Now, you've brought up a subject I like to rant about. I'm a senior support tech with the usual "major computer manufacturer" and I know from day in and day out experience that 4 out of 5 times when someone says "Vista is junk cause it won't do this" it's because either the user doesn't know how to do it or there is no OS that can do it without adding additional software. Many people have the idea that an OS is all they need to do anything a computer can do. And I can't recall how many people have had their data saved and easily recovered (easy being the key) because they were running Vista and not XP, GNU/Linux, or OS X. That's where Microsoft butting in can actually help. It's also true that Microsoft updates break computers often, but I've had the same in Linux.
Now, my main computer currently boots Kubuntu and XP Pro (and, God no, not SP3) and at one time I had it also booting Vista Ultimate. It has two other HDDs in it that I hook in now and then to boot Mandriva 2008 Powerpack and Fedora 8. Somewhere, there might be a copy of Windows 7 Build 6801
. The second computer on my desk boots OpenSuse 11.0 or TinyMe. The notebook in the drawer will boot to a command line Linux solely for play. The computer next to my desk should boot to PC-BSD if I remember correctly. Don't know how many LiveCDs are laying around, but particular favorites there are Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux. All of them are operating systems, not miracles, and do what an OS is supposed to do. I currently, and mostly, boot to Kubuntu. I will have to boot to XP later in order to work on some files from my second job (proprietary software issue, though I'm working on it). My wife's computer has XP Pro and Ubuntu and she will not go to Vista solely because she doesn't want to change. She uses XP - the Ubuntu is for me. My 4 year old daughter uses XP. I had thought about putting Edubuntu or similar on my daughter's PC, but figured when she gets to school she'll be using Windows so might as well let her learn it better. She can get on my computer and use Linux on it. I have no problem with Apple's OS, as it's mostly just modified Darwin UNIX and their EFI should be the standard instead of BIOS. (For any Apple fanboy who doesn't know, Apple did not invent EFI, which is an argument I hear often.) I have a HUGE problem with Apple and their approach to software and hardware. People who complain about Microsoft being heavy handed are completely ignorant of Apple. Of course, if you don't mind their way of doing business, you do get a working computer for 2-3 times what a Windows PC would cost you.
I tweak all my OS's, with any version of Linux being the most moddable, and I don't know how many times I've broken my systems doing tweaks. Vista is no harder or easier to tweak than XP and, generally, the same tweaks work. Vista is much, much easier to do networking on than XP for the general public and its GUI has interfaces for much more than XP had, though, sometimes it can be hard to find the right window with the right box to click. Yes, it works best with as much RAM as you can fit on the board and a real graphics card, but XP also uses way more resources than it needs to. So does KDE4 on Linux, come to that. And I wish that every OS had a search function that operated as fast and as well as Vista's. The Start Search box is the absolute jewel of Vista.
A particular quirk of mine is that I truly like Windows Solitaire and have a modded copy that I use on both Windows and Linux machines.
I have no problem with any operating system - it's the users who suck. :whip: