It's a lemon. going to send it back to ms and get full refund. Now, I like Microsoft as a company. They've put together impressive products and they can do some amazing things. I believe that while they've done both good and ill, the karmic scales of the company weigh more towards the good. I might get personally frustrated with their products and disapprove of certain business decisions, but I also believe that without Microsoft providing a de facto standard for operating systems on the desktop, it would have been harder to achieve the broad information age that we have today. Windows XP Service Pack 2 is a very good operating system because it is stable, works with most hardware, and is easy to use. I say this to impart that this is not a thoughtless slam or heedless rant against Microsoft, which can often be an inviting target. Based on my personal experiences with Vista over a 30 day period, I found it to be a dangerously unstable operating system, which has caused me to lose data. The 64-bit version is slightly better (which, frankly, surprised the hell out of us and makes us wonder if Microsoft didn't make a mistake in choosing to only distribute Home Premium 32-bit in the retail channel), but it still has stability problems. Any consideration of the fine details comes in second to that one inescapable conclusion. This is an unstable operating system. When Microsoft moved from the DOS to the NT based architecture for its consumer products, they did so primarily because users were tired of operating systems that had poor stability. The move from Windows 98 to 2000 brought that stability to the masses. Now, users are tired of operating systems with poor security, and in an attempt to bring that security to them, Microsoft has undermined the operating system's stability and overall utility. I can see what Microsoft was trying to do, but it may be that keeping Windows backwards compatible and making it more secure, all while trying to keep the OS stable may be an impossible task. I don't know if Vista will be improved with the next service pack, but the problems I found seem to stem not from flaws in code, but flaws in design. I don't want to give into hyperbole, but at the end of the 30 days, I begged Managing Editor Jason Wall to let me reformat my computer and stop testing. I really did want to like Vista. Yes, it is possible to enjoy both Windows and Linux - but unfortunately this product is unfit for any user. I still intend to keep a Windows XP partition on my computer for gaming and some multimedia editing, but as of the time of this publication, I have removed Vista entirely. Editor-in-Chief's Note: The fact is that Vista is far from "unfit for any user," and this statement by the author is simply incorrect. If you read the discussion thread linked below you will find there are many Vista users that are having positive experiences. The author's experiences are his own and I think a great look into just some of the complications that can come with upgrading to Vista. Some have had worse experiences and some have had better. -EaglePC Source: HardOCP Next time give credit where credit is due or get banned.
