indian help centres will be avoided at all costs.
I am using Ubuntu 8.04 now, and am most happy.
God bless the creator -of Ubuntu.
Shame on you HP for going the cheap and useless way.
Paris seems the most appropriate icon .
I have happily been using Vista for 6-7mths on a laptop I was previously running XP on. Yep, I have fugured out how to turn off a few of the more annoying features (UAC was the biggy) but otherwise I have nothing to complain about.
Have the detractors ever played about on the O/S? If not, they should give it a go before passing judgement, you never know they may be surprised.
Stop sign 'cos currently the detratctors are simply following the Apple media machine.
But have you tried XP (or Ubuntu for that matter) on that Core Duo with 4GB? I guarantee, you WON'T think Vista's running well after you see how something else runs on that.. those are incredibly high specs by any but Vista standards. This is what people object to about Vista (well, among other things).. you simply shouldn't need that much hardware just to make an OS run worth a damn.
I am responsible for an IT organization, upgrades, maintenance, etc. What can I say about Vista, well there is a good reason a lot of companies have not moved to it. Not just because you can downgrade to XP, thank heavens Microsoft got that right, it may be the single saving grace of Vista, the ability to downgrade to XP. The Vista glitz is nice but, the basic OS should be working. We tried it on a few test machines. Vista made device drives for basic services like the CDROM or DVD stop functioning. Why try living with an OS, like VISTA, when if you need Microsoft, you could just keep XP, which actually, more or less works. So, pay money to upgrade to Vista only to have it un-install devices or cause software faults? I think not.
"Come on Ben, your average punter doesn't see it that way. A working system gets 'upgraded' to Vista and it stops working. Whose fault is that? I suppose next you'll be saying it's the punter's own fault for expecting a product that works in return for their money!"
Come on Paul, your average punter never upgrades an OS. They buy it as part of their 'new' computer.
I got a free copy from MS of the Ultimate version, and have it installed on a dual-boot Intel Mac. As it came free, I thought I'd install it, and use it when the need would arise. I must have used it twice in over a year now... and when I do, I finish what I need to do and go back to something else as soon as I can.
Of all the OS's I use in various places (Win2000, WinXP, various Linux, Mac OS X), Vista strikes me as the one I prefer the least. If it works for you and you like it, fine, use it, by all means. I think it's a dog of an OS, so I don't.
Um, maybe it's cause I just woke up - but from what I read in the article he's not exactly slating it.
I'm with Ben Edwards on this one. Seen Vista on thousands of machines. From Quad Core 8Gb desktops through to my own home PC of a P4 3Ghz with 1.5Gb. Works fine on all of them. Only seems to run worse than XP on machines that were "budget" 5 years ago. (P4 2Ghz or less and uner a gig of RAM.)
Take a peek at www.neowin.net's home page for the member poll. As it's not a windows fanboi site but a IT news site it's a pretty good indication.
Oh - and BTW OSS / Mac fanboi's - on the same merit of such as "small" installation base for Vista - what does that say about Linux and OS X? (As Vista has a much, much bigger installation base than them)
Well, not really interesting, as the article doesn't really say anything we didn't already know.
Though I might perhaps advise the author to be more careful in writing articles that include source names of "DiBona" and expressions such as a "if you look hard enough"
Paris, because I've never done it before (nor her, for that matter). And she'd probably like to meet Mr. DiBona.
In essences (certainly in the case of my employer) it doesn’t make a difference whether corporates run Vista or not because they pay for it anyway as part of their annual software license deal. Where it really matters is the home market, people buying new PCs, and by all reckoning this has been a huge success. I use and like Vista on my home machines and it’s a nice consumer OS for email, web, photos etc. I use XP at work because it’s quicker and works well for what I do at work.
"Those of us that use Vista don't seem to have any strange trouble that is typically talked about in articles like this. The naysayers seem to be the ones with journo badges, linux/apple fanbois, and luddites."
... and Microsoft's own executives. One Mike Nash:
"I PERSONALLY got burned ... I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine."
