@ficcionista: So, you assemble your own laptops as well? I build all my desktops at home, but I'm not even going to try to build a laptop and I'm not going to spend lots of time at work building desktops when the boss would rather buy pre-built and have my time spent in more useful endeavors.

PapaGamer

I see that people in the U.S. do buy a lot of pre-made machines. I'm here reading about Dell Inspirion and HP and i start wondering: Do you guys ever make your own machines?

Since i can remember the only pre-made machine i ever purchased was my little calculator machine, my Spectrum 48k. Since my first computer, i have always purchased the pieces separately and assembled them myself. And so did all of my friends and still do.
We never had driver problems, we never had issues with periferals, everything always worked.

BTW, not buying a pre-made machine allows me to chose whatever OS i want without having driver issues.. :)

ficcionista

They are just following Moore's law... by the time 2010 rolls around, performance on these small machines should have doubled and will be able to handle Vista or whatever Windows is out at the time without much of a problem.

JiveMasterT

lol @ xp, its been reduced to bargain basement. it's on the sale shelf at the dollar store. at least poor people in under developed countries can get on the internet. XP is now the beach boys endless summer cd that columbia house sends out in it's 8 free cd's just for joining their club. LMAO!
at least XP'ers give me free entertainment. now everyone, give us a big XP whine...

rand0mCreep

Just in time for Windows 7?

rdldr1

HeartBurnKid is 100% right as this applies to lower end pc's. I did write an article a while back about your legal DOWNGRADE (Upgrade to XP from Vista anyone?)rights. You can legally downgrade to XP from Vista!

But good luck finding all your drivers! I REALLY hope M$ ships up and does Seven right!

AskTheAdmin

I still use XP in my old HP system, but I am seriously thinking about going to Mac. I have had many friends "jump ship" over the last two years and ALL of them are happier for it.

NeuroMan42

My sister in law just bought a Dell Inspiron 1525. It came with Vista as the only option (and indeed, Dell only provides Vista drivers for it on their website.) But, last night I gave it a major upgrade and speed boost by installing XP. I downloaded the XP drivers for the Inspiron 1520, which mostly worked. For the graphics I went straight to Intel's page. After a couple of hours of downloading drivers and installing XP (and then one more hour of windows update) she was up and running with her newer, faster new computer.

jokono

I'm not sure what to make of it. Part of me is happy that they realize more and more that vista just doesn't work and part of me is disappointed that they are making sure linux doesn't have as many inroads.

gforster

Note that this only applies to low-power PCs like the Eee; your average Windows desktop will still come with Vista.

HeartBurnKid

Well, I was able to make a prototype conversion to Linux occur for a non-techie friend, on the understanding that Windows XP would not be available and Windows Vista sucks rocks. The quote of the day came 30 minutes into the post-install training session, when she said, "You know, I already don't miss Windows."

Here's my blog entry about it.

kc2idf

@firesign: yeah, these days at dell, you can get a dual core vostro 200 desktop with xp home and a 20 inch monitor (special sale over memorial day weekend) for $400. You can't beat that by rolling your own computer. I rolled my own before simply as an educational experience, but I realized it's not cost effective, so no more for me.

qrius

@TendoMentis: that's all fine and well for an end user. in an enterprise/academic environment where there are important apps that break under vista and web apps that break under ie7, it's not a luddite mentality, it's keeping shit working so people can do what they need to do.

firesign

@ficcionista: i always built my own machines in the past, but since i rarely game on a pc anymore (and have mostly switched to mac in general) it's just not time or cost effective for me to roll my own anymore. and yeah, it's a moot point if you're talking about laptops.

i was just getting specs on a dell latitude 630 here at work yesterday, and i notice that for $50 you can have the priviledge to "downgrade" from vista to xp. luckily i don't have to worry about that crap since we have enterprise license for most ms products, and i jut use ghost to image them to xp anyway.

firesign

Most n00bs down Vista because the big computer retailers bundle so much bloatware with the Vista installation, and then when they downgrade to a clean copy of XP, the average users are fooled into thinking they are using a better system.

For those of us who build our own systems and install Vista clean, I have not yet heard a real complaint against Vista.

