Are you going to jump to VISTA?

[fritzi93]

I'm going to run Windows 2000 until I can make Linux a viable alternative. I refuse to buy XP or Vista, or any other product with activation, let alone DRM...

I can relate to that. I have XP only because it came bundled on this computer. It's fine, but I'm building my next computer and it's gunna have Win2k on it. Yeah, tried a couple flavors of Linux, it's not really user-friendly yet.

[rkr1958]

Win2K here ... Why switch? ... Win2k does everthing I need and is very stable. By the way, I can't vote in the poll because Win2k is not an option.

[yoda313]

Win2K here ... Why switch? ... Win2k does everthing I need and is very stable. By the way, I can't vote in the poll because Win2k is not an option.

Sorry never thought of it. I was just getting enough to say no for going to vista.

[vhelp]

>> I vote for that as well. Pity there wasn't a vote option
>> "I'm happy with my current OS"

It's a conspiericy

I'm with a few others here.. I'm staying with WIN98 Gold.
It has never given me any problems, and loads up in 15 seconds
on my Athlon XP 1800+ cpu setup. At work, my w2k system takes
about 5 minutes to finally give me my MOUSE CURSOR

Personally, at home, I have WIN95, WIN98, W2K and XP Personal.
But, I refuse to install XP because I heard it annoys you with
it's online key thing or somethng, and also, that it requires
128MB ram. I have 512MB, but I want my swap file to be the
smallets possible, which is sometimes 0 at startup, otherwise,
32mb at startup. XP sounds like it'll use 512MB of HDD swap
space. I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud now

Somehow, I don't quite see how I might see VISTA anywhere near
my pc's.

-vhelp 3747

[Silvas]

It uses RS-DOS

RS-DOS???

Radio Shack DOS

TRS-80 was made by Tandy which is a Radio Shack brand.

[lordsmurf]

My current hardware and software does exactly what I need. Not moving from XP Pro. I have DVD projects I want to do for up to 5-10 years, and I will keep using this very computer as many years as it will last.

My next computer will be a mini Mac on OS X. I think I'll skip the next generation of PC platform, if at all possible.

[jntaylor63]

Well my fellow MCE users, if you want:

1.) Cable Card Support
2.) HD-DVD Support
3.) DirectTV Support:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060105-5913.html

Odds are you're gonna have to upgrade to Vista.

I can live with 1 and 3, but I'm leaning towards Blu-Ray. I guess I could just buy the verison of intervideo's WinDVD that will support Blu-Ray and fire it up to watch them:

http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Press.jsp?mode=11-01-2005

HTPC'ers will fair better in the format war. We can just buy the drives and the software. So long as the hardware will cut it.

[Wile_E]

ROF, I still have my TRS-80 Color Computer 2 (64k) and the Tandy Color Computer 3 (512k) in my closet with accessories, OS/9, media, and Rainbow Magazines. This is the system that started my interest in computers. There are still many people that are writing programs and designing hardware for these systems. In fact, you can get USB and IDE adapters to connect these devices. Amazing for a computer with only a bit-banger serial port, and 1MHz Motorola processor. There was even a "3D" Doom-like game someone made, just to see if the computer could handle such a game. It doesn't use textures but it is cool, and was thought impossible on this system.

Although I have a 64-bit enabled proc, I only run WinXP Pro 32-bit. I have scanners and other accessories that don't have 64-bit drivers, and probably never will. I can't give up these devices, so I'm stuck with 32-bit O/S. If only Microsoft would incorporate a wrapper/emulator for 32-bit drivers. I don't want more bloat. XP is bloated enough as it is. A 3D accelerated GUI is just stupid. That goes to show you that Microsoft can't optimize anything. They'd rather just let the GPU do all the work, then optimize the GUI interface for computers without a GPU.

[MJPollard]

It uses RS-DOS

RS-DOS???

He probably means TRSDOS. Then again, the TRS-80 had more operating systems available than you could shake a stick at -- NEWDOS/80, LDOS, DoubleDOS, MultiDOS, LS-DOS, VTOS, KitchenSinkAndThenSomeOS.

[Noahtuck]

I am running XP Pro but plan to upgrade to the 64bit XP.

With all the Palladium/NGSCB/DRM Nonsense, I will stick with XP.

I'm staying with XP Pro. I may go with Vista when I'm ready for a new computer If it's not overly DRMed like I think it will be.

Yep!!!!!
With alot of the crap i have been seeing
Whether or not it's true, i guess we will have to wait and see......

And back in the day when i went to WIN98 SE, i had more problems than i could count!!! and i won't even go into WIN2K
Took me awhile to even try & go to WINXP Pro from WIN98

So i also.... will wait some time before even thinking about VISTA, and when that time comes to think about it, it better be DAMN good and not Overly Controlling or try to control what i want to do with what i want on MY pc

I'm sure i will still be using WinXP Pro for a loooooong time to come!!!!