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1213254812-d6D4v/z5NQj5lQ2i8qyeeQ>
As the New York Times comments:
"We usually do not have the opportunity to overhear Microsoft’s most senior executives vent their personal frustrations with Windows. But a lawsuit filed against Microsoft in March 2007 in United States District Court in Seattle has pried loose a packet of internal company documents."
Unfortunate that business of document discovery in court cases. Owing to our now having seen Microsoft internal documents, we're in a position to know that even they know they screwed up. What people say behind closed doors ...
I'm with Ben. Of course if you've got a 3-4 year old box that's running XP with no problems, you shouldn't upgrade it to Vista. It'll run like a dog unless you carefully disable all the features designed for modern, higher power PCs. The same, BTW, has been true for every new version of Windows since 3.11 and most new versions of Linux and MacOS as well. You can (if you really want to) add most of the new look and feel of Vista to an existing XP box - but then it'll probably run like a dog as well.
OTOH, if you buy a /new/ machine with a reasonable spec (and these days that would include all desktops and almost all laptops) it should run Vista without problems.
I've been running Vista on two machines - purchased in the last year so reasonable spec (and *had* to get Vista).
The only problem I've encountered is the really really really slow file transfers - it just plain sucks having whizzy SATA drives, a bog standard 100mbps network and finding it takes much longer to copy files between 2 vista machines than from an 8 year old pc to a 5 year old laptop (both running XP).
However, as a previous poster mentioned, Vista doesn't give me much that I didn't have with XP and I can't help thinking how fast XP would run on my newer machines.
I've had no issues with Vista either. Neither has my immediate superior, my girlfriend, or any of my collegues. The common factors are A) They all paid for it, and B) they all did clean installs from a DVD.
The difference before and after reformatting my own PC, on which it came preinstalled was immense. Prior to reformatting: DVD's wouldn't play owing to some broken DRM feature, games based on the source engine only ran on their minimum settings, and boot time was pretty poor (+2 minutes). Post formatting: DVD's play, I can play The Orange Box on recommended and boot time is under 1 minute.
The important thing to note is that prior to reformatting, I blamed Vista for these issues, because I couldn't see any software that could be causing them, and I knew my hardware was capable. It makes me wonder how many of the "ZOMG M$ VISTAIDS RUINED MY PC!" crowd have the same issues.
I've been using it for about a year or so now, and it has NEVER crashed. Not once. Not so much as started doing unusual things warranting a reboot.
I'll grant you I've had some crap TP drivers and some slightly unusual effects with certain old software, but the meat and potatoes of the OS are hard to fault on stability.
I wonder how many of those so quick to tout Vista's failings and advocate rolling back to XP Pro have used it (*really* used it) for any prolonged period?
My video card (S3-based Diamond from 1999) was NOT supported (using a generic driver for S3-boards work fine under Linux). I DID blame Microsoft for not supporting run-of-the-mill RECENT hardware (they did supply a driver for the much older Matrox Millenium I had in another box). They also failed to support the Adaptec 2940UW SCSI adapter the moment I plugged in a 9GB Quantum Viking II disk with an image of Win 3.1 on it (boot failure: box dead in the water, no matter what you said about boot order, and it DID boot under SUSE 8, so it was not a hardware issue).
Problems with hardware are an OS issue! The very core function of an OS is to provide a hardware abstraction layer on which the programs can function properly. Unless the hardare malfunctions at a physical level, you cannot claim it is a hardware problem. Claiming that the drivers are not available, and it is therefore not Microsofts fault does have some merit, but lack of driver support has always been one of the most quoted problems of Linux (sometimes true, I know), so why should Windows not be criticized for this problem if it exists.
So if I have a box which works fine under XP and it fails to perform under Vista, I have every right to complain about it. I do not doubt it would run smoothly on my current configuration (Core2-Quad at 2.6 GHz, Geforce 8600 GT with 512 MB, 2GB RAM), but I have not seen a good reason pay good money for it. I haven't even bothered testing it.