And for laptops that come with Vista pre-installed with all the crap bloatware, simply download a Vista image that matches what your machine is licensed to use and RE-install Vista clean with the license on your machine to have a bloatware-free Vista install.

I just don't understand this luddite mentality... from the Lifehacker community no less.

P.S. I am a Vista and Ubuntu user. Both have their strengths and weakenesses, but I sure as he-hockeysticks won't go back to XP.

TendoMentis

@ficcionista: It's also much more popular for a company who wants standardized hardware / software to buy pre-built rather than having some hodgepodge of hardware.

On a Vista note, my grandmother bought a Compaq that was like 250 dollars that came with Vista home basic and was so slow it was ridiculous. I put Ubuntu on it and it's running pretty darn well actually.

swf5002

@ficcionista: I'll go you one better. I buy all the electronic components separately and fab my own motherboard, graphics card, and PCIe cards! Because after all, doesn't everyone have an electrical engineering degree and a clean room in their house?

Also, I designed my own OS from scratch, typing it all out in ones and zeroes. Without a monitor.

Hmmph.

jaxun

I'm proud to be Microsoftless at home, but here at work we have been struggling with the vista\no-vista thing for months. I don't care either way any more, we were hoping they would make up their minds about what they are going to do and how long they intend to do it. It looks like we kind of got what we wanted, but now what are we going to do in 2010? We're just eventually going to have to bite the bullet and do the switch eventually.

The biggest problems with vista (as I see it) is with the users. Vista is vista, it's not xp. It's a totally new operating system and when it was released people were subconsciously using xp still, even though they were physically using vista, so they got disgruntled. The few vista computers we have are working fine, the only problem we had was with a vista to xp remote desktop thing, but using UltraVNC fixed that perfectly.

kc0tma

@ficcionista: Look beyond the closed circle of your friends - I'm sure the vast majority of your countrymen are not building their own either.

Rhywun

Oh, and as an afterthought, it does piss me off that computer manufacturers use outdated hardware, then load it up with Vista Basic and loads of third party crapware. I think that's part of the reason people are turned off by Vista.

mulletmandan

@NeuroMan42: I did the "Mac switch" thing in March, and haven't looked back since. I've found Vista to be intolerable, even on computers "designed" to run it, but the move to a MBP and OS X has been a beautiful thing. But hey, YMMV; not everyone's going to hate Vista or love a Mac.

Joel

@TendoMentis: I totally agree with you. I bought a Toshiba that came with XP Pro right before Vista came out, so I got the upgrade disc for free. I ended up using another Vista disc that I had purchased to do a clean install of Vista Business using the serial Toshiba gave me. I have never had issues with a slow startup and have never experienced serious operating system freezes. The allocation of free memory to speed up program launches is also a great new feature of Vista.

People need to realize that Vista is more demanding, and they shouldn't expect breakneck speeds on old hardware. Just as XP required most people with 98/ME to get new systems, Vista requires the same jump from XP. My notebook has a Core Duo and 2GB of RAM: modest, but far from top of the line, and I have had no problems.

Also, just as a side note, you don't need the same Vista CD as your serial version thanks to Anytime Upgrade. For instance, I used a Home Premium DVD to install Business. The serial is recognized by the setup and the proper version of Vista is installed.

mulletmandan

@TendoMentis: OK, this is exactly what I want to do. Reinstall Vista without all the bloatware etc. My dell vostro laptop which came with nothing extra installed does run great. However, we have an HP desktop that seems to struggle and has a multitude of pre-installed apps.

Where can I obtain a 'clean' Vista image?

dgeezer

XP is around for more than just low cost PC's. My employer, a company with over 20,000 employees, is in the process of switching to XP this summer, which tells you that XP isn't going anywhere for a while and will be supported by MS.

slaughter33

@jaxun: 010010000110010101101100011011000010000001011001
01100101011000010110100000100001

Spaztrick

@Spaztrick: Surely, 01000100011000010110110101101110001000000111011101100101001000000110000101110010
01100101001000000110011101100101011001010111100000100001.

Seriously!

jaxun

@firesign:

I got two words for you.

Virtual Ization

Seriouisly though, just run your oldie apps in a XP/2003 image until you (or the applicatin's vendor) has upgraded them to be Vista/2008 compatible. And VMware server is free (and version 2 final is just around the corner, w00t!!).

