My biggest complaints ? The interfaces choice to add tons of PowerPoint presentation like Wizards and unintuitive relocation of settings (that used to be clear concise and within 3 clicks.

The choice to out of the box sacrifice performance to try and “help” computer illiterate users automating everything. full text Indexing , shadow volume copy , windows defender on by default, so your disk is always grinding like your running a full virus scan while your working. I don’t loose/forget what I named my files , not do I delete them accidentally all that often , and I put my own AV and don’t need anti-spy ware and I I did I’d grab AD-aware. UAC broke several od my MS peripherals and even if it was annoying (If Mac OSX and Nix can understand user context and prompt once , not constantly why can’t Vista ?

Disabling it’s annoyances and improving performance is not easy. Turning off shadow volume copy requires turning off system restore(a feature I liked). Turning off full text searches and indexing creates a permanent nag screen in explorer.

Then you have all the issues , apps crashing or being whited out when they are busy , DVD/CD burning , reading , media playback bugs that stop productivity dead. Explore and it’s random amnesic musical folder views , the addition of 200 file sort categories like “shoe size” “MPH” and “number of kids” but “Date Created” is not a default. They removed the graphical defrag GUI for some reason.

Complexity of the supposedly new few useful features. The new event viewer and task scheduler for all their new supposed new functionality are actually quite unreadable and useless and you’ll find like a hundred Microsoft OS functions implemented as tasks. There are more categories in these utilities now than I have file folders on my hard disk.

The 40 GB install and 3 -5 GB registry (a register that is bigger than most operating systems) the 5gb free space for a service pack requirement.

The biggest problem though by far was the decision to draw the line at the 64-bit OS as to requiring signed drivers. Not prompting , not warning requiring. I you tried to install VMware all seems well until you get a little popup from Vista saying your program may not work as it’s driver is not functioning. Then it goes on to inform you that the reason it’s not functioning is that Vista has disabled it and “you will not be able to use it”. Go search MS knowledge base and you will find the solution is “this behavior is by design , we recommend you use Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007 instead”

They had an “unsigned drivers” boot mode (along side safe mode) which was annoying to boot into and gave screen corners but when people started using this they patched it out as a security fix saying that mode was designed for use by Devs and OEM’s. You now have to install the full Windows SDK and attach a kernel debugger then reboot.

Must be nice to able to hold your competitors application functionality for ransom with your driver certification.

With their no non Microsoft licensed drivers on a major desktop release and their resource gobbling DRM and Driver delaying tilt bits requirement for certification, a cert that once we all have at least 4 GB of RAM and need 64-bit will be LAW.

I think Microsoft has taken control unfortunately it’s over their paying customers computing. They want that DRM platform so badly to attack apples media delivery market share by getting exclusives and monopolizing a DRM standard. Apple struck a good balance between content creator and consumer rights and MS plans to be more attractive to the content providers with their higher market share and DRM that puts the content creator first and for which the consumer foots all the inconvenience, and cost. They want those drivers 100% compliant with their rules that will allow them to manage your OS functionality as protected content as well. Why ? That have patented and Gates has been talking about their subscription biased software model. They rent OS modules to you via subscription. Hey gamers only $7 a month for the Direct x 11 games for windows service that lets you use your own graphics card.

Sure no more 7 launch versions of Windows as you buy the modules you need but for those who enjoy the flexibility of PC’s being multi-purpose your going to be paying more. Oh and like all protected content that will be able to revoke your license when ever they like and for most your apps maybe the software creators have a pretty good Idea and a lot of control over how and when you use any of their software.

All the big software companies (adobe, Autodesk, now MS possibly) have started to realize that it’s hard to generate a new revenue stream every year by adding a few new features and updates or bundling their apps into suites. A word processor for example only can be developed and sold at full price again with new and improved features for so many years before they are just adding fluff and new menus. Once they get a good product out their it’s hard to make it compelling to buy it all over again on a regular basis as sometimes their is only so much that is compelling to update, change or add to it especially when it’s ungodly expensive. What can they do lower the price (that’s just crazy talk) no enter the subscription biased pricing model.

For a lot of People this model doesn’t make sense and they don’t upgrade all the time. Well in Microsoft Ideal vision of computing the consumer finally will realize that they never actually buy software they rent it like an apartment and they pay what ever can be charged that year. The PC is something you buy to enjoy paid services and we see many technologies MS has invested in to the dismay of consumers which is solely designed further their corporate agendas and give the end user less control over their PC, software and digital media. I think to them the acceptance of a EULA is pretty much just the honor system and they aim to fix that once and for all. They didn’t focus on the end user as I think this is merely a means to an end for them now days. They are throwing their weight around (market share) around and it just goes to show their hubris.

my new Toshiba came with a core 2 duo and 2 gigs of RAM with Vista Home Prem. It ran very doggy, much slower than my XP machine with AMD 3000+ and 1 gig of RAM. Upped the Toshiba to 4 gigs and now they run about the same.

As an Engineer, I am forced to work in a MS-Windows environment because the tools I use are in many cases only available for that platform. I am also aware that many of these tools were developed under older versions of the OS and are the result of many [hundreds and thousands] hours of work. These tools often have a limited user base, so the cost to the user is very high. These would be driven even higher if the developers are forced to make unnecessary changes because their OS platform is no longer supported.

The point is that there is a significant user base that relies on backwards compatibility for their “legacy” applications to run. I am one of them – I also develop embedded systems code for equipment that our customers expect to be supported for 5-10 years. That’s not easy if your platform isn’t stable.

It’s not just about surfing the net and playing games – there are real people out there with real jobs that keep the industry of this country running.

I have been watching every step of the releases for now 4 YEARS NOW. I have been loning for the Vista release so bloody long. AND when it’s finally here It’s just a big dissapointment.

I certantly do not complain about the functions I just wish that the functions which were there would actually work.

Last time I tried to use Vista for good was 3 weeks ago. But All my networking stopped working after I had tried to bridge the connection betwen a wlan stick and my network card. The bridge was removed, DHCP client was running. No solutions on forums found.

Then there are these driver problems. Webcam= no drivers, Realtek sound = crappy rear sound.

BTW I agree with you Cris that the 3DFlip is just useless. I wish that they have done so that developers could make something own, similar to Beryl, or just copy macs way of switching programs, its brilliant. And its a good idea to leave the old framebuffer. The power of graphics cards is there to be used.

And has anynoe tried to setup File sharing in Vista with write permision to a folder. Damn it took 20 min to figure that out.

As I see in Vista the only thing that is interesting for me is DX10 and the new startmenu. For now on XP FTW, even though I get smal anoying bugs which makes me reinstall every 3 months. But that is not a problem since I have all my important files on a separate partition and I recomend every home userdoing so. Because next time Win crashes all files are still there.

PS Never touch a running system