Hmm. Sempron 2600, 256 Mb Ram, 30 Gb HDD – that’s what I had in November, 2004, and the same I saw in offices in 2006 and 2007.

* Streamlined and improved start menu including Windows Search
…
* Better performance management for laptops

Four words:
I don’t need all this.

And if you talk about MS apps and “centers” – you can add fifth word, crap.

The only good app from MS, on my opinion, is Excel.

All other MS Apps can (and often must) be replaced by third-parties, often far better.

Overbloated with unneded things Vista is first MS OS that make people think about Linux seriously. Some of my friends bought notebooks with Vista (and some more intentionally bought notebooks without it). No one Vista survived. I even learned new word – “vistacide”, means killing Vista. People downgraded to XP, or switched to Ubuntu.

>I assure you, that when you try your to load all those application into XP it will work terribly slow. I checked it

But you don’t have to load all of them for XP… While you do get all of them with Vista – which greatly contributes to perfomance issues.

Nonetheless, I take your note to heart, and as Ive said, if I ever get a laptop or secondary machine, Il give it another go. I play around with it on VMware now mostly, since I can’t mess with my PC during my studies!

Windows Search – Locate.
Windows Explorer – Total Commander.
Media Player – Take your pick, a bunch of good ones around. KMP, VLC, MPC, Foobar and the list goes on.
I could continue with the rest, but I’ll leave it at that. To me it’s all fluff that I don’t use anyway.

From my point-of-view I havnt seen any good reasons to run vista. I make electronic music and all the fluff is just in the way and gives me less memory to move around with. Running xp on a “vista certified” box is like lightning compared*. But sure, I can see how people would like it on a regular desktop computer which they use to check their email, surf a little aso. I would pop in ubuntu or something similar then, but that might just be me :)
So until I need vista because of some software compability issue (which will happen sooner or later), or I get convinced by something else, I’ll most likely stay on xp.

*It was a year or so since I tried vista tho, so things have probably improved a little since then.

I’ll believe this when first question user ask about their new notebook is “can I have XP on this?”. Really, we have boom of IT-troubleshooting services around here and “replacing Vista with XP on notebooks” is one of the most advertised ones.

One of the most wrong things with Vista that it only works good on good hardware. You can argue that this was case with XP but XP had huge tasty parts like networking that made upgrade worth it. Vista has no new features of such level.

>There are plenty of third party tests which have grudgingly shown Vista to be equal or superior to XP on identical hardware.

Sure, I can beleive this if you take new PC with 4Gb of RAM. Take few years old one and suddenly Vista sucks comparing to XP. Even better – try Vista on netbooks like Eee PC and than say it is equal to XP in performance. :)

>I rarely ever have whole system crashes like I did with XP.

XP in current state (SP3) is extremely stable. Vista may be sufficiently stable after SP1 but it is not an advantage over XP.

>I understand upgrading to Vista may not seem worth it, but if you are purchasing a new computer what possible reason could you have for not simply getting the vastly superior OS?

I may consider it for new PC, but as I mentioned – much more interested in upgrade process (both personal and work-related). “Vastly superior” is very arguable. :)

>I also think this shows a little lack of foresight as Vista provided the necessary architectural changes to create far greater Windows versions in the future.

Anything wrong with napping till “far greater” and not wasting money on Vista (and hardware) when it is not really needed upgrade? :)

Features feedback is strictly from my personal preferences.

>Streamlined and improved start menu including Windows Search
>Integrated search in Windows Explorer
>Windows Media Player 11 and Windows Media Center
>New and improved applications including:

Don’t care, I don’t use most of them in XP either. I don’t want bundled crap, I want features that only OS can offer (again – think networking revamp in XP. THAT was OS feature).

>Windows Aero of course, and some improved customizations options
Cute eye candy. And very screwed story with pushing clearly underpowered hardware as Aero capable (Microsoft/Intel scandal).

>Security improvements:
Make a poll “Do you trust Windows to handle all of your security-related tasks?” :)

>Improved Control Panel navigation
Replaced clear XP system with something hyperlink styled. Don’t like it. Setting should be structured, not searched.

>Administration and troubleshooting Tools
XP has like more of this most users ever use.

>System maintenance tools
Decent but again – these are bundles, hardly features.

>Improved audio, now individual programs can be adjusted, for example low volume system sounds and high volume media player

Very nice. Not a problem to add same to XP thou.

>ReadyBoost
Total finance-inefficient crap. Buying RAM instead does much more good.

>Improved sharing capabilities
>Improved wireless connection
Hadn’t tried them, have nothing to say.

>Better performance management for laptops
It’s a joke, right? :)

>Thanks to Rarst himself I discovered Unlocker
yw :) Thanks for links, they are huge help for newbie blogger like me.

You may find those via torrent search engines.

I just feel I need to make one thing clear – my comments are mostly about Vista as replacement for XP (on existing hardware or with upgrade that must be taken into account than). It is very important issue as XP is still heavily dominating OS and Vista is supposed to replace it.

I don’t really care about new computers with Vista – it’s times less important issue for those.

PS Martin could you please make quotes more clear? I can filter what I said myself but it going to look like mess for the rest. :)

Im sticking to XP on my 3800X2 pc with 1GB of ram, mainly because I’d need at least 2GB in vista to run at comparable speeds in vista.

So, in that sense, why should I?
it might be a simple input, and if I get a new system I will give vista another try, but until then Im happy with XP. I like fast performance, and don’t care so much about looks. XP Classic user :P