I do this for my XPS m1330 (running Vista Ultimate) for my Oracle class (where Oracle is still not completely Vista/2008 compatible). I boot up my lappie into Vista, then login to my server 2003 image running my Oracle instance and get my work done. My server 2003 image is isolated, so it can't get infected, and with weekly backups and I can roll back the whole virtual machine if I need to....heck I can even simulate a server failure to experiment with restoring my processes, all without having to actually power down my machine.

In the world of over-powered computers, virtualization is the future.

TendoMentis

Seriously, I must be missing something in this XP versus Vista debate. I purchased a couple of low-end Vostros for some folks, and Vista ran fine--nice fast boot, great color, super responsive. I also used a Dell upgrade disk on my own desktop for Vista Home Premium and have no problems whatsoever. Me asketh . . . why is this so? I honestly don't think Vista is the problem. I can remember going through XP growing pains and Linux labor pains, but coming of age and giving birth to Vista was much less painful than the previous OS's.

rainbowsky

@dgeezer: I don't want to get banned for posting stuff I shouldn't, but here's what I recommend:

1. Check what version of Vista your HP desktop came with (Basic, Premium, Business, or Ultimate).

2. Go onto Google and type Vista+(whatever version of Vista your desktop is using)+torrent+SP1

That should find you a torrent of the version of Vista you are licensed to use with SP1 already integrated. Then, after you have that image burned to disc, re-install Vista with that disc using the license on your HP desktop. Activate like normal for a good dose of legality....ala peanute butter sandwiches, you have a bloatware-free Vista install.

Good luck :)

TendoMentis

One thing I don't like M$ and/manfacturers like HP is them launching a product like the tablet lines (TX1000 or TZ2000) and made no option or made no available options to downgrade to XP (at least there aren't XP drivers out there). Of course there are work arounds to get the drivers to work but one will expect companies such as HP will make that an option by default......instead they try to follow M$ to make sure they push and force that Vista on end-users whether your grand father or mother likes it or not!! Too bad I don't buy HPs (Thinkpad rocks!!)but have to support it since I have friends who owns notebooks from them..

mr_oshodi

I use XP at home and Vista at work, I still much prefer XP, but my major bug bear is that Epson still have not released a Vista driver for my printer, which is only 1 year old!

[www.aninconvenientblog.co.uk]

theoeeman

I upgraded, yes upgraded my two year old laptop to vista and wouldn't imagine going backwards to xp. On the budget desktop I recently built, vista is working quite well also, once I found a stable nvidia driver.

kineticarl

@TendoMentis: Yeah I use Vista and Ubuntu and they're both great. I hate XP now, Vista is so much better.
@firesign: If it breaks under ie7 then use Firefox. Duh.
@mulletmandan: Yeah, My family did the same thing. Bought our computer like a month before Vista came out and we qualified for the upgrade. I installed the upgrade and Vista runs like a dream. Yeah, and Vista is more demanding. What else do you think a new OS would be? XP demanded more than 98 and Vista demands more than XP. It's simple logic.

Rumel

@jokono: I'm glad you posted that - I have 7 1525's at work I want to upgrade to Vista - but I guess I'll need to take an image after one build is done.

Maksimir

@TendoMentis: Thanks. I see nothing wrong with that since my current Vista Install is completely legal. I would hope that if I begged and pleaded I could get a Vista disk from HP. It agravates me no end that when you create a recovery disk it re-installs all the crap that came on the pc originally.

I have an original XP disk which I have used to re-install and wipe clean every pc we have ever purchased (all of which came with XP pre-installed).

dgeezer

@TendoMentis: i am very familar with virtualization. we use it, and will be using it more. the problem is not on the server end, it's the desktop. where i work, they use SAP stuff a lot (don't get me started). some of that stuff *will not run* under vista and upgrades from SAP have so far not been forthcoming. also, they use some SAP GUI web apps that DO NOT RUN under ie7. see above about version upgrades, hence the need to run ie6 (they also do not run in firefox, so that's out). also, the stuff is run on servers that are out of my control. i'm on a branch campus, they're on main campus. we are a seperate IT dept. we have no reason to go to vista currently. xp runs quite well for us, and if you work in a big IT environment then you know that you stick with what gives you the least amount of shit for as long as possible.

firesign

@rand0mCreep

XP Pro will by my OS until I move away from Windows completely.