I have tried Vista for a couple of months, it does have problems, so I went back to XP. I am certainly no less productive nor any less secure. So what are the real advantages of Vista, basically "None" for the enterprise. We can already script most tasks with 2003/XP and security lies more in the hands of the SysAdmin /Company polices rather than in the OS.
I would be happy to use Vista if they stripped out all of the crap/bloatware and made it run on basic systems. What is really going on the background that requires a minimum of 2Gb RAM, 3.0Ghz Core Duo. Do people actually realize what 3.0Ghz represents. 3 000 000 000 Cycles par second. Thats a hell of a lot of cycles. ( Just to open a damed text file, that seems a little overboard, no).
But in any event lets face it, what can ANY new OS possibly offer that will increase productivity, which is what companies want. Joe Consumer doesn't need more than
Notepad or Lotus 123 ( version DOS, circa 1982) for all he ever does.
A new productive OS might include the following :
1 : No Internet Browser.
2 : No Instant Messaging.
3 : No Torrents.
4 : No Music.
5 : No networked gaming.
6 : No Social networking.
7 : No 3D graphically amusing ( for 3 mins) interface requiring a 256Mo dedicated graphics card.
Remove all of these and watch productivity soar when the (L)users no longer have any "distractions". But in that case, I wouldn't have any reason for coming into the office either.
I can imagine that we will be heading back to Mainframes/Thin Clients ( Call it Cloud Computing) in the near future. Standalone OS's have nothing left to offer that can benefit the company, except for the (l)users who need there daily dose of Pron whilst commuting.
[Skull and xbones, because computings dead, MS has gone a killed it off- Long Live Pencil and Paper].
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"Mind you, it is more expensive than XP, does no more than XP and needs better hardware. Apart from that: Great OS!"
How can that be great, the OS is just a layer on which applications sit on top of, why should it need shit hot hardware and cost a lot.
When Vista came out we bought a box for our office, it was sluggish, took ages to configure (I can pretty much navigate 2K, XP & *nix blind without a mouse). I don't honestly believe that an OS with a fluffy interface is needed in an office setup. The important part of applications are inside the windows, not the frames.
But then I run an office which is full of self employed people, so they actually do work (or else they don't get any money). Yes, maybe that's the difference.
No Bill's evil icon, because if you're stupid enough to deploy it, you deserve it.
Yep, runs fine for me too, on new AND old hardware. Vista is absolutely fine, bar a couple of rarely-needed services that are installed and running by default (Windows Search, I'm looking at you).
Funnily enough, all the furore about shit performance turned out to be badly written drivers by 3rd parties, but you don't hear the detractors holding their hands up to that, do you?
And all the OSX fanbois can just fuck off - it's a piece of piss to rip off Linux and get it running on your tied-down over-priced glossy hardware platform, then crow at the competition because they have a hard time supporting hardware for virtually anything. If you want to look trendy, buy a fucking Audi TT, not a computer. Please, just go away and give us all peace.
Only the linux boys have ANY right to crow at Vista.
Hee! Late night fun. Well, before this grows to eight zillion comments about "I use Vista, and it's great, you are all plonkers," "use mac/linux/a broken abacus it's better!!!11!111oneone," and "VistAIDS is fail," let me be the first to say:
I for one, welcome our crap OS overlords.
That siad, it's troll time.
<Troll>
Linux: I love you. You make my web servers spin. You don't talk to all the proprietary third party software my business requires to run, and this makes me cry. You make good web servers, but Open Source egotism, massive fracturing and lack of focus means you may never be more than a server to me. Oh how I wish you were ready to replace all the bits and bobs I need. (Having drivers for most of my printers, and being able to share them out to windows boxes properly would be a great start.)
Mac: Let me count the ways I loathe you. From your unwillingness to run anything made in Java properly, to my inability to properly control you from a directory server, to the administrative overhead required to make you talk and play nice with operating systems made by other vendors. I completely detest you, and all of the mad, mad people who try to run our Java apps on you. Mac, please do me a favor, and either license the damned tech required to work properly in a mixed environment, or just...disappear. Thank you.
