I remember when I upgraded from Win98 to XP, I sighed with big relief because my old computer was no longer crashing every ten minutes with a blue screen... I was actually afraid to turn on my pc and save anything on it 'cause the big ol' crashes would take all my data away with them.  It was like a miracle for an application not to crash XP and just shut down without affecting the PC!

Everyone forgot about Win 98 SE.

And Windows 2000, that was missing from that list as well.

I'm with Zubaz. Most of the difficulty with Vista early on, and what generated the most complaints was its rather poor compatibility with older hardware. Eventually that was fixed, but between its considerably higher memory usage (Aero, anyone?) and the old hardware compatibility issues, most of the damage has been done and Vista was since thought of as crappy.

In reality, I've found it very stable (I got it along with a PC upgrade, so all my stuff was new). I had no big issues with XP either. Many people prefer the less flashy interface of XP and the lower memory usage is a definite advantage, but still the current version of Vista is not at all a bad OS

I think some of the BIG differences this time around will be:

1) Hardware is relatively cheaper so will run the OS better. Especially the extra RAM

2) 64 bit has finally cracked the home market (I love 64 bit Vista - 8GB = sweet).

3) The 3rd party software will be better supported as developers have started to come to terms with Vista/Server 2008 technology.

Hey, DOS 5.1? And, all preceeding iterations thereof? When you consider that EVERYTHING ties to that underlayer mechanic (not being a 'pure' virtual OS, i know - before anybody corrects me!).

Go figure.

Mojave will be a direct response to Vista complex growth & catchy hurdles... sooner than never.

But i'd agree that M$ has a knack for adaptable servicing enhancements.

I've been running vista on the laptop I bought last year because it came with it. It hasnt been bad persay. It's just been kinda "meh". You look at the front end UI of OSX and vista is archaic in comparison. I, personally, want more customizability in the UI. I know I can always go to stardock and buy some, but that still isnt 100% custom to me. And I dont want to have to learn to code windows just to do something that should be built in and readily available.

Further, the sidebar in vista is ok at best. It's quite buggy and gives me issues far to often. That coupled with the inability to move it where I want makes it more tedious then its worth.

I guess those are the only things vista really has in terms of what the user sees. MS is going to have to load all the features that people want at one standard price if the new windows is going to be successful. It's also going to have to include some version of office. Maybe just a stripped down version of word, excel, and powerpoint. Theres nothing worse then getting a new computer, setting it up, and trying to open a document a friend sent you only to find out you dont have that software. MS works does not count because it doesnt read word files (at least it didnt last time I checked but that was a few versions ago).

People are getting smarter and wiser when it comes to purchases. Couple that with a staggering economy and MS is going to have to come out with a pristine product, loaded with useful, pretty, and highly desired features, both front end and back end, at a reasonably low standard price in order to be successful. Minimal bugs, decent security (no holes in the OS) and no bloat ware. It's going to have to be optimized significantly over vista. And its going to have to start offering more services that are useful, that people will actually pay for (not just windows live). Can the advertising and make people actually want to part with their money for a useful service.

Thats not to say that they should charge for tech support. Maybe they could simply have something where all of their products are available for a monthly fee. So you get full office suite for $30/mo or something. Download and play all of their games for a similar fee. Things like that would not be a bad thing in general.

MS needs to focus on the touch screen as well. There is very little software that works effectively on the tablet notebooks. Why not branch into that potential market. Businesses could benefit greatly from their employees having wireless meetings throughout their buildings, all doing their respective projects, but being able to have the whole meeting audio to text automatically, while reserving the screen for individual camera segments so that everyone can see the others in the meeting. Computers have the power, now they just need the software. Netmeeting is a very basic software from what I'm thinking of. I'm just thinking of how great windows could possibly be.

And greatly reduce these "permission to do something that I just clicked from my mouse through my own USB port yada yada" windows. Enough said.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the OS. I really hope MS doesnt botch the next windows. It has so much potential if they actually realize what real people want. Apple realizes that to a greater extent then MS, but apple runs very little in comparison to windows. Sooner or later that is going to change and windows will become secondary if it does not keep up.

Me too... I've been running Vista since the 1st public beta and have found it to be stable, reliable and easy to use.  I dual boot between Vista Ultimate SP1 and XP Pro SP3, and I find that Vista loads faster than XP... and that is with more apps/background services running than XP.

Vista may not have gotten off to the best start (but then, neither did XP), and it has had its detractors, but I like and enjoy using it, and that's all that matters to me.

Honestly, I don't think 2000 really counts, since it's more with the Windows NT line.

I've also personally never had problems with WinME, back when I ran it.  There's also nothing particularly wrong with Vista, it's just not a significant improvement over XP and uses more system resources (though turning off Aero helps somewhat).

1st impression Visa: Delete a file. Oh there is still a link, righclick to delete, OS crash.

It got better with patches.

2nd impression: slow

Lets look at services, realize you do not need 2/3ds, disable via msconfig:better

only reason i haven't tried vista is because i never had a problem with xp getting a new pc after the holidays then i will have vista .a friend of mine has it and loves it.

In my view ... Vista can be named as Windows Me 2 ...

Is MS can overcome two of the major shortcomings that occurred with Vista's release ... spotty hardware support and OEMs selling 'Vista Ready' machines with 1GB RAM (or less) ... the new OS should go over well.

The hardware support they should be able to either build in or work with OEMs/manufacturers to avoid.

OEMs selling memory deficient boxes? MS may not have as much pull there.

Could you elaborate as to what your view is based on? Vista has been fantastic for me, once I accepted the fact that hardware required drivers, so old stuff wouldn't work. But since I built a system from the ground up to run Vista 64, it wasn't an issue for me.

I think that most people who don't like Vista got burned by the crapware that OEMs install and effectively infect Vista to act like a zombie. I would recommend a clean install to see how Vista really works.

Good point.Even though my new Compaq/HP was only loaded with Vista Home Basic it was running an AMDAthlon64 cpu

However,they only equipped it with 512 Mb of ram.I use more than that at idle even with non-essential services disabled.

I added 1Gb of ram before I even started it up,or I doubt it would even have been usable.

If you mention missing OS:  Windows NT and Windows 2003 are not listed. Both systems are not for gamers. WinNT was the very important milestone, but it had some very bad features (e.g. missing rescue mode). And Windows 2003 are not bad, neither good. However Windows Millenium should not be called bad. It was the real disaster. 

speaking for myself, i'm not strictly anti-vista. i'm anti-bloat. it took me long enough to configure XP to do most things i wanted and few things i didn't. if windows 7 weren't on the (albeit, somewhat distant) horizon, i'd be considering an upgrade to vista more strongly. but until i either need DX 10 or >4GB of memory addressing, i'm happy enough with XP. (note: i fully realize there are other "significant" advancements in vista, i'm not especially interested in them).

Hrm, 95b was good, 95c was 98 at conpception backported and thus horrid.  Most of 98 was bad, thus why I jumped to ME, which I found tons better than 95c or 98 ever was.  XP Pro has bene very good for me and I will probably hold off on a new computer for 7 to come out.

So I'd give 'worst windows OS' title to 95c.  ME was a rush job to toss something out to appease the 98 haters (like me) until XP came out.  You can only give a rush job so much potential...yet I think it exceeded a 'rush job'.