(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

What can happen when you become numbed to the security alerts.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

A good story about a man who had terrible problems with a slow Vista computer that became so fast after downgrading to XP that it was more accurate to call it an upgrade.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

Vista apparently runs out of memory when copying over 13,000 files in one go without any warning. While that is a lot of files, this seems to be a fairly large bone-head mistake. First of all, why can't Microsoft figure out that file transfers should be pausable and resumable (same as when downloading from the Internet). Of course, even that was something they had to steal from Mozilla rather than figure out on their own.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

Vista has been a rough release for Windows. I would say that it's probably the first time since Windows 95 that a new system wasn't better than the previous (other than ME, but that didn't last long). Some people think Microsoft's mistakes with Vista are such that they should just abandon it and move on.

Much talk has been given to Service Pack 1 and how this update should address many of the issues users have with Vista, but I simply don't agree. Will SP1 eliminate the ridiculous Microsoft licensing schemes? Will SP1 drop the price on the higher-end versions? Will SP1 eliminate the need for users to buy a new computer just to use the faulty OS?

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

This is an iteresting article about how Vista, with it's poor security, lack of compatibility, high price, and integrated features that users hate (like DRM and security alerts) might make people start to seriously wonder why they're still using Windows.

I don't personally buy the argument that Linux will be the system they run to because I haven't yet seen a version of Linux that could match the user friendliness of Windows (with the possible exception of SUSE). But I'm no Linux expert. We'll have to see.

And on that note, be sure to check out this link for an article comparing Ubuntu Linux VS MS Vista.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

I had to laugh at this. It seems that Microsoft is offering a discount to anyone that downloaded a beta test of Vista. The article suggests it's because no one really wants Vista and why should they?

Annoying. Yup

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

For it's incessant prompts to "allow or continue", it's terrible compatibility with older software, and for Aero not working on most machines even though Microsoft marketing always shows the Aero experience (which so many people don't actually get to see). PC World puts Vista as #8 on the top 20 most annoying tech products of all time.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

It looks like there's a legitimate working hack for Vista that kills their bogus activation scheme. Microsoft is saying that they're not going to do anything about it yet because they don't know if it will become a wide exploit. But I think this commentor (from the source article) has it more correct:

They didn't think it through as a "hacker" (pirate more like it) would, and now they have a problem. Millions of legitimate users are out there with legitimate hardware sold with Vista. MS can't simply pull the carpet out from under these users. They will need to devise a way that all users can continue using their systems without having to do something drastic like reinstall or update the BIOS because many users simply don't know how to. Even locating the product key on the sticker would be difficult for some.

MS can't simply pull the OEM keys and try again.

But on MS's side, the number of users using this method is very low. And MS have said they'd prefer we pirate Windows than use MacOS or Linux.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

So companies don't want Vista? Well, we can fix that…. (hand rubbing and evil snicker).

Microsoft will stop allowing companies to install OEM versions of XP by the end of the year.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

Good news: Here's an article on how to use Vista's compatibility mode to run older software.

Bad news: According to all the comments on the article, it doesn't work at all (which matches my experience with the XP compatibility mode).