Vista: Everything I complained about above for the Mac and Linux goes double for you. Please, either license the tech to work in a mixed, (or even Windows) environment, or GTFO. I don't know which department at Microsoft isn't working with the other, but these network transfer issues, GPO application issues, and the complete inability of explorer to save anyone's settings really must go away now. I know you believe it's not "your fault" you can't properly interact with programs and servers from other vendors. Those Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 servers are just so *foreign.* Gods forbid you be able to use a printer driver from a previous incarnation of Windows. Who cares if it was a $50,000 device with a life expectancy of 10 years made by a company that got eaten by someone else. They should backport just for you, or better yet buy all new equipment to replace that which works perfectly well! Well, um...no. Please, please please...die.
XP: Why hello there. How are you doing. Want to go out for tea? Dah-ling, you look just mah-velous today. You just...work. Now, a few things such as, for example, system restore, security centre, indexing, and that really inept firewall/ICS package of yours can cheerfully go to the “disabled” bin, but those I can nuke from orbit with a GPO. You run all the little Java apps I send at you from everyone quite nicely, most things have drivers for you, (or your wonderful little brother, Windows 2000, which you so kindly are able to use,) and you talk to other operating systems not just in a stable fashion, but at full speed! The files on that server over yonder on the network, I can delete/move/transfer them without strange glitches, or insane overconfiguration! Please, stick around for just a while longer.
So before all of you [x]'tards get out your spleen venting, let me troll each and every last one of you with this little gem: "it doesn't matter what is 'best', or 'newest' or 'most secure'.
What matters is what works, because when it doesn't work, a business doesn't make money. After "working" comes (distantly,) "security" then "best" then "newest." In about that order of priority. After decades of working with insecure Microsoft operating systems, most sysadmins have a good deal of experience recovering from a security breach or failure. Improvements are welcome, but not at the cost of basic functionality. Windows XP on a Server 2000 or Server 2003 Active Directory, with Outlook on top of Exchange is a system businesses trust because a) it works, b) people who can make it work are cheap and plentiful and c) it's dirt simple and *familiar* to the majority of users who have to use it. We may not like it, but those are the considerations that sell the majority of software to the majority of businesses.
Fanboyism and religion aside.
</troll>
Mine's the one with the EEEPC, RDPing into the XP VM in the pocket.
...is a hi-def TV. Vista seems to have been hobbled from Day 1 by the need to keep "premium content" safe. Unfortunately businesses don't do "premium content", you work on their computers, you don't watch movies.
So maybe the failure of Vista is that MSFT designed it as a high end multimedia center and then tried to convince businesses that they needed it in the workplace. It was a nice idea in theory -- the OS renders existing office systems unusable so they need replacing, the whole thing being a great way for everyone to make money. Too bad the businesses didn't fall for it.
"we assume they mean Windows XP. Which you can still buy, if you look hard enough."
Most of the box shifters and now offering XP Pro as build as well as Vista.
It used to be just XP Home OEM but now you can get XP Pro installed without it being an optional extra or to do it yourself.
No need to look hard - thanks to Vista it's everywhere.
... But maybe not in the way Microsoft expected.
I saw it running on various computers, and hated almost everything about it - system requirements most of all. I thought, 'Oh well, I suppose we'll eventually have to upgrade anyway -after all, what else is there?'
But before making the plunge, I decided that this time I would investigate this 'Linux' thing. Getting used to it was slightly painful, but probably less so than the switch from Windows 98 to XP. And we've been blown away by its performance, even on antique PCs that were still running 98 because they didn't have the power for XP.
I'm not a Linux 'fanboy' (Not quite. Not yet.) But at present I can't imagine what Microsoft would have to do to Windows to tempt me back. Also, I haven't had so much fun with computers since the days when I bought my Sinclair ZX81.
So, thank you, Microsoft!
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