Hold Off on that New PC?

Windows 7 in 2009

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,14415 ... ticle.html

Says alot about Vista.

Probably most of that is the things that got cut out of Vista... In any event I don't see 3 OS releases over a three year period excessive. On side note XP will be avaiable until 2010, http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/feat ... xpeos.mspx

Having said that I still use XP but will switch to Vista once I get new 64 bit system. What a lot of consumers don't realize is for what they need to do XP or even Win98SE is more than sufficient for their needs. For your average consumer the only thing Vista adds is the need for a faster computer. These resources would be better spent actually performing tasks using a less resource intensive OS like XP.

Microsoft has created a slimmer windows core called "MinWin". It's 25 MB on a disk.
Here is a tech. video. MinWin is discussed 47 minutes in.:
http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference/2007 ... -Traut.wmv

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=842

You don't have to hold off on the new PC, if you need one. When I was window-shopping Dell the other day, I noticed they were still shipping PCs with Windows XP. So it is quite possible to avoid Vista.

Yes, Dell online business also has XP machines.
HP is dumping "debranded" PC's to internet stores w/o an OS. Only a 90 day warranty though.

Microsoft will end OEM and retail sales of Windows XP on June 30, 2008

Save Windows XP! The clock is ticking:

http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/arc ... ws_xp.html

huh? I thought they were continuing OEM sales through 2010 or something. Oh man, I'm so confused. Balmer has to get a grip on that company and get it doing something right for a change.

For your average consumer the only thing Vista adds is the need for a faster computer.

Right, and the question becomes, how fast do you need? The average computer user that uses it for internet and word processing needs very little, 1ghz and 1gb ram would do just fine and I doubt anyone except hardcore gamers would notice any difference over that.

e.alleg wrote:The average computer user that uses it for internet and word processing needs very little, 1ghz and 1gb ram would do just fine and I doubt anyone except hardcore gamers would notice any difference over that.

I'd actually suggest much less, more like a p2 running around 300ghz with 128 or 256 of ram with win98se as a OS. You'd might want to bump that up if they were image hobbyist but that is about the only thing that actually requires any amount of power that your average consumer is gong to do on a computer. Other than that, gaming and video encoding and video decoding is the only other two that some consumers would be interested in. You can never have enough resources for encoding video and HD video decoding for viewing is going to do number on any under powered processor.

Hardcore gamer on the other hand would definitely notice 1ghz, you can't run Doom3 with 1ghz and that was released something like 2 years ago. Slowest machine i saw it running on was my brothers AMD2200 but he had pretty good graphics card but it barely ran on the lowest settings.

Vista really goes into the "what were they thinking?" bin.

What new *business-related* features do you get for 'upgrading'? None, but it is slower and no hardware really exists in the 'standard business desktop' cost range that is powerful enough to run it. And, it's works differently, so you have greater support issues/costs.

Sounds very appealling, no? Any wonder why only 6% of the enterprise market has adopted it? We're holding out for 7.

PS - they raised the price $50 on XP in January (and we're gladly paying it).

The same conversation comes up every time they release an OS, the only really failure that they released was Windows ME. If you're smart like me you give it few years when they have all the bugs worked out then upgrade. Vista doesn't offer me anything at the moment but my next machine will be 64 bit so....

The latest video cards require XP so maybe they designed it for gamers. It makes sense when you look at the game console market, billions are being spent by these kids that have way more cash than me.

Directx10 requires Vista, not really a choice for the card manufacturer's.

Richard S. wrote:The same conversation comes up every time they release an OS, the only really failure that they released was Windows ME. If you're smart like me you give it few years when they have all the bugs worked out then upgrade. Vista doesn't offer me anything at the moment but my next machine will be 64 bit so....

I guess we have to put VIsta in context. The only significant features it has are for gamers. Gaming is branching off from "business" machines (MS Office/Dreamweaver apps); I'm only concerned with supporting 600 users and Vista has 5 speeds in reverse for us. None of our peers or betters in business have accepted it for very sound reasons; the press alledges because it wasn't SP1, but 'business' has not picked it up since that release, either. There is no advantage to it for us and the cost to support it, "just to do it" is significant.

- Charlie