You don't specify what your OS is. If it's Vista, you're obviously just one of those pointless Microsoft fanboys, with an opinion unworthy of consideration.

If you're running something else, you might consider that not everybody in the world views playing with their computer as an end in itself, any more than most of us want to be mechanics in order to use a car for its intended purpose.

In either case, the sneering tone of your post denotes a mean and impoverished sensibility. I bet you whine pretty well yourself when people pee on the toilet seats and make your job more difficult.

Counterglow

Awesome, now I can save some cash to get XP on my Eee 900 without worrying that I'm gonna have to buy it anytime soon.

bdragonmsl

Uuuhh, apparently i touched a sensitive spot somewhere.

I do look beyond my inner circle of friends. What i was saying was that in Portugal we don't see Dells, HP's or other brands on sale at our retailers. What we do have are shops and retailers that assemble computers according to the buyer's requirements and then sell them fully assembled.

My company provides me with my own desktop to do my work and i don't need a laptop to do it.
At home i have my own desktop and do not feel the need to own a laptop. When i go out i like to leave the computers at home. But that is merely a personal choice.

Of course that companies here do buy pre-made computers, when i was talking about U.S. Citizens buying a lot of pre-made PC's i was talking about home-users. I was just curious, that's all.

ficcionista

Somebody in Redmond is reading this? Well READ THIS:

WHY CAN'T MICROSOFT'S OWN TOOLS LIKE ADAM ADSI Edit WORK IN VISTA? Why has it become necessary for me to use an XP Virtual Machine running under Vista "Business" just so I can use production applications? Geez, you guys really drop the ball sometimes.

sideshowmel

@firesign:

I feel your pain. My mild mannered day job is with a big defense contractor, so we're under the same restrictions. Some software (including our SAP) won't run under Vista/2008 (yet), so our machines are limited to XP/2003. Some of us use virtualization to run these apps on our local machines to get around this limitation.

By night, I am a freelance technology consultant super-hero with my own clients. I go open-source as much as possible to save them on costs, but for my own network and for the clients that can afford it I push Vista/2008 simply because of the benefits that can be realized if you do a clean break from legacy software (and not everyone can make that clean break).

TendoMentis

I'm also surprised at the lemming-like reaction to hating Vista, especially on Lifehacker. I built my own comp last spring with a clean install of Vista. My machine cranks through any game on the shelves today without breaking a sweat.* The only time I've gotten a BSOD in over 16 months is when trying to install an XP version of Alcohol 120 on it...and shame on me anyway, because I tried to scam it from a torrent.

I will not be able to control my laughter watching someone try to play games on XP with DX9 in 2010.

*Except Crysis of course, which makes it a bit feverish.

OX4

@Counterglow: did i hurt your feelings? you have to let go of it. XP is a worn out operating system, it's time has come and gone. how much longer can someone keep wearing old shoes, shirts and underwear? actually i was going to get an imac, but dell just happened to have an xps on sale for one day only. i compared it to what the imac had. the xps had twice as much for half the price, so i loaded up the xps until it came out to the price of the imac. i now have a total kick ass computer and still came in under the imac price. to not be stingy i picked up a bose companion 5 speaker system. and i do have vista home premium by request, i make sure all the graphics and eye candy are working because it makes people with XP mad. i also can have 25 apps running and nothing slows down. the best part is i made an avitar out of a picture of your mother. say hello to mom, my animated gif!

rand0mCreep

@OX4: Ah, yes, the "I've had no problems, so everybody else who claims to have had problems are lemmings" approach. Because, obviously, you are the world.

I must commend you on your subtle approach -- not at all like rand0mCreep, who is trying way too hard and way too obviously to start a flamewar.

HeartBurnKid

@HeartBurnKid: i just like to stir it up :)

rand0mCreep

I would just like to add that Dell STILL offers xp on almost all of their small business computers, of which any home user can buy. Most are far from "low end," including some quad cores.

