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Posted by number.61 at 2/4/08 7:33 a.m.

As soon as Microsoft trims the fat of Vista I'm sure businesses would jump all over it.

If you aren't in marketing or development your company PC isn't going to handle Vista, SP1 or not.

Posted by unregistered user at 2/4/08 9:33 a.m.

For general home use, Vista Premium or Ultimate with SP1 is a slam-dunk. For business, it's not as much the bloat as it is the fact that most of the major features of Vista...instant search, GPO enhancements, etc...just aren't there without Server 2008. Realistically, Vista's in a tough spot, because most shops won't touch Server 2008 until its SP1....and that'll probably be in 2009, by which time Windows Seven will be right around the corner.

Posted by unregistered user at 2/4/08 11:07 a.m.

And by the time Windows Seven rolls around, shops will be finally ready to upgrade to Vista + Server 2008.

And the cycle continues...

Posted by unregistered user at 2/11/08 9:22 p.m.

I've been using pc's since my first IBM XT-386, and for the first time I'm serious about buying a MAC!! I've been using Vista Ultimate on one of my laptops because I have to provide tech support to people with Vista. I tell everyone to buy XP or buy a Mac. For people with Vista already I usually find that they don't have enough money to buy the hardware that will actually make it run. It's sad to see how the marketing machine forces people to sell this because they don't have a choice. There are too many resource hogging processess and programs. I don't like knowing the CPU in my laptop is running wide open most of the time. Watch the context switches--it's amazing how much disk activity there is. The average user has no idea about any of this, they just want performance and ease of use. I don't think any of the "new" explorer views help make it easier to use. The best feature in Windows has been the "Windows Explorer" and program manager. The "bread crumb" address bar is a great idea, but it should be added to the existing explorer instead of a substitute for it. The rediculous convoluted paths and links you have to follow to get to fundamental settings wastes time. I can't and won't recommend Vista to anyone! As far as I'm concerned it's in the same basket as Windows ME.

JB in VA

Posted by unregistered user at 2/12/08 5:34 a.m.

I have been using Vista for my business since it came out for consumers last February 07. Although it is true that some features are not available until Server 2008 is implemented, the features that work stand-alone have greatly benefited us. I have found most work has received a 20-40% increase in productivity a month after Vista was implemented and training was complete. As employees continued to use the new features, mostly being search, (since you can search everything from docs, to email to contacts and tasks/calendar, programs etc. from one place), delayed start services (we heavily implemented this into our proprietary service engines that run at the client for update downloading and server data sync'ing. This alone increased our client computers' startup and response time by 45-70 seconds and was the biggest complaint of our employees since we run close to 10 independent services), Tabbed IE (we were not cleared to use Firefox), ReadyBoost and SuperFetch (have greatly increased response and performance), along with Office 2007 (which all our employees love to death!). There was plenty for us to benefit from out of the box to make the upgrade to Vista worth it. Not to mension the fact that we have not seen 1 desktop BSOD since we upgraded Vista and usually found 2 or 3 XP desktops BSOD every 6 months for no clear reason. Also, the new task scheduler features are great (which we can use a Vista desktop for an admin to set up client tasks with) especially the task log that is created to show if the task ran or not. To be honest, I can't see why everyone else is complaining. Yes, it does take more resources then XP but you can't have all the great productivity-grand features without needing more from the hardware. MHO, The features are well worth the extra resources they consume. Most of our 3 and 4 year old desktops were ready to go and the ones that weren't, we just plugged an extra 1GB RAM stick in and they were ready. our TCO for hardware upgrades (15 computers) was averaged at 83 dollars per computer.