I think I’ve just had my millionth RAID failue (Quicktime again). I have never been so disappointed with an OS before. I am seriously considering going back to XP. I hate Vista so much that when I got a new laptop a couple of months ago I got a Mac. I can live with crashes, but things that make me have to reformat my computer and reinstall everything piss me off.
Well, that hasn’t happened to me yet, but sometimes I end up having to restart due to one of Vista’s quirks. At least this thing seems to be somewhat robust. Never had a system crash to date. IE seems to be quirky at times though. Gotta remember to get Firefox here somtime.
I just got Vista on a new computer a week or so ago. No real complaints here, but you won’t catch me using Office 2007. Whatever bright light thought that getting rid of menus ENTIRELY was a good idea in a program that has this many features was out to lunch.
Before you reformat your hard drive for XP, set aside a partition for Ubuntu and try it out. Admittedly XP has it beaten in the games department, but you won’t find a better OS for media playing, internet browsing and general computing.
The great thing about Ubuntu is that, whatever it is you want to do, you just search for a how-to online, copy and paste 3-4 lines into the terminal, and it’s done. You should try it.
I’d prefer an OS that actually works with most of the programs I like using. 8p
Well, have you tried WINE? I don’t know what programs you mean, but Ubuntu may very well work with them.
I’ve heard a lot of good things about Ubantu, and I like Linux, but I just dont really have a need for it. When I got back from Africa I got nice power new computer so that I could play games easily and that is primarily what I use my dektop for. For just regular computer taks, my Mac latop works fine and I can use it anywhere. Ubantu just doesn’t have the game support I’d like.
Yeah, see, why should I bother jumping through four different kinds of hoops to do exactly the same things I’m doing right now without problems?
And that is exactly the problem with using Linux as a desktop environment.
Not to sound like an OS apostle, but the “having to jump through hoops” to do everyday things is why I stopped using XP:
-Firefox was freezing on certain pages.
-I had to mess with my codecs every time I wanted to watch a movie.
-Adobe took 5 minutes to load pdfs from the internet.
-Bittorrent repeatedly stopped working and required me to figure out which ports were being blocked and whether it was XP or my antivirus that was doing it.
-Antivirus programs, whether Norton or McAfee, interfered with all my non-browser internet programs.
-I had to check my computer for unwanted background processes at least once a week, but also leave some that seemed useless because random media players and hardware required them.
-I couldn’t find a good image-editing program for free. Ubuntu has GIMP.
-Microsoft Office costs a lot of money. OpenOffice costs none, and functions the same.
-A firewall was absolutely necessary for security, but half my internet programs needed me to turn it off. And also figure out whether it was XP Firewall or McAfee Firewall that was the problem.
-There was always the “leaking memory” effect that required occasional reboots.
-There was always the “leaking hard drive space” effect that required occasional formatting.
-There was no automated way to resolve dependency issues. I.e., for messages like “Cannot find VBASIC6.DLL” and “Cannot find DX3D9x01.dll,” you had to search for that error online, install whatever program you’re missing (if you ever found out what), and hope that it wasn’t too old to work on your computer.
Basically, all those irritating little things that people accept because they’ve dealt with them in Windows for years, just don’t happen anymore. I certainly understand why Infonick would stick with Windows for games. But as far as general computing goes, I’d say it’s XP that makes you “jump through hoops” to do everyday things.
Well, I guess we just had different experiences. I was using a 2.03 GHz Celeron for the last four years or so:
-Firefox has rarely if ever frozen on pages for me (the only exception is Java-powered pages, and that’s because I have three or four versions of it installed on my computer at work; I never had problems at home).
-Never had to mess with codecs, just installed the Community Codec Pack or whatever it’s called and no problems.
-Never took more than a few seconds to load PDFs.
-Never had any problems with bittorrent or firewalls. Norton Antivirus has a firewall that works just fine for me, letting through everything I need and nothing I don’t.
-I generally shut down my computer once a week regardless of what I’m doing, and I’d do the same in Linux. Even if the OS were perfect, every single application is decidedly not.
-Never had to reformat my hard drive.
-I believe GIMP is available for Windows too, though I may be wrong. In any case, never really had to edit images that badly.
-OpenOffice runs into myriad problems in opening or saving files that were made (or need to be opened) with MS Office. I got my copy of Office 2003 for about a hundred bucks (student edition) and am very very happy with it (before then I was using Office 97, which worked just fine as well).
In short, if you’re taxing your computer to its very limit with all sorts of funky h4x0r stuff, then sure, go for Linux. But don’t recommend it to your average user - even to your average programmer, like me - because it does us no good at all.
Eh, I might as well at least try Ubuntu + Wine, next time I get a computer. I mean … I’ll have another partition for Windows (XP, that is), but I’m gonna give Linux a chance to conquer my soul. 
I’ve actually not heard much good about Vista, and I like my XP. I don’t know why you’re McAfee is bothering you mine seems to do just fine.
I don’t want to get in the OS wars, but I can at least confirm this. I used to have GIMP on my computer (in fact, I think I still do), so it most definitely is available for Windows.
I bought Vista specifically for that reason. I was not disapointed.