I'd rather stick with the flaws that I know about then have to learn a whole new bunch of flaws.

That's what it boils down to.

TWO WORDS ON VISTA COMMENT!

GROW UP!

I run a small side business where I set up people/small businesses with computers and networking and of ALL the computers I've bought since Vista's release, not ONE has stayed a Vista machine. Every single one of my customers has asked me if I can put XP on their shiny new computer instead of that Vista thing.

oh well.. Maybe next time around huh?

I'm using XGL+Beryl on Gnome. Spanking graphics, better hardware compatibility than Vista (believe me, for the first time Linux got more support).

Vista anwsers questions that no one was asking, XP was the frist publicly known Operating system that didn't need to be rebooted every 1/2 hour, so we all wanted the next upgrade.....not anymore MS was creating it's own market with crummy software until they made XP.

Part of being a grown up is recognizing when something stinks.

The State of Denmark is waxing odoriferous.

what's the deal with the link to the indiatimes? i mean, i guess it makes sense though, seeing as how all the potential tech support calls from vista customers isn't quite materializing.

i totally agree with PRRawlins in that MS sabotaged themselves by making a decent operating system in XP (decent enough that people didn't want to have to learn a completely new one).

One of the things i used to like about MS vs. Mac was that it was less "user friendly" but more usable. i was taught on MS-DOS back in the day, and i still to this day use the command prompt when i feel like i can't get something done that i want to. that being said, i've never been a big fan of the idea of trying to make the GUI look nicer at the expense of usability. i mean, might as well take away our second mouse button too, while they're at it.

The slump is because everyone is waiting for God's Messenger to unveil Leopard.

@bigbadjon

The India Times is a major newspaper, why not link there?

Agreed. Vista is all bells and whistles with not substantial substance. Gimme XP Pro any day.

Denmark are they still around? Did Denmark say God created man, woman and (better not say the word)! Denmark is the joke of the EU!

So, Gizmodo, what is your agenda to run this piece? Do you want advertising money from Apple?

Just becuase Vista isn't driving computer sales doesn't mean it's not sucessful. Vista takes a big peice of a shrinking pie of computer sales. If Vista is taking more of the profits, then computer makers would be pissed off. Why would this be egg on Balmer's face?

Gizmodo is sponsered by Apple.

You will never get a link to verify what their saying is true.

@pacalis,

It's reality check time and it comes without aloe vera:

Fact A. MS cockily says Vista sold 20 million computers on its intro, which is double the XP units sold during its introduction in 2002.

Fact B. MS doesn't say how many of those are actual copies sold to customers and how many are bundled in new PCs.

Fact C. As Ars Technica pointed out, new PC sales in the same period have doubled since 2002, arguing that this clearly accounts for the double rate on Vista sales.

Fact D. However, one could argue that Vista is driving new PC purchases, even if that's extremely far-fetched looking at the PC sales growth curve from 2002.

Fact E. Big computer and component manufacturers say that this is not the case: Vista is not pushing sales, neither meeting expectations or making the industry grow.

Do the math.

@Yoshi and the other one:

Why is reporting on Vista failing to meet expectations at all levels pro-Apple? Should people stop reporting on things because they may damage or benefit someone?

The source link and quotes are clearly identify in the story.

@jesusdiaz

If you've been around this website for any length of time, they are pro Apple. Plus, they are sponsered by Apple.

They make it a point to bash Microsoft 2-3 times a week. If you don't believe us, just look at all the Microsoft posts. Even the positive news has negative spin on it from Gizmodo.

Personally, I think they do it on purpose to get all the MS fanboys worked up BUT if they are going to quote someone, post the actual link of the source. They post links all the time so it should be no big deal.

LOL, yoshi, Jesus wrote the article.

@Yoshi:

Being a writer here, I can assure you that we don't give a damn about Apple or Microsoft or whatever other manufacturer out there. We hate and love them all the same.

Except Sony and Nintendo.

We love them so much we put them in our pants.

