I have Halo 2 for xp... XD
Well, yeah.
That kind of proves my point, though; it was easily patched to run on XP, hence the only reason it's a Vista exclusive is to push copies of Vista -- lame marketing tactic.
I've used Vista for a good few hours, and I still like XP more. XP just feels like theres less bullshit I have to slice through to do what I need to do.
I gave myself about a week with Vista before I realized that, for the most part, I like it more. Some of the things take time to get used to but, in the long run, I felt that they were placed in a more logical spot.
What really bugs me is when people judge Vista in a bad light and praise OS X. People say Vista takes up a lot of disk space. OS X used up about that much disk space back in
2001 (and I have the 10.1 discs to prove it). Right now, a base installation of OS X uses 5.1GB of space, not far shy of Vista.
People whine about how much memory Vista takes, then try to "prove their point" by posting the amount of memory usage in the task manager. No dice -- Vista aggressively caches operating system components so the more RAM you have the more memory it's going to use. On my main 2GB system at work it took close to 1GB of RAM normally, on my 512MB test system it only used 300-350MB. This "excessive" memory usage made the OS respond even faster without hammering the hard drive. OS X requires 256MB of RAM and recommends 512MB or 1GB but, in my experience, around 384MB is essentially a requirement. Of course, as time goes on, operating systems will require more RAM -- OS X 10.1 had about the same requirements as XP (though slightly higher) while the later versions have roughly the same practical requirements as Vista (though slightly lower). Whoopdie-doo.
People whine about UAC. For one, you can turn it off, secondly, it's a friggin button that needs to be pressed. That's it. You try to change a system setting, you click the button, done, that's it. A bit of retention would be nice (i.e. click it once every ten minutes if you're changing a lot of things) but it really isn't a big deal. I configured my mom's laptop for her with UAC on and it didn't bother me at all. What kills me is how OS X goes about doing that. Not only does it prompt you for the same basic things as Vista (and the same amount of times) but it asks you for your password every single freaking time and
there's no way to shut it off. While I am used to using su/sudo to perform administrative tasks, I'm not used to having to type in my password repeatedly. When doing updates on my PowerMac I remember having to type in my password about ten times just to do updates. Argh!
People whine that the UI takes up too many system resources. Okay, fair enough, but maybe if they spent less time whining about it and more time poking around they'd see that, even in 2006-2007, you can still use "Windows 95 mode." Additionally, there is even an XP-level skin for people who don't want it to look like a relic but don't have the hardware for the full Aero look.
People whine that there are too many editions of Vista. Eh, not so much. There are four editions for home (Starter, Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate) and three for business (Business, Enterprise, and...Ultimate). The Starter edition is limited to "emerging markets," Enterprise is limited to enterprise licensees, and Ultimate works in both environments. So, really, there's four editions that people would be likely to get -- Basic, Premium, Business, and Ultimate. I think we can all agree that Basic is useless. It's not much less than Premium and sheds plenty of useful features (Media Center is a huge one). Most people have absolutely no use for Ultimate. I mean, honestly. Business takes out a lot of features that are of limited (read: nonexistent) use in a business, so most people aren't going to want that. So, uh, anyone up for Home Premium?
I dunno, I just think that the only reason Vista received as much flak as it did is because Microsoft made it. Most of the rants that I've read about Vista are uninformed and irrational; it's like people talk negatively about it before they've even looked at the install media.
