I get really tired of apologists who say we shouldn't blame the whole company for the shortcomings of one department of the company.

If I, as a single, lone consumer, approach Microsoft about a problem I am having with a product, I face a huge, monolithic entity who closes ranks around their phone techs and, typically, tries to move blame over to somebody else outside of Microsoft: the developer of the driver, the third party application developer, etc.

Yet now, when it is obvious that there were out and out lies about the capabilities of Vista to run on hardware Microsoft said it could run on, I'm expected to accept an excuse of "Well, YOU know how those SALESMEN are"? No way.

What exactly is the point of this article? It's an obvious case of a *company* stating a product can do something it can't. How is that relevant to determining the performance of the product on its own merits?

Being a Vista user in my work environment and seeing details of the upcoming Service Pack addressing some of the grievances I've had with the OS, I found your "excellent job" comment a bit wanting.

I tend to find the "you're just a shill for Microsoft" comments a bit too convenient in most cases, but your second-to-last paragraph, plus the ill-informed piece you wrote questioning the movement to save XP really has me wondering...

We use Vista Enterprise on our laptops so that we get the BitLocker Encryption and the assurance that data on our laptops is secure. I agree that with relatively cheap (today) hardware, 2GB RAM a decent CPU and an inexpensive (less than $100) graphics card can really make Vista fly - and I have yet to have a crash on two machines at work and three at home.... forget about Vista Basic. Use the Enterprise or Business versions at work and use the Premium versions only if you need the multimedia and entertainment stuff (at work, few people do, but there are some in PR and marketing for our organization).

I am with Tim on this:

I cannot believe that any software developer would think that Vista was ready for primetime. My only hope is that the MS board was lied to by the development team and that this OS was not inflicted on the public on purpose.

I beta tested RC2 of Vista for several months and my feedback to MS was not glowing every post back to them was that the OS was slow and bloated even on brand new technology.

I bought a brand new "Vista Capable" laptop last February. After my RC2 testing I configured laptop with Vista in mind big CPU, dedicated video, extra ram. I loaded Vista Business and took a 50% performance hit(hard drive running constantly, CPUs being used at a constant 25-30%). I gave Vista until SP1 to give back my performance much to my dismay SP1 had little or no effect. The Vista OS is just as bad if not worse than that wonderful OS Windows ME.

Let's keep some perspective, here.
Microsoft has traditionally low-balled system requirements.
Check the system requirements for NT 4.0:
486 processor running @ 100MHz wih 16 Mb of RAM. and 100Mb of disk space.
Of course you can't actually DO anything with that setup, or run any applications and your disk drive light will never turn off due to the virtual memory store being in constant use, but the O/S will be running!
Anyone who doesn't mentally double a Microsoft system requirement is deluding themselves and the manufacturers should have known better. It's not like Microsoft hasn't already been doing this to us, forever!

Sorry Peter, your continual defence of the MS monopoly - and even worse, how they treat the customers under it - has tired me to the point I've unsubscribed.

Regardless of who at Microsoft lowballed the specs they did so as a functioning representative of the company they work for. Microsoft isn't a individual, it's a corporation made up of many people. Collectively they decided to market the product this way and that makes the entire entity responsible.

That being said, how fast is fast enough? For my 70 year old mother running a PIII 1000 MHz its a pretty low target. The machine moves as fast as she does so it's a good match. I'll bet I could stuff Vista on it and she'd still be happy. For me a Q6600 with 8GB RAM still isn't enough some days. It's all relative. If you paid $350 for a new computer do you really expect it to be a speed machine?

Either do you homework or buy from someone who can. Either way, spend a little money or don't upgrade.

I can't believe I'm reading this article! In the eyes of the law a corporation is a person. The fact that a really deceptive marketing campaign was initiated by one part of a company in no way excuses the remainder of the company. Yet, that's what you'd have us believe. Microsoft (the corporation) either lied to potential consumers or authorized others to lie on their behalf. That's generally considered a crime (when the company profits from the deception, which Microsoft appears to have done). I cannot understand how you can, in good faith, put your name to an article that says otherwise. This isn't about the contributions of the developers, who are almost assuredly overworked, dedicated, caring individuals, but about the corporation that employs them and how they chose to deceive their customers. I find your apologies for the possibly criminal actions of Microsoft to be inappropriate. If you want to praise the technology, please feel free to do so. But don't confuse the technology, good or bad, with the corporation, and don't confuse the technology contribution with the legal obligations of the corporation.

We have been told NOT to buy vista as the drivers won't work with some of the hard ware we are proposing to buy. Am just waiting for the Linux version.

Holy cow guys, take a deep breath and unclench your fists for a few seconds. The statements about Vista being crap are about as accurate as saying that the local fire engines are crap because they won't push water through my garden hose fast enough to put out a fire. Of course they won't, you need the proper equipment. Same thing with Vista.

Every operating system has it problems and vulnerabilities, even Apple and Linux OS's. For those that tout Apple, here is an article headline from earlier this week:

"Apple Tuesday issued a record-breaking security update that patched nearly 90 vulnerabilities in both its own code and the third-party applications it bundles with its Tiger and Leopard operating systems"

Related to Linux, I like the progress that has been made but there are still problems there as well. In the interest of looking at options outside of Windows, I've tried several varieties of Linux. I tried Ubuntu, but couldn't get it to work so removed it. I plan to try again soon. I have also played with Suse and Fedora flavors of Linux. My Fedora box (a Dell with enough power to run Windows 2000 Server, which it ran until it was cascaded out of production and I converted it to Linux) has locked up on me, requiring it to be forced down to recover, and has had some other issues requiring re-booting. I have Suse Linux running in Virtual PC on my Vista laptop and haven't done much with it yet. I do plan, however, to build a Linux box and see how much I can do without MS products - more because of their attitude than because of the products (I like their products). I just need to figure out which distro to use. It will be interesting.

In short, all OS's have their problems. For me, the key is that it does what I need, has cool visual features that can be turned on or off as needed, and runs my hardware and software. Then I run it on hardware that can handle it. I currently have Vista on four laptops (one was an upgrade from XP) and all work great.

In keeping with my comment above about checking out Ubuntu again, this past weekend I went to the Ubuntu Forum online to see what kind of experience others were having. There is a list there of issues, each contaning a link to the discussion of that issue. Problems ranged across both hardware and software. Just the list itself was 420 pages long.

Folks in various blogs have pointed me toward a couple other flavors of Linux (neither of which I had ever heard of before) so I'll be checking those out.

Given my experience trying to find a stable, easy-to-use Linux distro, I won't be abandoning my Windows PCs anytime soon.