Some of us, anyway.

OK, just Jason.

That said, I am the writer of the post and there's no possible spin for it: simply, it's BAD news for Microsoft and the industry. Quite serious, if you ask me, because it could mean a setback for many companies, which were banking on the projected growth of Vista to drive their results for 2007.

Now, that's not going to happen.

Finally, and once again, the link for the quotes is in the post. Click, read the article (which is good info in a reputable newspaper) and check it out.

Thanks for reading.

suckers!

I just bought my daughter an iPod Nano. Shhhh, I'm not any pro-apple. PC all the way! Shhhh.

I am not a big fan of Vista. But what has Acer innovated recently that warrants an increase in sales? Is there a single good looking laptop (right out of the box) in the entire Windows side compared to the Macbooks?

Vista seems really nice. I run Vista Ultimate on my Mac Pro, which I obtained from my company's MSDN account - Sorry Balmer :) I've yet to have to reboot it because it has caused a problem or has locked up. It runs really smooth with all of the bells and whistles. I've run into some issues installing some software which version I had was for XP. Perhaps the problem that's facing Vista is backwards compatibility.

I think Vista will suffer the same growing pains that XP Pro suffered with Windows 2000. It will take time for people to accept it as XP's replacement. Some other people out there will never change though. Believe it or not, there are people still running Windows 98, or even Win95. Some people just don't give a F. All they care about is that they'll be able to access their My Space account or that MS Word 95 doesn't crash.

Whenever they see Vista they see having to learn a new OS that may not run well on their outdated machine. Then they hear that it won't necessarily run their library of outdated software either. Not to enticing. This, I believe, is the same reason why a lot of people have stuck to iPods for so long. Why switch products when I have already invested so much time and money on songs from iTunes? Well, I don't know about the money part but damn, my iTunes library is so well organized, why fuck with it just so I can try out someone elses MP3 player. You get my point?

For those people who went long on MS stock the last cojuple of years hoping to ride a Vista-induced upswing, I think it's time to get out of those positions.

Oh, that includes me. Bwaaah.

Ha, Ha, Ha... He fell for it. Now they know how it feels.

Sorry Jesus but I had to do it. HA, HA, HA!!!

On a personal note, I need a new desktop (the old one is dying fast), but I will not get one with Vista on it. I want my tried and true apps to work. That elimates going locally to a box chain store to get a new machine...and this is my third Dell in a row that has caused me major problems.

Back in the DOS days, when MS-DOS 6 came out, people still ordered 5 for months after, when 6.22 came out, they still order 5, and some went to 6, Windows 3 and 3.11 got sold on 5 & 6, and when Windows 95 came out, people wanted WFW 3.11 for months, and then started running the Progman.exe as the shell because they hated the new looks in 95.

Same story on NT 3.51 to NT 4, and from Windows 2000 to XP.

This is no different, people just don't like change.

You can argue all you like about how Vista is all eye candy and nothing else, but anyone that says that has obviously not used Vista properly.

If you say you have, then you don't understand what you are looking at. If you say you do, then you're mistaken.

The only advantage other than familiarity that XP now has is the driver support. But surely it's not Microsoft's responsibility to provide these, so blame your hardware vendor, not my buddy Bill.

Yours sincerely,

Bill's biatch

@tundraboy

I find it hard to believe that you didn't sell your Microsoft shares when they hit $31.50 back in Janaury?

I did. =0}

No kidding. I rushed out to buy the Dell XPS M1210 loaded with XP so I wouldn't have to buy it with Vista. I saved a couple of hundred bucks to boot.

@olegna

If you ever decided to upgrade to Vista, www.NewEgg.com sells the Vista Ultimate OEM version for $199.

I bought it and installed it on my 2 1/2 year old Dell Precision laptop. As Tony the Tiger would say, It's GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT!!

AlanJC,

Damn man! You reminded me of what I went through trying to adapt to the changes Windows 95 brought in from the old Windows 3.1 or 3.11. I used to think that Explorer would never replace File Manager. I used to hate Explorer too.