[yoda313]

I'm staying with WIN98 Gold.
It has never given me any problems,

Then you are a fortunate one my friend. I had win 98 on my old amd athlon 800mhz. I routinely reinstalled 98 about every 6 months until I finally broke down and put win2k on it. Never had a problem after that (once I installed the last service pak for 2k that is - I got spammed to hell the first time I went online with the basic 2k ).

I tell you XP is one of the most stable windows I've had. Even 2000 had a hiccup or two. XP is very nice. Somehow I don't see VISTA being as pleasant until the SECOND version of it

[waheed]

Since Vista will be released in SEVEN different versions (and thats excluding the N editions), which one would you choose?

[cd090580]

I'm still keep XP.

I need to upgrade my hardware to run Vista

[offline]

I'm more interested in efficiency and effectiveness than eye candy. But I'll be playing with it fairly quickly just to learn the OS itself; all the while reserving Windows 2000 for the real work. When I upgrade I will consider what the new Mac has to offer before making any decisions.

[ZAPPER]

Pretty much got to stick with the "Not unless it comes bundled w/ a new PC" crowd. I would like to do a major upgrade someday, but I don't really have the time, money or ambition to start comparing all of the stuff out there.

Any OS is gonna have its' quirks and bugs, the thing is to stay within its' range . I got a dual boot setup now that I have only ever used to see if it worked, so what is another OS as long as it is cheap or free.

[ozymango]

We need a poll option for "Will end up with a copy at work whether we want to or not." I work for a college and we've got your standard agreement with MS that we get everything at huge discount, plus our network is an MS domain, AD network, so of course whenever a new MS operating system or upgrade comes out, we get it. Not necessarily on a personal level, but I'm sure we'll end with copies of Vista that we'll want to play with, just because.

That being said, the bulk of the computers we (in my immediate area) directly support are XP Pro, and the hardware we're running XP on will be hard pressed (without RAM and CPU upgrades) to deal with Vista. At least as I understand Vista, anyway. I'm sure that as we get new equipment for various departments, we'll see it more and more, but we certainly are in no hurry to jump into it. Not on a major level, anyway, but yeah definitely as soon as we get a copy we're gonna fire it up and see what breaks!

[offline]

I work for a college and we've got your standard agreement with MS that we get everything at huge discount

Microsoft Select?

[ozymango]

I work for a college and we've got your standard agreement with MS that we get everything at huge discount

Microsoft Select?

Yup! I'll give myself away, I work for Portland State University (all opinions expressed here are my own and PSU disclaims all knowledge of my activities! ), and actually we're "Microsoft Academic Select," meaning ... well, I'm not sure, exactly, just that basically we staff people can take one (1) copy home of XP and Office (current version) and it's "free," as long as we're currently employed by PSU, because basically it's the same as a "one-seat" license, we can't be both at home and at work at the same time so it's really just the one license they paid for us to use at work. Something like that! And of course we can only use this for work-related purposes and have to turn it in when we leave, and follow all the license restrictions completely, which I absolutely do of course.

Not that we get the free bennies on everything, it's still a few $$$ for things like Visio and Frontpage (!), but not much, I think it's $50 for Visio and $40 for Frontpage. There's other stuff in our MS Select package but I don't use it so I dunno the prices. Cheaper, definitely.

For me, my favorite benefit (computer-wise) is our deal with Adobe, which I think is pretty much standard for any educational insitution (or even just any student or faculty/staff person at any recognized university), where I can pick up Premiere for $89 and Photoshop for ... can't remember how much CS 2 costs because I'm still using Photoshop 6 (I know, it's antique!), but it's a heckuva lot cheaper than street price, anyway.

But the best deal I ever had was when I worked at UT Austin in Texas -- this was in the days of Windows 2K, but I picked up, for home use, copies of:

Windows 2K Pro
Office 2000 Pro
MS Visual Studio (whatever version it was, the full version)

for a total cost of $20. YOW!!! Windows and Office were no big deal, but I had great plans to teach myself to program in Visual Studio, so that was an awesome deal.

Not that I ever learned, and the discs are all now lost, in the bottom of a box somewhere.

[vitualis]

If we can flawlessly install Vista on an Intel based PowerMac that is running on the upcoming 64-bit version of Yonah with its low power but high performance dual-core sweetness, I may well buy it...



I don't really like Mac OS X but I have to admit that Apple hardware is second to none.

Regards.

[sohaibrazzaq]

i am currently running WinXP, will think of upgrading after 2-3 months after it is released since it will come out with lot of problems as XP came out.
For now, i will stick with my 32 Bit version