M$ Haters. Penguin Obsessed.... Welcome home.

Wow. It certainly seems to me that this site is absolutely CHOK full of Microsoft haters, Penguin freaks, and one-track hard-nosers.

Linux is a DAMNED good OS. It is fast, it is stable, and it runs on damned near anything. Yes I can run Linux (albeit an older version) on any box I have ever handled, including Sparc's, PowerPC's, and my Cell phone.. Probably my Dryer too, it has a computer controller inside it... But for my mother, my father, my daughter, neighhour, etc. Linux is just not for them. Slight Windows compatibility issues, lack of simple click click for some things, and inability to "just go to download.com to get a shareware tool" make it a poor choice for someone like that. For the large corporation with thousands of systems to handle, the I/T overhead may be too much. Compatibility with legacy applications and backends mean Windows is the only option, save for a million dollar retrofit..

Windows Vista is a damned good OS. It's fast, it's clean, it's stable, it's compatible, and it just plain works. Yes, you read that right. It works. I run it on my HP notebook (which was designed for Vista) and it works fine. Ohhh.. I hear all the haters out there "Yah, of course, it was designed for Vista. Of course it's going to work!". Surely you must recall the WinModem days. Yes, Linux users could not say "It works" unless they design the system themselves with the right hardware.. Thereby making it "Designed for Linux". Of course it's going to work. My car takes specific oils, and if I drop generic 10w30 in there, it's going to cause problems. I use VW Certified oil in my VW.. who'd have thunk...

The big beef is running the right OS on the wrong hardware. Vista just plain does not work on some hardware. End of story. Try installing OSX out of the box, on your PC. Thank you for calling.

I'm getting really really fed up hearing everyone here bitch and complain cause they have had bad experiences with Windows this, and Windows that. Everyone is up no "XP is the best" bandwagon.. yet.. I'm old enough to remember the days when XP was the latest hideous beast form Redmond, and "No way I am going to use that candied up piece of crap. I am sticking with the only OS worth using if I have to use MS.. Win2k".

We get it.. You hate M$.. You love Penguins. Move along now. :)

Mine's the one with a different OS in each pocket.

Vista problems?

I bought Vista (I know, who would actually pay for this DRM laden, bloated piece of crap) and I had no problems with it, installed fine, updated fine, SP1, fine. The HATED DRM which everyone always goes on about has never had any effect on my PC (which isn't a Cray by any means, still a 32 bit single core processor for Gods sake)

OK, it isn't everyone's cup of tea, especially here on El Reg (where "real" operating systems come on punch cards) because most of the readers don’t like Microsoft and that’s fine. To say that every user of Vista is suffering, or that it is impossible to set up a small (50 user) network without any major issues is generalising to say the least.

The worst thing for me was the changes they made, seemingly because they could, to the familiar menu systems. OK it took me as long to learn the new ones as it took me to learn the (superficial operating) differences between Windows and Ubuntu so no big deal really. I just don’t understand why they made the changes, especially to office! A bit like a car manufacturer moving the pedals around “just because”

Far too late M$!

Bought Vostro 1400 laptop with 3GB of RAM and dedicated NVidia graphics. I thought, as an IT professional, I have to learn about mainstream OS. Yes it works but so do vacuum cleaners, but when you switch them off they do so as opposed to the mainstream OS - it starts installing patches and the process can't be interrupted.

This is just tip of the iceberg. SP1 broke my wifi catcher button functionality. Tried to setup net profiles? Ever renamed user and then found out that it didn't rename user directories, and you can't do it either without worrying you will break 50+ pieces of software you needed to install in order to have environment you are used to? Cooling fan blowing crazy most of the time? Etc, etc.

>>> It does what _it_ wants, not what _I_ want. <<<

Once I realised the the fact that I have no longer control over MY system, I knew I learned enough about the mainstream OS and installed guess Ubuntu 8.04 - all worked out of the box.

However, hats of to M$ campaign, that can be defined as "it just works", very clever. If linux community wasn't so diversified and fragmented, maybe we'd have a real alternative ready for an average industry office user and we'd also have software tools of equivalent or better than .Net.