Because you have a working install of Vista does not mean that Vista is not glitchy. There are plenty of legitimate issues with vista, outside of hardware incompatibility and third party providers. I have seen installs fail (cyclic BSOD) on new vista loaded branded laptops during reinstalls with original disks.

It is a buggy OS. I mean, I am just tickled that you have a functioning iteration. Most people do. The amount of people who do not is an unacceptable sum.

Considering that the Republicans have been in charge for the majority of the last 50 years, it takes some real spin and serious self-delusion to pin the public school system's woes solely on the democrats. Don't skip on your medications.

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I'm a Tarty Fart, What! You want some of this?
Ignorance is treatable. Stupidity ain't.

"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." ---Albert Einstien

I think he means the larger point of it being a socialist entity... as is each of our greatest failures (military not withstanding)... and is equating that ideology to liberalism.

Vista isn't horrible, XP is just better. Windows 7 should eclipse both easily, every once in a while even the great companies release lemons.

My XP computer is far more stable than my Mac (eMac 1ghz G4 512 10.4). In fact, I installed XP on a pentium 2 at 333 mhz with 256 megs of ram and it ran far faster than the (*)(*)(*)(*) eMac.

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"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion." ~ George Washington / "I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature." ~ Thomas Jefferson / "A just government has no need for the clergy or the church." ~ James Madison

"All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party."

-Chairman Mao

http://imgur.com/ESOy.png

You want to show where you got those numbers on Republicans.

I'll wait, as the Democrats have had control of Congress far more in my lifetime. The Teachers Unions are not run by Republicans either. Come out to California sometime.

bloody hell, school boards are almost always non-partisan. Why are you guys arguing about this?

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"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion." ~ George Washington / "I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature." ~ Thomas Jefferson / "A just government has no need for the clergy or the church." ~ James Madison

"All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party."

-Chairman Mao

http://imgur.com/ESOy.png

Do they really check what you're doing on the computer in Iran? I hear stories of how strict things are there. It's always better to hear from someone that is there. Then I know everything in the USA is screened.

As a member of the MSDN, I was really unhappy with Vista as it was rolled out to the public in January 2007. Incompatibilities, inconsistencies, driver problems, etc., etc.

But Gates must have gotten a big stick and straightened things out in Redmond because Vista Service Pack 1 really did fix probably 98% of everything that was wrong with the new OS. My colleagues and I were highly suspicious of SP1 when it came out last March, and so we tested the hell out of it for about 90 days. At this point, the few remaining problems with Vista seem mostly to be those related to printers and printer drivers, and I'd blame much of that on the printer manufacturers. One thing's for sure: when you buy any peripheral hardware be CERTAIN that it is, in fact, Vista-compatible! That applies even to something as lowly and ubiquitous as USB keyboards.

That said, this past summer, four of us built new high-performance rigs, and after looking over everything that was available, we all chose the Vista Home Premium 64-bit operating system.

One suggestion: if you adopt Vista, use one of the 64-bit offerings if only because you'll be able to utilize far greater amounts of system RAM. In operation, Vista is a "Pit Bull" among lap dogs -- you can't feed it soybeans and cereal. It wants dripping red meat! And by this I mean it wants a very robust dual-core processor, and lots and lots of RAM. Equip Vista properly and you'll love it -- but if you starve it, you'll hate it. Another thing you'll appreciate is that Vista is far less vulnerable to viruses and spyware than XP, and that had much to do with its architecture in the first place -- to make it much more secure.

I run an Intel E8400 dualcore overclocked to 3.6 GHz, and 8 GB of DDR2 800 MHz system RAM, plus, 4 GB of readyboost on a thumbdrive (probably superfluous, but what the hell....).

BTW, if you decide to bypass Vista and wait for "Windows 7" (the next OS, not due out until 2011), you're going to see that it looks a lot like Vista, and behaves a lot like Vista, too.

I wish political machines ran as well as our computers do....

Yes, he put it together himself. But a nearly identical PC system (Quad with 6Gb RAM) could be configured at Dell for about $350 less with MS Office included, along with comparable versions of the programs that come with a preinstalled on a Mac. (Vista was the OS as Dell didn't offer an XP option) Additionally, Apple doesn't offer a BlueRay DVDRW.

Software wise, the only thing Apple bundles that you don't find an immediately comparable Windows applications are some aspects of ILife (IWeb and Garageband). Since ILife retails for about $79, that still doesn't mitigate the disparity in hardware performance.

The point being for the same amount of outlay you get a far more powerful system from a reputable PC manufacturer than you do from Apple. Apple's strength isn't in its performance but its perception.

Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy our MacBook and IMac. But to say they're a superior platform overall doesn't gibe with the reality. They're better at some things but not all. And they are overpriced for what they deliver, imo. I'm just grateful that my partner's work allows him to get them much cheaper.

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Toodley-doo,
Maggie.

I guess my only comment to that is that I think your figure is somewhat exaggerated as to what has and has not been fixed... but yes... most of what plagues people are the third party drivers, which are not exactly the fault of Vista, except that it is such a pain in the @ss to write for.

Until very recently you couldn't even get a 64 bit flash reader, but most manufacturers have really stepped up to the plate with 64 bit support. I guess I was just very dismayed in the first public releases that most of the MCE software native to Vista could not even function due to lack of support. There wasn't a top shelf anti-virus that would work with it for almost a year after its release. I have hostility that Microsoft would release such an unsupported OS, which is built on the same dammed kernel as xp, 2000... hell it is technically Windows NT 6.02.

At the end of the day, the native OS (Vista), while more resistant to malware, is not sufficient on it's own to handle the task... that being accepted as true... since you have to run protection anyway... why not stick with XP, and get better performance on cheaper hardware? Why go the way of the glitchy and resource hungry? What is my motivation? To spend more money to perform poorer... oh... no wait... that is their motivation.

Sell me on this OS.