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first off if it wasn't for buisness and pre install customers M$ wouldn't have the legit numbers to brag aboout. i've used a mixture of legal OS's and a few beta's and i can admit to a few pirated downloads like the millions and millions of others. You may say i'm wrong and how do i ever expect the OS i deserve due to the actual life span of the modern graphical OS and that i'f i'd adopted the OS legaly earlier on and pay a higher price i may has so mentioned improved OS however I certanly have never managed to justify and find the spare cash to spend on something that wont' take me a couple of hours to download and the next morning to install completely. Once an OS has dropped to around £100 - £150 i've generaly bought it and for actual fact bar a recent copy of NT and Server i've got legit copies of all the other OS pretty much but only when they dropped in price and improved since day one launch. I've been playing with win 7 for a while now and i liked it. since my recent complete upgrade ive gone back to Vista 64 as i did find some programs are more stable in vista however i do know if i had win 7 i'd see a further increase in speed and performance. end of another long post cheers

I used to be an XP only lover. But then I got Vista, it's NOT THAT BAD GUYS. People that say it is, have a bad computer and most likely never updated. Updates are your friend. God, I can't even look at an XP interface anymore, it's so weird to me now. And, I'm not paying that much for an operating system. $100 now is even a lot.

I hate piracy, but f*ck Microsoft, I paid for vsta, and I'm not paying again for what vista should have been in the first place, I will illegally download windows 7, ist like if I have already paid for it.

Windows 7 is significanly faster than Vista, and XP is showing it's age. But more than that, manufacturers will slowly begin to drop XP, forcing people to move on. I will definately get Windows 7 at some point. Vista felt like an incredibly bloated incremental upgrade over XP, but Windows 7 feels like a real successor to XP.

As for Linux. I've been usin openSuSE recently. It's a nice system but I can see why it hasn't made it mainstream. It's just too much of a pain in the ass. A fresh installd didn't even play audio CDs - I had to go and manually edit some config file. Finding and installing the drivers for my laptop's built in wireless adaptor was a pain too, but I must admit, However when I did find it, I found a command line on a forum that downloaded it and installed it.

There are also the niggly things such as no MP3 playback on a fresh install (due to licenses and stuff), so even bare essentials have to be located, downloaded and installed.

Also I'm not sure how good the performance is in Linux either. It quite often lags when I am browsing with Firefox (2x2GHz) and the CPU usage is between 10 and 15% just at the desktop doing nothing. What? (Probably where there aren't any specific hardware drivers and it just uses generic crap).

Nice system, but if you want to do anything other than use stuff that's already installed, it's a pain.

The OS should be free, seen as they are rushing it out cos Vista flopped and they are ditching support for XP.

Okay has anyone had problems with Vista starting up on PC it freezes or the screen displays random colours. Vista might not be bad but when it goes bad it blows. If someone could help we with my problem, it would be much appreciated

i lol how loads of people stuck with xp seriously vista isnt brilliant but people exaggerate how bad it actually is. fair enough if you actually need as much power as possible for sumet like gaming maybe you should stick to xp.

well to be honest most people who only really use there computer for emails and all that crap always seem to say vista is rubbish im staying with xp. but to be honest they know nothing about computers and are only saying vista is crap coz they have a friend that says so. seriously apart from xp performing a little better vista is overall better because it has a better UI. the only annoying thing about it for me is the UAC and that most the added features are copying mac but not as good.

Really hope some major companies come out with an OS to rival Windows. MS has had a stranglehold on the PC market which is why they get away with constant nonsense. From over pricing to marginal improvements to their software which they get away with due to lack of competition. Would love for Apple, Google, Palm or some other big company to come out with a good consumer friendly OS with gaming support to make MS sweat.