[1] Files take 2-5 minutes to delete — yes even one small file. It runs the hour glass.

[2] Starting computer takes 15 minutes at least.

[3] background processes waste batt life on laptops.

[4] No support of legacy software that is required to do work. Bugs and permissions problems underly each issue.

[5] Extremely slow. Life 3-4x slower than XP. This is on a newish laptop produced by lenovo after Vista was issued. And Vista was loaded on the lenovo. And I have full 4 GB memory.

[6] Hard drive runs constantly wasting power and batt life.

[7] Frustration impedes productivity.

Switching to Mac/linux. Goodbye Microsoft. I wont go down quiet. I will convince every friend contact, family member and community organization I know of to not support your company. You killed the PC with your reckless corporate culture. Bye bye.

Thanks for the comment. It has to be the longest blog comment I’ve ever read.

Windows 3.11 for Workgroups
Windows 95 OSR2 (yes, I waited!)
Windows 98
Windows 98 Second Edition
Windows ME (yes, ME)
Windows XP (then SP1, SP2, and now SP3)

I have always gone through every couple of years and backed up documents, etc, and done clean installs with the latest hardware drivers, etc, for all of these Microsoft OS’s. They all worked better than the previous OS.

Remarkably, I didn’t have ANY issues with Windows ME, which I know is *rare*, due to the grief I hear from pretty much everyone else. Maybe it is because I always did “clean installs”, and made sure that the computer had 64MB of RAM. (Anything less and Windows ME did kinda run slowly.)

This pattern stopped with Windows Vista. Windows Vista, even on BRAND NEW top-of-the-line machines (like my Dell XPS M1530 with 4GB RAM, 7200rpm Hard Drive, Intel Core 2 Duo 9500, etc), ran like SLUDGE. Slow, unreponsive, buggy — a complete DEBACLE and an utter TRAVESTY.

People complained, and even I couldn’t stand using it. So, OUT went Vista, and back ON went Windows XP SP3. And, let me tell you, after living with Vista for a month or two, going back to XP was like upgrading your car from a Yugo to a Porsche! INSTANTLY 10x faster. Clicking on something seemed to pop up a menu before you even finished the click. I couldn’t believe the difference.

Windows XP SP3 is simply the best, fastest, most reliable OS Microsoft has ever produced. The sad truth is, it takes Microsoft seven years to finally get an OS “right”. And I’m not a Mac fanatic at all. In fact, as I stated above, I have been a Microsoft user since my first PC in 1991 (ah, good old DOS.) But, Microsoft DROPPED THE BALL with Vista. I’m sorry, but as far as my experiences go, Vista is WORSE THAN Windows “ME”.

I have high hopes for Windows 7, despite the fact that unfortunately, it is based on Windows Vista (as in version 6.1 over version 6.0). I feel like Vista is such a terrible code base, they should have started completely from scratch again. But, maybe around Windows 7 SP12, in the year 2014, they’ll have as good an OS as XP is nowadays. Hey, by then, computers will have the 512 GB of RAM and the 20GHz 8-core CPUs needed to run the Vista code base!! (Ok, I’m half joking. I know, I know, supposedly they’ve tweaked Windows 7 to not be such a resource hog! Time will tell.)

I cannot emphasize enough how absolutely horrible Windows Vista is. I was psyched for it after the 5-year wait. After getting through the eye candy, it pretty much sucked and made computing a miserable experience. And I’m a power user!!! You can imagine how my non-tech friends felt! They couldn’t even figure out simple tasks! Why would you make a newer OS *harder* to use than the previous one??? What a humungous letdown.

Early tests with Windows 7 look more promising. Maybe after a couple of years, that will be the next OS to go on these machines. But for now, I will stick with the blazingly-fast, rock-hardened stable, time-tested mature OS called Windows XP SP3.

Don’t let the M$ freaks tell you otherwise. I have high-spec machines, and Vista blew chunks. You shouldn’t have to have a $10,000 gaming rig to run a MAINSTREAM Operating System at acceptable speeds. Heck, you should even be able to use middle-of-the-road configurations on such an OS if Microsoft is positioning it to be in the Home.

And, finally, Vista added insult to injury by their GREEDY pricing scheme. Vista was MORE expensive than XP for the same feature set. Why would you pay MORE for your computer to perform LESS?? We’ve gotten so used to software costing MORE than the hardware it runs on!!! MS-DOS was less than $100, as were early versions of Windows. In fact, Windows 95 was only $99 as an upgrade to Windows 3.1. And that contained ALL of the features! (Yes, Plus! added extra themes and such for a few $$$ more, but not critical features.) To get all of the features that they added to Vista, you have to pay a LOT of extra $$$$.

If they were SMART, Windows 7 should cost $99, PERIOD. And maybe Windows 7 Ultimate would be $149. That should be IT. Microsoft is greedy and is paying the price. Nearly 70% of computers still run Windows XP. And I agree, Windows 7 will most likely cannibalize the Windows Vista user base more than eat up XP. Who wants to spend $300 on an OS???? You can buy an entire Netbook for that price!

While I am not a Mac user in any way, I do own an iPhone. Full disclosure. It’s pretty amazing. But, I’m not ready to go buy a MacBook Pro, as beautiful as the new ones look. All of my software is Windows-based. I just have this feeling that I’ll still be using Windows XP until it’s official “end of life” in 2014. ;)

XP Service Pack 4, anyone?