Also, in case anyone didn't know, some companies are just now switching to xp from 2000, so I am sure that support will be available for xp until windows 7 rolls around (though it may no longer be directly from microsoft).

wild_bill

@ficcionista: I think people took offense because it sounded a bit like an assault on Americans. I think the primary reasons are economical. It's just not a bargain to build a PC piecemeal anymore. It was at one time, but the sum of the costs of individual parts is now a fair bit higher than buying a Dell made of the same parts.

fadecomic

Yeah I've heard/read complaints about Windows Vista. But I'm afraid I can't give my opinion as I've been a happy Mac user since December 2006.

nakedicarus

I don't see what the fuss is about. XP is the only MS product that can run on budget PCs, so XP support continues until such PCs will be able to run Vista. Some of you are treating this as some sort of consumer victory when it's really just a case of a shrewd corporation shipping old software to run on slow hardware.

That's what's so great about Linux; if you like a distro, you can use it as long as you want.

elgilicious

I use Vista at home on a laptop and XP at work on a desktop. The desktop is shiny new with a dual core processor and a decent sized hard drive. The laptop is nearly a year old with a dual core and a tiny hard drive. Both have problems, freezes and crashes on occasion, that's nothing to do with the operating system but what they are being asked to do. Know your computers limitations and work within them. Applies to any operating system.

I've been using PCs with various operating systems since my first 'IBM Compatible' which shipped with GEM (ah, happy days). Nobody is ever happy when a new system comes out... not since Windows 98! Remember Windows Me... now that was a nightmare.

Nat-London

Hmmm. I don't see what the problem with Vista is. I've been using Vista for a while now, and even though it has its issues, I wouldn't even consider going back to Windows XP. Ugh! XP? Never! (Just to imitate silly Vista bashers)
I used to be a Vista basher like lots of others, but once I was actually forced to use Vista (because XP gave up on me, I had to save my files through Vista) I discovered that Vista really isn't that bad and that I was just whining about nothing.

Joshiii-Kun

@fadecomic: First of all, i wasn't my intention to offend anyone. I talked about North Americans because of all the online buddies i have, only the north americans purchase pre-made branded computers.

I really was curious about how you do things over there and why. Here in Portugal it is still cheaper to buy a desktop by the parts. The average home computer user in Portugal does not assemble his own computer, he goes to a shop and they assemble the computer for him. However the consumer does chose the parts that go with the computer.

Getting back on topic, Vista does work very good on my computer, but for the time being i'll stick with XP, i find it to be more stable and easir to configure (but that's probably because i've been working with it longer).
I still remember when XP came out, i saw a lot of people not wanting to change from 2000 to XP, they said that 2000 was the best, etc. etc. I also was reluctant to do that change, but once i did, i got used to it and i guess it will be the same with Vista.

ficcionista

@firesign: agreed. i work for a 30,000 employee telecommunications company here in canada, and they have vista machines in testing that they stopped even trying to get to work with their proprietary software. most enterprises write thier own software to work with certain systems, and upgrading the nmachines makes the software perform abnormaly or not at all. and my company is pretty much married to m$ products, and they wont budge from XP. sadly they just recently rolled some emplyees from NT4.0 and some servers from 2000...

as for at home, i still stick with XP, even with my new dell laptop - went with the inspiron 1520 because the 1525 didn't come with xp, and didn't want to hastle with licencing or warrantees, and my 3 yr old desktop has xp media centre which serves content to my xbox360, and until there's a clean way to do this with linux, it stays that way.

I run Damn small linux in a vm under these though.

gover57

@Nat-London: Oh yes, i used to say that ME was just ol' 98 with a fresh make up.
Back then i sticked with 98 until 2000 came out, and then made the shift directly.

ficcionista

Part of me is glad to see this but part of me is sad because even Microsoft seems to admit that XP has its issues.

I just built a PC about a month ago and and bought XP for like two programs and to sync my iPod. Dual booting XP and Ubuntu means I really don't have to care about Vista.

I used to hate, now I'm indifferent.

battra92

@Rumel:

Sure, it's "more logic" the jump from 98 to XP, but from XP to Vista?

What's the logic in upgrading a PC for cooler graphics and a custom security guard?

Danny