Oh, it would have been 'usable' (as far as MS is concerned).

It just would have given you ample opportunity for many lengthy coffee breaks, trips to the bathroom, or grocery store, or that vacation you always wanted to take, etc. while it was estimating how long it was going to take to delete a file, open a browser window, add a printer, or pretty much anything else!

I've been using Vista for the past few months, since around SP1, and it really hasn't been that bad. The UAC is annoying, but being able to come out of sleep mode in 2-3 seconds makes up for that. I haven't seen much performance drop with it, though on the rare occasion I do, it's usually not because of windows. The sidebar is tacky, and needs a better positioning system (I almost never look at the desktop, and rarely use it. I'm seriously considering disabling it to save the system resources it hogs).

I've also been looking up Windows 7 stuff for the past few weeks, and there look to be some neat things coming with it. Multitouch alone is enough for me to justify waiting to upgrade my laptop until it's out, but the faster boot times, reduced system usage, and other expected features are looking good as well. We'll see when the features list is released, though. If anyone's interested, the engineering team working on Windows 7 has a blog that's pretty interesting, albiet a bit technical at times. It's long, but good.

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/

No way. Vista's just great visually, easy to skin and no crashes (yet....please!)

..or what?

lol.., just kidding., you did sound rude

ME was the absolute worst, from a tech point of view, as a user it was even worse.

Vista is stable to me and Ive yet to have any problems with it. Im not sure why the next version is being touted when they should have thrown all their resources in to perfecting vista. But hey im way out there I guess.

Of all the oses ive run over the last ...wow  it been that long? ok well nm how long , It is the best IMO so far, hands down.

As someone that does tech support - no Vista is *not* as stable as XP in my experience - the support requirements are disproportionate to the market penetration. Not horrid, but not as good as XP either. Call it a reasonable second place.

That said - my real problem with Vista is just that it does absolutely nothing to excite me in any way. It's not horrid, and it's certainly not Me, but Vista doesn't actually give me any reason to give a darn about upgrading.

Barring games and a selection of driver rapidly approaching null, there's nothing Vista does that Ubuntu doesn't do better, faster, cheaper, and with more stability. And my copy of XP beats vista on the gaming and driver fronts.

Why mess with it?

Jonnan

I personally avoid Vista whenever possible, but let's be honest. XP was a greedy system. It required 1GB RAM, while the other OS were working fine with one quarter of this amount. It took about 5 GB from the harddrive, while e.g. Win98 something about 0.5 GB (with virtual memory file).  And it used to have compatibility issues too.

From what I've seen/heard of Windows 7 it looks like it is going to be most impressive. Even if it is just a heavily refined version of Vista with a new UI and features, it'll be pretty impressive.

I like Vista quite a bit, I run x64 and don't have any issues out of the OS. Vista just got some bad PR, which stuck with it. Most people who don't like it are just afraid of change.

I also hope they keep the name, 7 is a fantastic number.

I like that they are removing a lot of the built in applications to 'lighten the load'. Now if they could only manage to 'disconnect' IE from the shell (explorer.exe) that would be something.

All in all, this new os will have to be pretty impressive to compete with XP for installation on my machine(s). Vista, as it stands now, sure cant compete in terms of performance on my computers.

I think that'll definitely be a nice change. Not so much for the disk space aspect though as the 'not having useless crap cluttering up the OS' one.

I really hope they make Win7 64-bit only. They had little to no reason to not do that with Vista, yet they cursed us with another generation of underutilized hardware anyway.

well from my point of view, i have loads of games for my xp laptop, which are INCOMPATABLE with vista. i was told yesterday by the company that built this laptop (and whom i will buy my next one off) that you can no longer have xp on new machines as the chassis will not support it. hence, when this machine bites the dust i am left with a choice of vista or windows 7 ( a rock or a hard place in laymans terms) and also am left with £100's worth of p.c games that will only be fit for being used as fire lighters. i suppose they will make more games compatible with vista and windows 7...........then microsoft will come up with something "even better than ever before" and these vista/7 games will suddenly be INCOMPATABLE. and once more back to square one of having to pull out more cash for games that comply with the next o/s

seems like the only people who are rubbing their hands apart from microsoft are the vendors of all these softs we have to buy again and again. can hardly blame them, its all money in the bank for them afterall.

Eh, Toshiba won't sell or support XP on laptops in the US anymore, but that didn't stop me from putting it on the one I bought this summer anyway. There were a few minor annoyances (the utility for the Fn-keys doesn't work, biggest problem there being the lack of a dimmer option, but there was a separate utility on the EU site that allowed dimming in the end), but it runs fine.

XP SP2 took 1.3GB of HDD space installed.  I don't have clean drive numbers on SP3.

Further, my father is running XP SP3 on a system with only 256MB of RAM.  It's certainly slower than it used to be, and he would benefit from 512MB+, but the commit charge generally stays around 300-350MB.  Which is a bit more than the RAM, certainly, but it's hardly 1GB.

I myself ran SP2 on a system with only 128MB of RAM (yes, you heard me right) for a little while, but rapidly discovered that it was insufficient.

As for XP's "requirements", it won't install with less than 64MB of RAM.

Lots of interesting replies here folks, thanks a lot for stopping by.

For myself I have decided on my next OS.  Going to get a new computer before the end of the year (always sales now between now and Jan) and I'm going to go with the 64bit version of Vista Home Premium.  Most computers that are being sold now are coming with that installed now.  Why, well my current XP Home 32bit system is 5 years old.  It still works but it is time to get a newer system with either a Dual Core or Quad Core CPU, faster and more memory you know what I'm talking about.  This should also set me up nicely to upgrade to Windows 7 when it gets released.

I've been wondering as to what to do with the XP box and I think I'll turn it into a home security system with cameras and maybe even give it control over the lighting in the house.

Yeah, now that's a plan. 

no i am in the good old united kingdom of great britain (you know the place.)

upgrading to vista sounds a nice idea, especially the 64 bit versions....however..........guess what?...............wait for it........most of my softwares are INCOMPATABLE with vista 64 bit.

i think its time to shut down the p.c and go out drinking and womanising instead....less stress

Possibly but costs more and you cant put them on mute when ur tired of listening..

MS really just earned my eternal hate for unncessarily barring DX10 to Vista.  I'll pick up Windows 7 for the improved 64-bit stuff though - my 2gb of RAM isn't enough to play GalCiv and WARhammer at the same time, but the rest of my system is, so it's time to upgrade.