OK, first and foremost let me say that Vista in its own right is a huge success on Microsoft's part. If I were the average Joe who went out and purchased the software for my brand new PC, this would be the OS of my dreams. It's visually attractive, secure, and well built. Yes, Vista by most standards is the perfect OS.

But I'm not the average Joe, and chances are, neither are you. I'm a technology enthusiast and I just so happen to have a great interest in these things. Don't get me wrong, I still think Vista is "all that." I just feel Microsoft has shot itself in the foot with Vista - in some ways they might not have counted on. Here's a quick recap, things I've said for months on the site.

First is the notion that Vista sales are slow because of pirates. This story is just that, a story... better yet, an excuse. Vista isn't slowed by pirates in undeveloped countries, at least not for most of the general population. Let's not just go waving the "RIAA" flag around just yet. So what explains the bubble bursting sales? Simple... Microsoft themselves.

Let me explain...

Sales of Vista likely looked like a sure thing. XP was a success beyond measure and that should have meant big things for the predecessor. Except wait, XP was a success. Mama always said, "If it 'aint broke, don't you dare go fixin' it!" Yes m'am.

Microsoft created the OS we dreamed about 6 years ago. It was called Windows XP. And no, it's not perfect, and it's certainly not the most secure OS out there. But it works. And it works with our stuff we've collected, bought, and paid for over the last 6 years.

Vista has better security... well so does my security client that works in XP. Vista has a better GUI... great, my current graphics card works fine without a pretty interface in XP, but it didn't work in Vista. So much for that pretty GUI huh? My sound card plays great sounds in XP - it works, but they crack and pop in Vista bc my sound card company decided not to support Vista. My applications and hardware ALL work in XP. They all have support, drivers, and such. They've been tried and tested many times. Vista, not so much. It's pretty hit and miss, even now, nearly 30 days after public release with drivers and support from a lot of vendors. I don't blame MS for this, but it'd have been nice to have support for my stuff. All this makes me think, "Wait, why am I upgrading again?"

Good question.

You know, MS can point the finger at whomever they want IMHO. The lack of initial sales originates with the fact XP is a solid OS for most users. At this point, the only people buying Vista are big enthusiasts, folks who needed the security, or anyone buying a brand new PC. How many of you fit that description? Out of the 14,000 visitors here each day I'm guessing that 1500 of you are the BIG enthusiasts who bought it the first day (or week), 1000 might have upgraded due to security, and 800 of you have a brand new PC with Vista. That's right under 25% of the readers on this site. And what about the other 75%? OK, lets remove all the Apple and Linux people combined. The other 74% of you (yeah, like I'm wrong)?

The rest of us are quite happy with XP... for now. And if SP3 for XP makes it as Vista-like as I think it will, well... let's just say the road to Vista might get even longer. A lot longer.

Make no mistake about it, I have both versions installed (XP Pro and Vista Ultimate) and I continue to use XP because it works with EVERYTHING on my PC. Period.

The other flaw MS has made in my honest opinion is their marketing. Who in the heck decided that in all these commercials about "The WOW starts now" that flip-screen-3D was the COOLEST feature in Vista? Big whoop-te-do. Who cares? How about promote the big security improvements, or the organization improvements? Show off that GUI some, or just one of the other half-dozen new features in Vista. I mean seriously.

Instead I'm sitting here comparing Vista's flip-screen ads to Apple's much more effective "Accept or Deny" ads with the UAC agent (which is quite funny, though exaggerated, by the way).

Oh the woes of Vista... and it's not likely to end. With the holiday season long gone and the stretch of Spring and Summer (warm weather) ahead of us, that's not looking like good news for the software giant.

That's all I have to say about that. And yes, I wrote this from within XP. Don't get me wrong, I love Vista Ultimate. I have all the new hardware to prove it.

-John C. Derrick
Founder

These are all the same reasons I spend 99% of my day in Windows XP. Quite honestly I'm a little surprised at myself about that - LOL. Having been involved with Vista since it's Pre-Beta days, I thought I would be an "early adopter" of Windows Vista.

At the moment, all I do in Vista is keep it running good by booting to it and updating virus definitions daily to make sure everything is still running good, and keeping it up and running on my test system so that I can answer questions that are asked on this forum.

This is despite the fact that all the applications I use on a daily basis, work in Windows Vista. The only issues I face are with not being able to maintain the format of my emails in .dbx format (an important consideration for those that need to keep a database of emails going back several years) and the only game I play with any frequency not having OpenGL support in Vista.

I do know some folk who have recently gotten new systems with only Vista installed who seem to be happy with using it. They generally fall into the "average Joe" category though and make no more use of their systems than to write the odd letter and send and receive the odd email.

Like Grav!ty, I also spend the majority of my computer time in XP............... and I think I can at least explain the reasons for this......... Right now there is a "hardware gap" or should I say a hardware overlap with IDE and SATA HDD's. This is currently not an issue with XP, as most XP installs can either find the SATA hdd or you simply press F6 to load the drivers for the SATA/RAID you wish to install to. NOT necessarily so for Vista, and when you get folks bringing home preinstalled Vista and wanting to put XP on it (NOT as designed by the logical flow of things OS), and to top it off, these folks may notice that they have an open SATA/IDE (Depending on what Vista was installed on) port and wish to utilize it................ Vista just makes it more difficult right now to troubleshoot all this mishmash of hardware, so most of my time is spent trying to understand that. At some point, I think IDE will go through its deaththrows and we'll all be happier with figuring out what SATA/RAID controllers people are using.......lol

I have been running Vista solely on my 3-year old laptop for several weeks now, and besides dismal gaming performance (thus, no more system-intensive games) and some other annoyances, the experience has been somewhat positive. Early adoption always has its flaws, and especially Vista ... but some of us can't help it

I'm going to go out on a limb with a guess. Give Vista about, eh 18 months and I think it'll start to even out between XP and Vista (in the home market - and that may be a generous guess). In the business market... give it around 36 months or so. Most businesses are only now fully transitioning to XP (yes it seemingly takes that long, or at least it does here, LOL). The government agency I work at just NOW (as in last week) upgraded to Office 2003. I've been running XP there about 2 years now, maybe 3. But some folks are still using 2K. When I started there in 2001 I was using NT still.

To further my case, my wife, who works at a major newspaper, uses Windows 2K as well. Big businesses don't always upgrade as fast as some think they do. The tide can be much slower in those environments.

I've done work for larger companies that still have 2000 pro workstations and even some Server 2000 systems.........