i have been following the development of windows vista for a few years now. one of the better sites has been paul thurrotts, Winsupersite. Now vista certainly looks very nice and pretty but apart from the fact it will have dx10 for games what is the point?. now for my own point. computers have come along way from the humble days of the original ibm pc, so as operating systems. I remember me moaning about the system requirements of windows 95 when that launched over 10 years ago, but as for vista?? it is just riddiculus! it will take up all the system resourses just to run the damn thing. what happened to operating systems that take up a few 100k of ram when loaded? vista recommends 1 gig? that is stupid really stupid!! now apart from explorer.exe (the shell) what else is munching all the pc's horse power, i bet i could get a 5 yr old pc install win 98, d/l and run a skinning//shell repalcement program and a sidebar program to get the look and feel of vista. all i would need is for microsoft to release dx 10 for win 9x and u got a faster more responsive and less resource hungry operating system for todays pc. as for corporate user's y switch from win200 or win xp? so summing up my original point on Whats the Point???

Money money money.
Oh Vista will be more secure and user friendly and blah blah blah.
BULLSH!T.
It will be bug ridden, hardware incompatible, and security problems just like xp was when it was first launched.
I have no need or want to goto vista at least for a year after its release, if it ever does get released.
XP is running just fine for me.

microsoft has to keep releasing products otherwise they wouldnt be a very a good business. im glad they actually waited this long -- xp in 2001, vista in 2007. not like windows 95, then 98, then 98 SE, then ME, then XP a year later. so yeah it sucks but what doesnt

Well damnit, Jim!

Let's get pissed at Apple... I mean what was the point of OSX? Even further... what the hell is the point of Jaguar, Panther, and whatever other names they came up with for it?

What's the point of a new Linux kernel?? I'm pissed off at those guys too! How dare they even consider updating an OS!

Like it or not, software vendors have to continue releasing new products. If they wrote one single piece of software and stuck with it... where would they generate income? Would you rather pay a rental fee to use your OS?

As for system requirements... most computers I work on nowadays are coming with at least 512MB of RAM... and I'm seeing more and more with 1GB. I have 1GB in my home machine and plan on upgrading to 2GB when I can. Fast hardware has allowed programmers to get a bit sloppy with their code... so the more high-end computers, the sloppier they can get and still get away with it.

Good luck with that. There is such a beast for XP, but you're highly unlikely to find anything for 98. I'm pretty sure that you can also forget DX10 ever being released on 9x. A lot of new software is coming with compatibility for 2000/XP only. If you've got a 5 year-old computer, it's probably time to consider upgrading anyway... unless that computer does everything you want / need.

The point is better security, more money, and DX10. IE7 will not be integrated into the shell, and will provide better security. XP is 5 years old now. Microsoft needs to make a new cash cow. DirectX10 will introduce Geometry Shaders, and Unified Shader Architecture, as well as Shader Model 4.0. 3 big improvments you will be able to get OEM for like, 150 or 200.

I'm going out on a limb here and assuming no one is holding a gun to your head to buy Vista. In fact, I doubt anyone forced you to go to XP, or 98, etc. If you'd still rather be using Windows 3.1, or DOS, knock yourself out, we're not stopping you. Why do new cars come out every year, with only major changes coming perhaps every 3-5 years? What's the point?

People who think only Vista will have DX10 don't have a clue how the history of DirectX works. Just another false hype.

Oh I didn't say ONLY Vista would have it... I just said good luck getting it on 9x.



Don't put words in my mouth.



DX10 will most likely be on 2000/XP/Vista... but I really don't see them releasing it on 9x.

One question are you using it now to make these assumptions ?

Lets not forget that not only MS is going to be making money by releasing a new OS, but hardware vendors as well, M$ leads and everyone will follow, your welcomed to stay behind. Everyone can bitch n moan all they want about how Vista is useless n pointless... im sure eveveryone will feel sorry 4 u.

"U don' like? U don' buy!'"

I dont understand what anyone is complaining about, right now the operating system actually works good, and we are 6 months away from release to have the stability and performance that we have now considering that there is hardly any driver support and or 3rd party support is actually pretty good. The only real problems ive run into gaming is punk buster problems because it is a horrible excuse for an anti cheat program and I would hope that no game developer uses it again. I gives me an error insufficient o/s requirements, yes thats it punkbuster im using dx exploits with my new operating system to cheat through walls you caught me. How ever yes vista doesnt run as good as windows xp, but isnt that expected in the first place ? windows xp never ran as good as its predecessor until the hardware caught up, and if you dont remeber windows xp was quite buggy upon release. Operating systems arent the only thing driving ever evolving hardware, games, higher bandwidth needs, internet communications skyrocketing, everything has a playing factor in evolving computer performance, and we shouldnt complain about computational performance ever evolving and not sitting where we are now, how ever ms is not the only one which drives the need for faster hardware.