Other than people just being trolls or MS bashers, I really don't see what their beef is. Like I said above, my Vista experience so far has been rock solid. It runs MS FSX, Wings over Vietnam/Europe, LOMAC, GT2, plus some other games really well. Some of the problems that I have encountered so far have been syncing up my WM6 phone (Cingular 8525) since I ran into some issues syncing it in Vista, and also that I have to run my Saitek X52 Pro joystick programming software in XP because it won't work in Vista. This is why my Parallels install uses XP Pro. But otherwise, I actually like Vista and don't see what the big deal is. Well, other than the $300.00 price for Ultimate, yeah, that's kind of a big one I guess. But I can't complain since my Vista Ultimate was free.

I still wonder how much better Vista would be without all the DRM crap in it? Would we get back the 10% performance we lost? Or is that 10% more a casualty of bloatware than the DRM schemes?

@aperguero

Personally, I think it's the media spin. People bashing Vista are the ones that don't own or use it. My experience with Vista has been rock solid too. You hear people complain that certain software doesn't run on Vista but those of us that run it know that Vista has backward compatibility support (Compatibility Wizard).

Keep in mind, this is coming from someone that owns a new 24" iMac, 12" iBook, and Mac Mini.

In some respects, Mac OS X doesn't even compare to Vista.

As much as I hate apple's products and the whole fashion before function approach they take, and as much as Microsoft (and its products) has kept me gainfully employed for many years, I have to say that;

I really do dislike vista.

And if for no other reason that the damn dialog boxes asking me if I really want to do something, or if I think it's really a good idea to run an application I WROTE!, or I don't have permissions (I installed the bloody OS.. how do I know have permissions?), etc... you've heard them all before.

Now it does have some nice points, but generally, I much prefer XP.

I am on both an iMac 24" and 15" MBP and both loaded with Vista oem's, yeah I suckered up and bought two copies. However, never got around to XP and as such little experience with it. I just don't see what all the negative fuss is over Vista is? I personally have the best of two worlds and can op for either OS's at any given time.

I'm a software engineer (at a primarily Mac shop) and I've been using the Vista betas for almost a year and the release version for a couple months.

I don't know why people are so down on it: so far the release version has been stable and visually lush. Whenever I have to use XP it's like moving from OSX back to System 9. While may not be the upgrade we were looking for (what happened to WinFS?) it's hardly the disaster Mac & Linux geeks keep touting. Remember that MS values backward compatibility over innovation.

@diverguy

Sounds like developer problem.

You need to consult MSDN to set your permissions correctly. Let me know if you need the link. Are you programming in .NET?

Here is the link anyway.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b...

Vista certainly looks the part, though the Aero function is complete shit if you ask me, and inferior to expose. This aside, the rest of the experience is pretty much windows-esque execution in a much more attractive wrapper, which is fine by me. My problem is the price of the retail software. yeesh. I may one day get a very small tablet which will have Vista preloaded, that is unless Apple comes up with one of their own (no Modbooks, no keyboard)

I never expected Vista to be a big hit, but rather something that simply phased its predecessor out through OEM over a long span of time. Eventually Vista will be the common OS.

It's actually not bad if you're familiar with it, but it's just that there are lots more people with low-budget boxes that can't handle it, and don't want to invest in all new systems at the moment so of course adoption will be slow. No matter, it's not like Microsoft is in trouble or anything.

The Vista experience is pretty much XP with a glassy wrapping all over everything with some snazzy little animation here and there. I don't know why people were psyched about Aero. It, quite simply, sucks. Period. It's mostly for show, but doesn't really speed up finding my windows. Expose is far simpler, though not as pretty. Everything else seems to be a nice step up from XP, especially the search function. The gadgets aren't my cup o' tea, but that's easily rectified.

Being a recent switcher from windows 95-XP, I won't get lost in Vista. But after using OS X for a while, I'm going to have to choose the latter instead.

