Switching back to XP

Anyone have Vista? I've been praying that my laptop doesn't die so that I don't have to get a new one with the Vista OS. I've been around PC's long enough to know that you never purchase the first release of anything Microsoft puts out since that is it's beta testing phase. It lets them save on testing by making you their testers :-)

This just confirms my fear:

I've concluded that this initial release of Vista is not worth it. I'm digging out an install disk for Windows XP and putting that back on my machines.

What's the problem with Vista? In exact programming detail, I'm not sure. But despite a number of things it does nicely -- snazzy screen display, very rare blue-screen crashes, and some other things I'm sure I'm forgetting -- I find myself working against it more than with it. (Definition of the ideal computer program: one you never have to think about.) Of course there is its rampant gobbling of my 105-gigabyte hard disk, as complained-about here, here, here, here, and here. There is the clumsiness of the built-in indexer -- OK in theory, not that great in practice -- and of something called "user account control," which if you've tried Vista you know about and probably don't like. ComputerWorld was a little blunter about it: user account control, it said, was Vista's "most universally reviled feature."

Vista takes forever to start up or shut down and in general feels overweight and slow. I was finally pushed off the fence and toward that XP install disk by this article in TechWorld, saying that IT officials around the world were doing what they could to avoid Vista.

And this:

I've been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system -- it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes. Whenever anyone asks, my advice is to stay with Windows XP (and to purchase new systems with XP preinstalled).

(via)

My hope is that by the time I need a new computer Toshiba will be shipping their computers with XP pre-installed.

And Mac people, if I wanted one I would have bought it years ago. I have no interest. You can't get a good Mac for under $600.