I don't want to sound anti-Microsoft, because I'm actually not. I just dislike their OS and their business practices strongly on many levels. But I wanted to share with you a bit of information - my reasons for sticking with XP and not buying Vista. #1. Assuming they stick to plan, MS will be replacing Vista in 2009, that's only 2 years away. #2. Vista uses DirectX 10 which is NOT compatible with DirectX 9. Since the majority of users who demand DirectX are gamers AND MS will be replacing Vista in 2 years, does MS honestly think the developers will switch? They want reach the largest audience, and that's DX9 by far. #3. A large portion of legacy hardware will not function with Vista, including such widely compatible hardware as a 3C905 Ethernet card. Granted, that's old, but it's a widely compatible card - plug it in and go. MS says it's too old to bother supporting. Right now, users on Internet who have upgraded to Vista are howling about substandard or no hardware support - even when hardware is marked Vista Ready. #4. Windows Vista has embedded DRM, in an era where even Apple is starting to admit DRM was probably a bad idea. If they are going to replace Vista in 2 years - why bother using a version of Windows with it embedded? #5. Microsoft has announced in the license that you CANNOT run the Home versions of Vista in virtual environments. In other words, if you want to Xen sandbox Vista, you have to go out and pay and extra $100 to buy one of the more expensive versions. #6. Microsoft is so cheap they wont even give you the new interface with the Vista Basic version. #7. If you want POSIX programming support, something programmers have been screaming for since Microsoft gutted it from Windows six or seven years ago, you have to buy a enterprise class copy or better. POSIX being an API standard for applications programming on all other major operating systems. The lack of it in Windows is a major impediment to the FOSS software base (which the majority of uses POSIX) being ported to Windows. Ironically, Microsoft was one of the original signatories to the standard. Right now, you can download and add the official POSIX add-on package for XP Pro for precisely $0 from the Microsoft update center. So my question is: if you can't get proper gaming support, your older hardware won't PnP, you don't want to be shackled by imcompatible audio/video, Vista Ready hardware is having issues, and you can't even run it in parallel with Linux using VMWare or Xen (unless you spring for a business copy) - WHY would you really want to run Vista at all? Especially when they will take your $120-$400 and then just replace it in 2 years with another monster. Now if they said, we will take $100-$150 a year and provide you with consistant, meaningful upgrades - and everyone has the same version of Vista - I might have said yes. (BTW, just for the Mac fans - you aren't allowed to run OSX in a virtual sandbox either because of their stupid hardware copy protection. They don't want anyone running OSX on a virtual Mac.) So I'm not going to buy Vista. I'm going to keep XP, and just go XEN when my new Intel hardware arrives. Just my 2 cents, T.J. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: tj.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 117 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20070225/b73a64aa/attachment.vcf