I have noticed that in the last few months, all the "security patches" for XP PRO have caused system instabilities in systems that have previously run for years with no problems. Cleaning and rebuilding from scratch has not helped.

Could this be an effort by MS to give people a reason to move away from XP and to the latest and greatest?

Hey Yoshi (or any other Mac user out there),

Have you updated Boot Camp on your Mac? I used to hate having to keep changing the clock every time I booted into Vista with Boot Camp. The new version has fixed that. My Vista install rocks in my Mac Pro.

The permissions thing is there for safety, just like in Mac OS X. Except that it's more bitchy in Vista. But that could be turned off in the Control Panel. This was the first thing I did.

Now, one thing I wish OS X did better is Finder. Honestly, as much as I'm loving my OS X experience, I just can't place Finder in the same league as Explorer.

Also, did you all know that Vista has a built in utility that allows you to grab a portion of a screen into the memory buffer? I used to have to use Alt-Print Screen for this and then paste the image to Paint or something and then edit the image. Now all I have to do is right click and select the option to select what part of the screen I want to capture. This puts Snagg It out of business :) Does OS X offer this?

Also, can someone tell me an easy way for me to resize a picture in OS X without having to open iPhoto or Aperture, etc? With Windows, just right click and select resize.

Small stuff like this is what I'm really hoping Leopard will bring. I better stop now because I'm starting to compare Vista and OS X when all I really wanted to do is tell people that Vista is a lot better then it's being made out to be.

What I don't understand is why people thought a new OS would drive sales in the first place?

It's only the small, early adopter crowd that buys new hardware strictly for an OS. The majority of consumer segment wait until they need a computer then use whatever OS it comes pre-installed with.

If the hardware makers want to blame anyone for slow sales they should look at themselves. Mediocre hardware design, lukewarm support, not too much innovation. I'm suprised that a majority of desktop machines are still fugly boxes that everyone trys to find a reason to hide. Except for a few exceptions computer makers still haven't gotten that we are over the "Wow, it's a calculating wonder!" and now want some fashion to go with our function.

The article should note (as people commenting have noted) that there should be a distinction made between Vista not selling because it isn't a good O.S. and Vista not selling for other reasons, namely "upgrade anxiety." This makes a material difference to the message of the article because it doesn't negate profitability (for PC makers or for MS) it just delays it.

On a personal note, I held off for a couple of months before installing VistaA. I had the upgrade CD, just never installed it....Damn you Nvidia! The day I finally got driver support, I installed Vista and haven't looked back since. I'm still starting to explore its features, but so far it's been somewhat remarkable. To my surprise, it runs faster than XP. (I kept my computer fairly clean, so bloat in my XP installation should've been minimal.)

I agree with yoshi, in that I think that people bashing Vista simply haven't really sat down and given it any serious use.

=|

@apeguero

To answer your screen capture question, yes Mac OSX has that feature. You have two options. You can capture a full screen shot (if you have dual monitors it will put 2 png files of each screen for you on your desktop) or you can do a select area screen shot. Its actually a great feature as I use it all the time in the design field i work in to send previews to clients.

Key Commands are as follows:

Apple + Shift + 3 (number 3 key) = Full screen capture

Apple + Shift + 4 (drag the mouse over the area you want after hitting this) = Selected area capture.

Hope this helped you :)

@apeguero

I have not tried boot camp but I am tempted to with the new version that was just released. I've read that if you have bootcamp installed, it will upgrade without affecting the current install.

I am trying to get my wife used to OS X before putting Windows on her iMac. I really want to install it because if it works well, my next PC maybe an iMac. I am hoping they release a black one cause you know what they say....

how does Apple's bluetooth keyboard and mouse work in Vista? I used to run in XP with a program called Apple mouse so I could simulate a 2 button mouse.

I'm guessing that the new drivers you burn to install after setting up Windows should have this utility also, just like the newer versions of bootcamp support the iSight and so forth.