Guy Thomas is a computer consultant and writer with attitude and a great sense of humor. Here Guy, who lives in the UK, puts dollar values on the various features of Microsoft's coming Vista operating system to determine if it's worth the company's likely asking prices.

I installed Vista beta a while back...  My personal opinon:
 
New Aero interface that will lag up my computer when I try to alt-tab out of a game, $-25
 
The fact that it takes up twice the RAM as XP, $-30
 
The fact that it takes twice as long to boot, $-10
 
The fact that it takes 3 times as long to shut down $-10
 
The fact that I'm going to have to get a new hard drive to support their prefered method of shutdown/restart $-80
 
Needing to relearn how to do basic things in Windows (benift of the doubt here, I'm assuming it will be better than XP, if not then probably cube the following number.) $-5
 
The fact that I'll probably need to update the majority of my computers components to be able to run Vista well, $-800
 
All the games that I won't be able to play because they are not Vista supported, $-100
 
DirectX 10 support that allows for rendering of graphics like seen in screenshots of Crysis, Priceless.
 
Guess you gotta take the bad with the good, eh?

Most of the points we're calcuating paying for in this article are actually either bug-fixes or stuff that anyone with Linux/Unix or Mac  experience would consider basic operating system functionality that should have already been in windows years ago.
 
I installed the Vista RC1 beta and decided to go back to XP. The aero interface does indeed look good, but is very slow and laggy, which surprised me because I have a PC with a core 2 X6800 extreme, 1GB of fast DDR2 ram and an nVidia 6800 ultra video card that has 256mb of video ram.  
 
Also the whole GUI is terribly designed from a usability perspective. There's all these redundant toolbars, sidebars and miscellaneous other crap that use system resources an generally just get in the way. I thought XP was bad for this but Vista has taken it to a whole new level.
 
The Vista interface is very business-task driven and targetted at non-pc minded people. If you happen to be a non-technical business user thats probably fine, but ofr the rest of us, it sucks.
 
Its not at all friendly or efficient if you're a home user, or someone at least semi-technical that wants to drill down, because the GUI totally hides the system and totally gets in the way of you trying to do what you want.
 
Vista is OK (not good, just OK) if you want to follow microsoft's use-cases and repeatedly do tasks like sign up for microsoft passport, but no real person is like that. If you want to just copy a file between two drives its now a major effort.
 
We haven't gotten to all the issues around Digital Rights either. I could write a whole post about how I couldn't do things with my own legitimately purchased DVDs and MP3s  that I used to be able to under XP.
 
After what I've seen from release candidate 1, Vista is prettier but a significant functional downgrade compared to XP, therefore its value in dollars is a rather large negative number.

I guess I have an issue with the Vista Aero Ultimate cost... seems like I am being gouged. We kind of beat this topic to death in A fiesta with Vista and the Killer Notebooks Wakizachithread, so I probably don't have to regurg all over this thread.
 
I find it funny that essentially MS steals all their ideas from Apple, Google etc, but then slaps a huge pricetag on it. How can OSX cost <$150 and work without the economies of scale MS has?

The only thing about Vista out of all those features that appeal to me is..umm..like 3.  The prettiness, which you all say is too laggy anyway...the Sidebar with Gadgets that will probably come to mimic Apple's Widgets, and the increased security measures.  Can't they just...do all the same thing with XP without trying to make me pay $400 for it?  I'm a big believer in quick response of boot/shutdown times, program reaction time, etc.  If Vista is as laggy as u say, that'll be done for me.  I guess the only way to know is download a copy tonight on my other harddrive and dual boot with it.  No way am I ruining my current XP by upgrading to Vista

 
Um... Apple has stolen more than their fair share of features. For example the GUI came from Xerox Labs...  
 
Apple can afford to sell OS X for whatever price because they ALSO sell the hardware. Essentially they are primarly driven by hardware profits (see desktops, laptops, ipods) and give the software away or at a break even price (see OS, iTunes). MS does not sell PC's so they need to make a profit from the software (see OS, Office) although they do sell some hardware at a loss (see XBox). They are completely different models for doing the same thing.

