[3GScottishUser]

Its been my OS for 6 years and I have struggled about changing to Vista.

I have done it now though.... thanks to the purchace of a new laptop with it pre-installed.

I get Vista and all new MS software free from work and have now fought and upgraded my desktop. It needed a new clean installation and I have lost my bluetooth dongle, my TV card, a webcam and my scanner. To make matters more interesting my 17" LCD Monitor packed in and its been replaced by a 19" Widescreen DVI model. Happily the old one is still under warranty so I will sell the repaiered/replacement to offset the cost of the new one.

So after a couple of frustrating weeks of installation/reinstallation, driver searching and compatibility stuff, was it worth it?

YES

It's a big upgrade, but Vista is worth it. It's more user friendly and intuitive and has some great features that makes lots of 3rd party software redundant. The look and feel is excellent and most stuff works right out of the box although many peripherial manufacturers have been slow to support it.

It's amazing what £399 buys now in terms of a laptop, makes a SIM free N95 look highway robbery!

If you are thinking about Vista ..... go for it... and while you are at it add Office 2007. Together on a decent spec PC they move the whole computing experience forward.

N Joy

[Ben]

We've all switched to OS X. (http://www.apple.com/uk/getamac/) Haven't we managed to impart any wisdom onto you at all this last few years? ;)

Good stuff on the new laptop. There are certainly some excellent PC laptop deals out there, and I'm sure Vista will serve you well - Microsoft didn't take 7 years over the successor of XP to bring nothing new to the table whatsoever.

I only wish more of the very promising features of the original codename Longhorn OS had made it into Vista. However, with XP being such a successful operating system it perhaps seemed a little far fetched that they wouldn't incrementally update it, a la 95-98-ME, before throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

[miffed]

LOL , I was having a bit of a laugh with a guy in PC world the other day about which of the tables and chairs were "Vista compatible" , (well , I was laughing , he just looked nervous )

It (vista) didn't do much for me TBH , I actually prefer using XP , but whether that is just down to familiarity I don't know -

What I like about OSX is that it is so easy to use , and pretty with it - I feel that with Vista , Microsoft have tried hard to match the prettyness of OSX - but in doing so have completely missed the point about ease of use - and in fact made an OS that is HARDER to use than it's predessecor !
I recently , erm , lets say had to make some "adjustments" to some pieces of software ( :o ) ... and all this mucking about with "permissions" and stuff was a real pain in the backside , and it seems that even doing the most mundane of tasks requires 1,000 confirmation clicks

Also, my Macbook sounded like a little hovercraft ! (despite rarely hearing the fans when running OSX)

Sorry to be a wet blanket Bill ! .....anyway , a new toy is a new toy , and I am sure you'll enjoy it regardless :D

[Hands0n]

Just to put this conversation in perspective have a look at this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaIUkwPybtM)

:D :D :D :D

[Hands0n]

Ooooh, here is an excellent guide into How To Load Windows Vista in Two Minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVbf9tOGwno&mode=related&search=

I'm impressed :D :D :D

[solo12002]

lol

What a augh,have to say I agree.

Now I am currently with Tiscali and upgraded to vista,so I looked ay there site to ensure I had the correct drives for a speedtouch 330 modem, downloaded new ones and off I went.

Guest what,yes the speedtouch 330 drives are only suitable for 32 bit not 64 so at this stage Im using alaptop to access the net.

Forsomething that has been years in the making,its a dam shamedrivers were not out to match the OS

[3GScottishUser]

Having used Vista for the last 3 weeks on both my laptop and my desktop... I would'nt go back to XP.

There are some very compelling reasons to use Vista and they become apparent when you get accustomed to it. Like everything else you grow into things and 4 months after launch 40 million customers seem to agree.

Anyone who has Vista should check out www.live.com and the great free stuff available for your Vista sidebar, IE 7 live toolbar and Windows Live Messenger.

So much to play with and so little time.... :)

[getti]

*cough*dashboard*cough*

[Hands0n]

Vista - OS X. Stark similarities in the Man Machine Interface (MMI) - M$ has finally woken up to the notion that the user base do not want to be computer specialists. Apple, in that respect, have been the standard bearer for effective MMI, everything is so straightforward and to hand.

The surprising thing is that they (Apple) have managed to do this on a Unix platform - something that is normally difficult to master for the masses. That is why Linux/Unix have had such a tough time of becoming mainstream on the general public's desktop. However, as the various Linux distros improve their MMI I see a certain convergence on the look and feel of OS X.

But then it would not be the first time that Apple led the pack - it was they, after all, that developed the commercialised WIMP (http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_winter/Topics/dialog-wimp/) interface in the first place. They fought Microsoft and Digital Research (GEM- Graphical Environment for Microcomputers, another early WIMP) to hold on to it, but thankfully lost a Federal antitrust ruling. The rest is history :)

NB: WIMP - Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointing device - more reading at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing)) and a history of Operating Systems here (http://www.csee.wvu.edu/~jdm/classes/cs258/OScat/micros.html) - I don't think they missed one!!!

If you want to read up on that early battle for the GUI there is a very credible [and legalistic] article here (http://law.richmond.edu/jolt/v1i1/myers.html) - it is well worth reading through the legal stuff to see what was at stake and how each party presented its case. Had Apple won we'd be in a very different world today in very many respects, not just GUIs!