I run Kubuntu with Crossover and it runs MS Office just fine; it also ran WoW.  My home Kubuntu server networks just fine with the XP PCs I have at home and my work Kubuntu workstation plays just fine with the Windows crap at work.

I love the annoyances of XP that are fixed in Vista, the little things. But anyone that likes Vista must not be doing a lot of Network type work on it. I had friends come over for a LAN party and we couldn’t share files on the network. I had them all set the Workgroup to the same thing (shouldn’t matter) we all turned on all file sharing stuff, and opened everything we could. But for some reason only 2 of us could access the file server at the same time. And it seemed to be a round robin as to which two got access. Sharing between computers was damn near impossible.

My friends and I all like to think we are fairly proficient when it comes to OSs, computers, and networking. But Vista made us all feel really stupid, really quick.

I wonder how much market share Apple needs before regulators start bringing anti-trust proceedings against them. 

I wouldn’t mind a computer running OSX, but I like to play games now and then (more market share will mean more compatibility) and don’t want to pay a $500 premium over an identical PC to get Apple’s hardware.

Of course you don’t run into many UAC problems if you run as admin

I have to admit it’s a good move to some extent, as it actually makes people aware what risks they expose themselves to when running stuff from trusted and untrusted sources as admin day in and day out.

Anyway, I’m using Vista at work, XP at home. And I decided to go with XP when I changed my hardware at home to a basically completely new computer, and haven’t regretted it a day. There’s simply nothing Vista offers that XP doesn’t do better and with less hassle, with the exception of DX10 that doesn’t have any industry penetration in the first place anyway. Really, it’s gonna take a lot of convincing until I switch to Vista, if ever – I dare say it’s very possible that at home, I’ll skip it altogether.

Oh, and UAC isn’t really that big of an issue – for me, anyways. But then, I run as admin, (because some programs I use require it) so maybe my experience is different than normal.

Running as admin is about the only way I can tolerate that POS.  However, we cannot actually do that with our testing, and apparently when you create an administrator account in Vista, it’s not actually a full admin. Thanks Microsoft!

What a deceptive “study”.

They give some people a supervised tour of Vista, almost certainly running the apps they want people to run, and declare that “Vista is awesome”.

I use Vista every day, and I only have three good things to say about the user interface: I like the widget bar, I like the new “save file as” system (with the shortcuts to navigate to desktop-documents-where_ever, and I like the fact that they did not eliminate the “Win 98 appearance” option like they said they were going to. (I HATE playtoy-looking systems.)

Oh, and UAC isn’t really that big of an issue – for me, anyways. But then, I run as admin, (because some programs I use require it) so maybe my experience is different than normal.

Folger’s coffee tried this same advertising ploy: “Wow, you mean this isn’t your gourmet coffee, it’s really Folger’s crystals instead?!”  But instant coffee, Folger’s included, still sucks.

We have a lot of specialized applications in our build, and in tests Vista broke many of them.  We also found it had difficulties interacting with some parts of our AD network. 

This Fall for the first time we are introducing some Apples in our main lab, dual-booting OS-X/XP.  A grand experiment.  XP runs extremely well on the Apples.

Vista is still a steaming pile of shit compared to Apple’s OS X.

MS already announced they are going to try and copy more of Apple’s OS features.

Sorry, I’ve used it (I know I don’t fit into the target audience), and you will never convince me it’s good. I’ve used it in a software dev environment, but from the user perspective, I cannot see that many of the so called enhancements (Aero anyone?) are anything other than window dressing (pardon the pun). If XP themes had actually been customizable for free, then there would have been no need for some of the user interface changes that Vista brought in (the Vista theme is annoying, the widget bar is asinine and could have been added to XP with little problem, checkboxes on list items is about useless, I have a list as long as both my arms and across my shoulders here).  Anyway, the only thing that is good is the increased security, but that is hardly transparent. UAC is possibly the most annoying part of Vista (anybody remember that Mac vs. PC commercial where the secret service agent restricts the PC from doing everything without answering the damn “Are you sure?” questions? It’s not a lie).  Of course you can disable UAC, but that sort of defeats the purpose doesn’t it?

In any event, I agree that if someone hasn’t used it, they should remain neutral until they have had a chance to experience the craptacular experience that is Windows Vista all for themselves.

The point being, though, that you’ve actually used the OS. It’s one thing to have used it and say it sucks, it’s another to just say it sucks.