I'm just playing around with the speech recognition right now. So far I really like Vista, it's a lot less buggy than I thought it would be. I'm dictating this whole post using the speech recognition.

The only thing that I have not been able to get to work is my Logitech webcam; but that's Logitech's fault. They haven't even released drivers for Windows XP 64 bit. Apparently if I used Vista 32 bit, the cam would work, but I want to use 64 bit. I had a hard time installing my Audigy 2 sound card as well, but again that's due to third party drivers more than anything else. Hardware vendors have to get on the ball and start making 64 bit drivers.

Exactly. I'll only upgrade to Vista once I'm convinced that the drivers are stable (or even exist). And then I'll also go and get a DX10 GFX card. And no doubt lose a kidney to pay for all this.

Wow, installed it this weekend and boy, am I disgusted. Everything that is bad about MAC OS is there. Why do very smart people think that OS stands for "Obfuscation System".

The XP user interface is like a commercial kitchen. You need a particular pot, look up, they're all hanging there, and you grab the one you need. You need a utensil, turn around, and again, they are hanging on the wall.

Vista is like a show kitchen in a rich person's mansion that nobody will ever really cook in. Everything is hidden out of site. Don't use something for a few days and you are sure to forget where it is. Sure it looks great, but try to get a serious job done.

What we really need is a new version of XP where things are fixed "under-the-hood" and nothing about the user interface is changed. Sure some things in it are weird but there is no reason to force a complete reset.

Actually, the killer app in Vista would be to allow us to boot existing XP partitions in a virtual machine window.

I find the interface very similar to XP's... other than the eye-candy. The only thing that was really different to me was the Start Menu.

Of course, you can set it up to look like XP... so that's not really an issue. I'm not sure what you mean by "hidden" compared to XP. Everything is there... though perhaps in a slightly different location than before. But, I've come to expect that with new OSes.

I actually like it.

So many different querks added on I can actually play with the OS itself for hours before worrying about drivers.

To be honest if anyone is complaining about bugs from the OS at the moment it is still beta but so far i havent come across any problems with the OS itself.

But I won't get it when its released, not for at least a year. It doesn't have enough new features for me to want to spend the money.

The main things i really like are IE7 and Windows Media 11... and both of those are seporate downloads anyway and work great on XP

I have tested Vista (32 & 64) and simply think that Microsoft is becoming 'dust in the wind' - all this about a super file system- smoke & mirrors thus far. Direct X - hmm still like openGL myself. I am a developer not a gamer, thus I dont get very excited about SLI or crossfire. I do like the tabbed browsing in IE 7 - but c'mon they haven't shown me anything 'original' or ultra cool. Talk of requiring hardware standards- just makes me think that the OS is buggy and ineffiecent. Seems to create a lot of unneccesarry overhead- and I ask for WHAT? But time will tell. I think debian cored linux is the way to go, as it detects my hardware on all my laptops and the PPC edition works on my ol imac too! I wont name distros, as this is a vista debate....
I will say the 64 bit edition of XP pro reminds me of when 2000 first came out - "drivers please!"

My 2 cents - brite and shiny (ok I will quit rubbing them)

Last Chance (EbuyC)

I have tested Vista (32 & 64) and simply think that Microsoft is becoming 'dust in the wind' - all this about a super file system- smoke & mirrors thus far. Direct X - hmm still like openGL myself. I am a developer not a gamer, thus I dont get very excited about SLI or crossfire. I do like the tabbed browsing in IE 7 - but c'mon they haven't shown me anything 'original' or ultra cool. Talk of requiring hardware standards- just makes me think that the OS is buggy and ineffiecent. Seems to create a lot of unneccesarry overhead- and I ask for WHAT? But time will tell. I think debian cored linux is the way to go, as it detects my hardware on all my laptops and the PPC edition works on my ol imac too! I wont name distros, as this is a vista debate....
I will say the 64 bit edition of XP pro reminds me of when 2000 first came out - "drivers please!"

My 2 cents - brite and shiny (ok I will quit rubbing them)

Last Chance (EbuyC)

Microsoft has also said "No DirectX 10 for any OS other than Vista".



But, I suppose we'll see. Apparently DirectX 10 just wouldn't work on any other platform.