I started with computers using windows, and still use it. I have used linux and mac and like the overall Idea of not having to "pay" for an os, but I think that even through MS unreliability, it is still pretty and easy to use. that is how they have dominated the field (also the underhanded dirty tricks by locking computer retailers into using only windows) but alas, it has worked. it will continue to work. this latest version RC1 5600.xxxx is nice enough, a little slow, but it has our office build on it and I can't bash it. It is still not a release so with 2 or 4 gb of ram, it should be pretty fast! what he didn't say in the article is how much you will pay when you buy a new computer with windows on it. Will it be the same? no, it will be less. save some money with an oem copy...buy a computer from dell, hp or gateway. the $400. will only amount to $200. That isn't that much is it?  
 
 
I have to say that making money by supporting these machines has been good to me, so I will allow this to go into our company. I am waiting to buy a computer until Vista is out, so slam them all you like but in 2 yrs if you have windows on your computer, you will probably still have windows on your computer. If you don't, it will probably make you mad to know you more than likely paid for a license to use windows if you bought on from a manufacturer.

Well, honestly, I didn't experience lag, but this was a clean install of it, not an upgrade, dual boot etc. The hard drive was clean except for Vista.
 

which can be duplicated with the Yahoo Widget Engine.
 
and as far as security, i don't need more stinking security from my OS. Look at SP2, what did that acomplish? I got a half a$$ed firewall and IE that supposedly helps me in some way, but it blocks all the stuff I actaully want, and the scumbags still use multiple pop ups or pop unders etc. so you might as well just turn it off.

ROFL, you are comparing stealing a GUI from Xerox, who in fact did not come with it:

to what MS WHOLESALE freaking lifts from the MAC OS? That's crazy talk.
 
As far as MS Office, don't even get me started that Sun's Open Office is FREE and can do everything MS Office can.

I completely agree with Niz.
oh, and.....I have three letters for M$: XGL
it's only (very)beta, but still does the job for me!

Here is my breakdown
AERO - $25
Explorer - $15
IE7 - $0
Bitlocker - $0
Secure Startup - $5
Task Dialog - $15
Flip 3D -$5
Sidebar - $0
User Account Control - $0
DirectX 10 - $60
Restart Manager - $5
Networking Components - $20
Sleep - $0
Superfetch - $10
Shadowcopy - $0
Readyboost - $25
Windows Meeting Space - $0
Media Control Center - $0
XImage and Windows Deployment Services - $15
Various other features - $10
 
$210
 
Note this is before I start deducting for inconvenience costs
Inclusion of tons of DRM crap - -$100
Bloated as hell laggy operation - -$100
 
There we go.
 
So I would be willing to pay ...... $10 for Vista.  Which version will that get me?
 
Can I get the version that is JUST DirectX 10 for XP?  I'd pay up to $60 for that ;-)

For new builders who wan't the best graphics  then I guess they don't have a choice but to go with vista and DX10...eventually we will all have to make the switch anyway(minus the linux and OSX useres)
 
I would definitly wait atleast 5 months before I buy vista though, so they can get most of the bugs fixed.

I pretty much have the same sentiment as above.  Why do I need 570 new 'features'?  I can only think of a few programs that I use in XP; remote desktop (for work), ms office (again, for work), visual studio (work)... thats all I can think of.
 
All of the other main programs that I use on a daily basis (EditPlus, uTorrent, Firefox, Winamp, Alcohol 120, CuteFTP, iTunes, PowerDVD, Adaware, Spybot, WavePad, etc) are all free downloads (well, sorta free ).
 
I would be willing to pay $300+ for a new version of Windows if it did the following:
 
1) Got rid of all of the unecessary crap that XP has.
 
2) Took OUT all of the 'added functionality' of windows explorer.  That means no specialized views for viewing folders with different media (I really hate that).
 
