David, in reading your short bio, who is 'compelling' you to work on a Windows-based PC?

please tell your 'veteran tech journalist' that i have vista running great on my 'old' t42 thinkpad, a homebuilt pentium desktop/server, and my shiny new white macbook (bootcamp and vmware (awesome program BTW)).

GASP...

@Paul
The Sun's page design system is a proprietary kludge that works only on Windows. It's actually more poorly constructed than Windows itself. I also have a Mac at work, a dual G5 system, that I use to flow the business agate as well as for photo and graphics tasks.

Well, Hank, you are one of the lucky few. I know very few people who have bought a new machine with Vista on it who are satisfied with it for more than a few hours after they first turned it on.

Older machines are much worse. Unless you have Home Basic on it, you'd be lucky to get it to run at all.

Well sheesh! If you can't run Vista on a 60GB 1.8 Ghz Pentium machine then no one can!

The point of the article isn't what you can "get" Vista to run on, it's that Vista is a mess for the vast majority of people out there. This really isn't in dispute by _anyone_ but the most avid Windows fanboys.

The reason Macs are considered superior by those who do is because it works the way people expect it to. When you _think_ something ought to be done a certain way, generally that's what the OS X designers have done. Something you absolutely cannot say about Windows of any flavor.

Anyone who does not have to use a PC for work would be doing him or herself a disservice by not buying a Mac. There really isn't anything you can do on a PC that you can't do on a Mac and a LOT you can do a lot easier on a Mac than a PC!

JoeL

I had XP running a thinkpad Z61m when purchased but switched to Vista when it came out last year. I had software compatibility issues for a month but most software responded favorably and I've been very happy with Vista since. Vista is more secure (i don't mind being prompted to allow a program to run once or twice a week), allows for much easier searching, arranging and navigating through data files and it is much more attractive to look at than XP. My system is not beefed up by any means and it is quite responsive with multiple programs running. I think that those whose choose to take the time to go beyond critiquing in order bash Vista spend too much timing their computers with a stopwatch, hate microsoft so much that they are incapable of being objective or just need to write an article that makes a splash.
I personally love Macs and appreciate their internal/external beauty, efficiency and engineering. However, in environments that demand compatability with multiple low profile programs (such as medical school) Macs can create more frustration than Vista ever will.
People hated XP when it was released too. People still hate XP and Vista's successor will be hated as well. We all know that most of these people will not be your average consumer or professional.

Journalists must be getting a different version of Vista to the rest of us.

It's a fine system that runs fast and smooth as silk if you pay the same price for your PC as you would for a Mac.

I've been using Vista for two months now, and absolutely no complaints or crashes. Ignore the doubters and doom mongers - XP is already history.

Vista isn't a problem because it's bloated, or because it was designed by committees that didn't talk to each other, or because Microsoft finally got smart and decided not to make their OS backwards-compatible with people still running their Kaypro IBM clones on an 8088 chip.

The problem is that for the majority of users Vista gets in the way. It constantly interferes with a user's workflow and thought processes to say "Are you sure you want me to do this?"

On the other hand, for novices and panicky types like my parents, Vista will protect them from themselves. Or at least protect me from having to clean their computer of viruses, trojans, spyware and the like every time I visit...

I worked at Apple for nearly twenty years and recently decided that I needed to buy a new HP laptop with Vista because in my new career in real estate I have to deal with forms generation packages that are Windows only.

Buying a new HP laptop was significantly cheaper than buying another Mac laptop with the storage I needed and a Windows license.

There is no question that Vista needs improvement especially in wireless networks, booting speed, and waking from whatever state it goes into when it sleeps.

I call my MacBook an instant-on computer compared to my HP.

Having said that I find that the web works better on a Windows computer and there are some peripheral devices in our office that I can now use that I couldn't use with a Mac.

I also find the HP laptop better hardware than my MacBook which had to be repaired at less than six months.

Apple is far from perfect. It you are a long time user, you would notice that a number of Apple applications, iPhoto and iMovie included, are being dumbed down in an attempt to broaden the Macs appeal.

There is no way that calendaring, contacts and business applications are as good on the Mac as they are on Windows. Google desktop search integrated into Outlook is a far better search engine than Apple's Spotlight.

I even skipped upgrading to Leopard because I saw no compelling reason to pay Steve's operating system tax.

I would love for Windows and OS X both to quit focusing on the glitz and just try to make sure everything works really well.

If they don't some combination of Google Apps and Linux is eventually going to win.

I just bought a Zonbu Linux computer with no hard drive. It is a breath of fresh air.

I can see the future of computing and I don't think it will be Windows or OS X.