cripes gimme a break with the "it's all Microsoft's fault crap" The OS is not the reason why dell and HP are having a hard time selling pc's. Vista is a fine OS that yes has some quirks but works quite well. I have been using Vista as my primary OS for over a year and it is fine, even better with SP1.

you want to know why Dell and HP are losing Marketshare

1. Boring designs, thick and hot - not sexy at all.

2. LOADED with CRAPLET's - HP is the worst at this. I refuse to recommend HP to any family member as it's always a huge chore to uninstall all the crapware.

3. BRUTAL Support - There is no one worse than Dell Support. Web sucks, buit-in task pane support too sucks, 1800 support is friggin brutal. HP is not much better

4. 0.0000 inovation, what the hell do these guys bring to the table that set's them apart. Where are the cool hardware features, where are the cool free software tools. - ONLINE BACKUP is not cool.

HP seems to be moving in the right direction with this voodoo line and the TouchSmart 2, but they still have a long way to go.

Dell - Now that HP have caught you in the price department, you guys are screwed.


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I'll agree with some of those points, but Vista had a horrid launch, there's no arguing that, most programs couldn't even run on Vista until SP1 or a rewritten and updated code for the programs was released. Even Microsoft's own Visual Studio had problems running. Sure, some stuff is the hardware and looks, but if MS can't even have all of its programs and apps from the past run well or even at all on Vista, you can't expect the majority of developers out there to like it very much. Most people I know who've used Vista have switched back to XP, and so have a lot of people I've only talked to. That spoke volumes to me.

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I'll agree there with you on that, when i 1st got my comp last year at vista launch most of my probs with it not working right was vista, and a cheap nzxt 500w power suply which was purely my fault. Having said that though i think vista works fine now exept no Hd acceleration for sounds cards like eax. I thought my logitech z5300 on a audigy 2zs on xp sounded light years better than my current z5500 on a X-fi extreme gamer on vista. So bad actually i switch to the onboard realtek and use the optical connection for sound.

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"... there's no arguing that, most programs couldn't even run on Vista until SP1 or a rewritten and updated code for the programs was released."

Yes there is arguing about that because its a truckload of bullshit. Most programs ran and run just fine. Fact. End of debate. There were and still are crappy written programs that cause trouble or wont run at all... so what? If you depend on that particular piece of shit software, run it in a (free) virtual machine of your choice with your previous edition of windows...problem solved.

Please stop talking about vista when you obviously never touched it for more than 5 minutes and depend on "what you heard" on some forum...



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Yep, I concur. I've been playing around with Vista since launch day and I've only had one app (out of dozens and dozens) that wouldn't work right. Short of some driver issues (Creative and Nvidia) I never had any real Vista-specific issues.

On my old Toshiba Tecra M7, Vista BSOD'd the first time I loaded it up. When I rebooted, Vista gave me a warning messaged that it detected the crash was caused by an incompatible BIOS and that a new BIOS was available for download, even provided a link as to where to get the update. Never had a problem after flashing my system. I was rather impressed with that.

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It seems to me that I had more trouble getting things running under XP out of the box. When there was that initial shift and everything was 'compatibility mode', which didn't work half the time anyways. In fact some of those same programs I had issues running under XP (mostly games in my experience) actually did run on Vista out of the box.

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It gets even better. We all remember Apple's migration to x86 and Rosetta. Old apps either crashed or used 5x memory while running 5x slower. Almost all of the biggest software titles were affected until they could produce a native x86 binary, which often took a year or longer.

Now let's talk about the blame-Microsoft BS floating around. The pro-Mac sentiment created by Apple's admitedly supperior industrial design, combined with the "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" commercials, is being transferred to MacOS. This is swelling the pro-Mac bandwagon, while increasing the anti-MS hype. Anand has apparently succumbed. PC's are not being held back by Vista. They are being held back by inferior industrial design.

Bashing Microsoft is just trendy. Most geeky bloggers and webauthors will find a way to either attack MS, or compliment it with a backhanded insult, even if the issue at hand has nothing to do with MS. For a good example, see the intro to this very article.

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Were you a Mac user that bought the first Intel Macs?

The software was at worst 2x slower.

And... you say, "They are being held back by inferior industrial design", which is exactly what was written in the intro for this article. The only reason Vista was mentioned was because that was an aspect of PC design the OEMs had precious control over, so the only thing left for them to tackle was industrial design.

You think you are superior for not "succumbing" to pro-Mac sentiment? Is that like not "succumbing" to pro-Zune sentiment, or pro-XBox sentiment, or any other "underdog gaining in popularity" sentiment?

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Yes, I bought one of the first Intel Mac Minis, and I had to upgrade the RAM to 2GB because of Rosetta. I have some experience here, thanks.

So I'm wrong becuase the speed hit from Rosetta was 2x instead of 5x. Don't you know you're making my point? Anandtech articles frequently make much of a 3% speed increase due to faster RAM, etc. Don't you think a 50% performance hit is significant?

Second, if you only percieve a 2x slowdown, it's because the Intel hardware was fundamentally faster masking much of the slowdown. You can't seriously say the speed improvement from Photoshop CS2 to CS3 was only 2x.

I notice you ignored my point about poor app stability. I've had apps crash in Rosetta far more frequently than Vista pre-SP1 (which is to say almost never).

It doesn't matter that the article mentioned the inferior industrial design when they go on to put blame on MS. Maybe the only thing the OEMs could tackle was industrial design. So? They still failed at that, didn't they?

I own a 5G iPod, a Zune, an Intel Mac, and a few PCs. I do see both sides, and I can say with certiantly that the pro-Mac position is hyped, and MS is getting shorted by the tech community who think it's cool to blast Windows.

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Now let's talk about the blame-Microsoft BS floating around. The pro-Mac sentiment created by Apple's admitedly supperior industrial design, combined with the "I'm a PC, I'm a Mac" commercials, is being transferred to MacOS.

You sir, are an idiot. Every single mac switcher I've talked to raves about OSX. It is the reason Apple is successful, not the design. The design obviously helps, but having an awesome OS is what differentiates Apple from every one of its competitors.

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