"Mark & Juanita" wrote

You know, this is just frustrating. Because I spent a great deal of
time
and research looking into the new OS but decided not to use it based upon
that research, this somehow makes what I said "hearsay" and by innuendo
uninformed?

Well, you apparently settled upon what suits your needs, which means in your
case your research was indeed sucessful. However, most users better be very
careful where they do "research" these days, or the rampant, bias based,
ignorance on this issue bites them firmly in the butt.

I've read both the good and the bad. The fact that Vista requires twice
the horsepower to deliver the same performance was a significant decision
factor. I would prefer to use that horsepower for something besides
delivering the same experience.

I would agree that you're correct about the above with the amount of RAM
needed for practical application with Vista. There is indeed a sweet spot at
2 GB RAM, anything less does show a degradation in performance, and anything
more, no noticeable improvement.

Updated drivers are of critical importance, and a robust video/graphics
system is also mandatory if you want the "eye candy", but not necessary at
all for normal business use. Vista also runs every single program that I've
been using on a daily business basis for the past ten years. The _only_
program I had problems with was Outlook for XP, which had years of business
contacts, and a $60 upgrade took care of that.

My Vista laptop, which has a Core2Duo T-7400 processor of early vintage and
2 GB RAM, runs noticeably faster, with much more multi-tasking power (which
you would expect from the Core2Duo) than my favorite Win2K desktop, which
has a Celeron with the same amount of RAM.

IME, Vista is far superior in "mobile computing" (which includes "security",
in a big way), to anything I've used thus far ... and "mobile computing",
IMO, is where computing is increasingly headed in the future.

An unbiased comparison between SWMBO's laptop running XP SP2, and mine
running Vista (with no SP as of yet, although with all "performance and
reliability fixes applied) is where you can readily see (a valid
observation, as maintain both machines), and appreciate, the difference in
this regard.

With regard to your remark about "security" ... having administered three
geographically disparate networks, and having suffered mightily due to
security issues, I'm probably much more prone than the average bear to put
up with the minor inconveniences of Vista's UCA, than the major PITA of
repairing a breached machine/network ... just like beefing up the security
on your home is a minor, but worthwhile, inconvenience.

Vista certainly isn't perfect ... but I've yet to see the perfect operating
system after almost 40 years of computing.

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Last update: 3/8/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)