3) Make it more stable (not that bad right now, but could be better).
 
4) Make it run faster.  This means get rid of all of the extra services that users don't need.  Even just give users a more user-friendly way of deactivating anything that takes up resourses (along with a description of what each windows process is).
 
5) DX10 (the only reason I will eventually have to get Vista, also the main reason they left it until Vista I bet).
 
Thats it.  To me, it seems that they could have accomplished all of this with much less effort and in less time than it took to make Vista.
 
Actually, I would like it if they could just change $100 for DX10 and let me run it on Linux.  That would be sweet

I dunno, Honestly anyone with some knowledge of the XP Operating System cant say that its unstable, Ive never had a problem with XP, But like some of us have said, DX10 will probably be the main reason most of us will be making the switch anyway, Lots of people will say that they are going to "switch" right away, but guess what, We will still be using Windows XP most of the time for at least 6 months after Vista's release. Or at least until Vista's First Service Pack.
 
Is Vista Worth it? at $249 is too soon to tell. But I think it will be in the long run.How many of us just purchased a WinXP upgrade version for $150 and have installed it at least 50 times through "upgrades" on more than one comp over the years? Plus all the free software we have on our comps that with all honesty shouldnt be "free".  
 
Will we be switching? Eventually.......But its not like we have a choice....Specially gamers.

True enough.  I will probably wait until either my work gets a few copies or somebody I know gets an OEM version and then I will install it on my machine.  That is if M$ lets us install on more than one machine.  Of course, you could always just pull the old 'I just upgraded my hardware and not it says I am not allowed to reinstall'.  If you actually call their tech support and tell them that, they will always let you do it.  I have installed the same copy of XP on probably 6 different machines (I did actually own all of them, but for all M$ knows I didn't).

I agree with waiting for a while, at least untill there is a good DX10 game out that I want. Untill then, XP will be fine for me, I value all the extra fetures at $0 I am getting along fine with XP for school, work, and gaming fine. Why would I want to "upgrade" to vista for 300+ when I dont need it.

Ok, so I read this article and was surprised to find there are some new features that actually sound good. BUT, alot of them are things we already have, they just wrapped a nice GUI and Wizard on them. You could do this with any OS (I really REALLY wish the linux community would hop on this already. People only think MS GUI wizards are good because there is no real competition, linux community should be able to do so much better).
 
Aero is a retarded resource-hungry waste of electrons, but you can turn it off so I won't count that against Vista.
 
The new hybrid flash HDs. Why are they inventing new hardware for their OS?  If you want a flash HD for swap and prefecting just install one and have the OS configure itself to use it. Or if you did make a hybrid to save space just partition off the flash part, no need to reinvent how an OS accesses storage or how a HD presents itself to a system. At the last Computex these HDs were still not ready.  A software company should not be rushing a hardware company to bring new hardware to market.
 
DRM DRM DRM, is not your friend. I might actually consider using legit download services. Itunes really does have an impressive collection and sometimes it really would be worth 99cents to be able to just find what I'm looking for easily and get it quickly... but DRM sucks. It ONLY hurts legitemate users. DRM has never bothered me, because DRMed files get deleted off my HD emmediately. Customers of mine have lost gigs of data to DRM and had compatibility problems with media devices, it's just silly.
 
I will not be down-grading my system performance by installing Vista. I resisted installing XP for a long time but eventually gave in because I had to support it. I no longer do end-user support (thank god) so I am free to familiarize myself with whatever OS I desire. WinXP should do me just fine as a backup until I'm ready to switch over to linux entirely.

 
You're logic is skewed. People don't buy a whole new computer to save money on windows. And yes...$200 is still a lot. Especially when you can get Linux for nothing.
 
>>I have to say that making money by supporting these machines has been good to me, so I will allow this to go into our company. ..
 
You mean that you'd prefer this to go into your company because you already see Vista will need a lot of support work, so keeping you in a job. Although probably true, thats not a very good commendation of Vista fo the rest of us.