Vista review...

wolfman

Heh, what was the thread about again?

thor

wolfman wrote: »

Vista is far from an ME stage. They spent far longer on it than another of their other OS's and made a lot of changes. The reasons business are reluctant to upgrade are firstly because of these changes (makes people wary) and XP at a cost level does what anyone should need.

So in other word MS are traying the old 'create an artificial demand for vista' trick since there is really no need to upgrade from XP anyway.

toasterman

They'll be a need in 10 months time, because OEM suppliers won't be allowed to preinstall XP on a new machine you buy.

You'll still be able to buy it retail and install it yourself though - just it'll cost you £200 instead of £50.
To be honest, with people changing pcs every 2 years, but only changing major operating systems (by which I mean that things on Windows 2000 broadly speaking, worked fine on Windows XP - but Windows XP things don't necessarily work on Vista) every 7-8, it'd probably make more sense to buy one copy of the operating system retail when you buy the machine.

Then when you bought a new machine after that you could revoke the licenses and claim the refund of £50ish, and install your own.

Then you could use it however long you wanted...well...or until they stopped making xp drivers for the hardware in the new machine.

wolfman

thor wrote: »

So in other word MS are traying the old 'create an artificial demand for vista' trick since there is really no need to upgrade from XP anyway.

Kind of although it's not that simple. I only said at cost level.

Initially businesses won't switch as it takes time, and a product needs a period in which to mature. However, for businesses buying new pc's in the next year or two it'll make sense to go for something like Vista rather than XP, an OS dating back to 2002.

From a typical home user perspective, Vista is usually the best option. The only case where it isn't is when you have older hardware that doesn't (yet?) have Vista drivers.