Promising yes, but less relevant if the machines came with Vista pre-installed. That's the real story: how many folks upgraded XP machines to Vista? - Kevin C. Tofel
promising no, forced yes. I've been testing it for awhile now, some things are very slow (file copy), if XP were better at handling advanced CPUs and more memory i'd swap back. - clarke thomas
Promising possibly but I'm hearing a huge revolt from people who GET Vista and were expecting an O/S they could use. May mean a huge bonus for those smaller shops and possibly Ubuntu - Andrew MacNeill
I work in company where we blocked all machines to upgrade to vista,we even downgraded some machine to Win2000,vista is not well received in most company,let the user discover what they need to get vista running properly and all the app you where used to run on other OS,they all soon downgrade or move to linux,or better and easier: buy a nifty Mac - Ben Borges
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Ed, then it's not really "promising for sure" from Rob's perspective, is it? Basically with your statement, his observation has less to do with Vista, and much more to do with new PC sales. ;) - Kevin C. Tofel
Well, I think the (mistaken) conventional wisdom is that people hate it so they either (a) aren't buying new PCs or (b) are downgrading to XP or sticking with XP. My near-universal experience with ordinary users is that they like Vista and consider it an improvement over XP. - Ed Bott
I don't see any big advantage to upgrading to Vista. I installed Vista on my laptop at home about a year ago and do like it (don't love it), though my laptop seems to overheat now from time to time. Considering going back to XP if I have the time to deal with the formatting and installation. - Justin Korn
I guess I'm in the minority here. I bought a laptop 6 months ago and decided to have it shipped with Vista... moving forward and all. Blue screens, memory dumps, hard drive scans, and random reboots are how I was rewarded. Maybe it was just a bad install? I did a fresh install; Same errors. Next install; I am now happily running XP Home. Of course i had to finance my own copy because Dell won't admit that Vista was a horrible option for my laptop. - Becca
My parents bad mouth Vista every chance they get. I'm currently in a windows-free environment, so I can't say. - Brian Norwood
@Kevin C. Tofel - Not many at all, I think. Most are new purchases - about what I expected.I'd never encourage anyone to upgrade from XP. - Rob Bushway
@Kevin and @Ed: A lot of regular folks I'm seeing are choosing to buy new laptops with Vista rather than staying put with what they had with XP. I'm with Ed. This to me shows that regular home users are not "holding out" for the next version - nothing scientific, just something I've been picking up on as I've seen people out and about. IMO - Vista is a marked improvement over XP, especially Tablet stuff. - Rob Bushway
Vista should work better with likely more powerful new laptops, and user experience should be more positive on those devices. There are still things I don't like in Vista, but overall I'd take Vista if my device is capable of running it well. I agree with Rob in that Vista is remarkably better for tablet pc platform. I will take Vista anyday over bloated tabletpc xp edition. - Inksim
I upgraded from XP to Vista and then immediately disabled a bunch of the security junk. Personally I like Vista. Most people seem to dislike it because of the popups you get every time you try to do anything or make any kind of changes. As long as it's disabled it runs just fine. - Richard Miles
I get 90% fewer errors on my new Vista Media Center PC then I did on my old XP Media Center PC. It also handles my very large digital media library much better than it's predecessor. I've been really impressed with Vista's performance and there are lots of things about it that I like even more than my primary computer, my MacBook Pro. - Thomas Hawk
Rob, I completely agree with you, Thomas and Ed about Vista being better than XP. That's why I've used it on all of my PCs for over 2 years. My point still remains: if folks are buying new PCs with Vista, how is that "promising for sure"? Is it promising for Vista, for the PC market, for the economy? - Kevin C. Tofel
For me it is a wash -- nothing in Vista that is compelling but since it came with the laptop and works reasonably well ... - Brian Sullivan
@Becca - It sounds like you had a hardware misconfiguration. The only reason you'll see blue screens and random reboots like that is 1) bad memory or 2) bad hardware...but since everything is running fine in XP, it was probably a bad driver for one of your components while running Vista. - Justin Korn
I'm not upgrading from XP Pro on my Dell. Still helping too many friends with Vista peripheral compatibility problems... it makes me nervous having to spend so much time managing it. - Sally Church
Vista has been great for me. Using XP is a hassle - Shey
@Kevin - I think it is promising for MSFT, Vista and the PC market ( economy in general ). What I had been frequently hearing are that people are digging in their heals and largely ordering computers with XP and staying away from Vista like it was the plague. What I'm seeing visually is that isn't the case. Now, I'm not sure they are buying the new laptop because of Vista, but I don't perceive Vista being the stumbling block to keep them from buying. - Rob Bushway
promising??? I guess you are in the PC tech support/repair business - lol - JackRyanBauer
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Rob, I hope you're right... in my travels, I see far more XP these days, which is a shame. Could be that I see notebooks and not desktops... - Kevin C. Tofel
It was a little shaky back in the early days with driver and program support, but I haven't had a problem with Vista in a solid nine or ten months. It's far more stable than XP *ever* was for me. Yeah, I'd have expected more than a modest improvement after five some odd years - but I really don't get all the Vista hate, or conversely the sudden love for XP (surely one of the worst OSes in history, that didn't become remotely usable until SP2). - Eric P
you could donate it to the USO so they in turn could give it to a member of the armed svcs so they can call home - JohnBfromMemphis
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I'm giving mine to a friend who has wanted to take the plunge. - Steve Isaacs
Support Network for Battered Women accepts used cells. Help some women be safe from her abusive jerkface spouse. http://tinyurl.com/5tyyxg - Vinny Green
Yep, your list of "Mobile Phone/Email, TiVo, GPS, PC, iPod" +++ RSS, FriendFeed!, Google mobile apps, online banking, BlackBerry 3G unlimited data & internet access! w00t! with GPS geo-location built right in to the phone; plus Mobile Video, Mobile Camera (ok it's only 2.0 Mpx), my "good" digital camcorder; WiFi, NAS data server, ultra fast Cisco routers on broadband internet. Also, my husbands medical equipment: hi-tech Blood Pressure monitor and Full Lipid/Cholesterol Blood analyzer. - Susan Beebe
just commented on your blog but copy/pasting here: A fine, well judged analysis. Robert said something to me via Twitter recently regarding Twitter's recent problems. I suggested that, collectively, we should consider taking it easy on Twitter as it is, after all is said and done, a free service. Robert replied that it it wasn't, in fact, a free service as he paid for it in his attention. As Robert put it; "My time isn't free. Is yours?" It struck me as a curious way of looking at things, but not an approach that I would necessarily dismiss out of hand. However, if this is a model of "commerce" that he finds validity in then I think it's something Robert should do well to remember i.e. we are all paying for Robert by OUR attention and we expect a decent ROI with less supercilious 'downtime' . - Scott O'Raw
Well written Steven. Robert will probably enjoy it to be at the center of this one ;) In general I'm thinking that there is only one relevant filter of information and that is the user himself. I have serious doubts that the mass on the Internet even remotely feels the pressure of noise. Why? Because they aren't into this rat race of wanting to know everything first and then echo about it. Chose the people and sources you wish to follow carefully and the noise disappears instantly. - Alexander van Elsas
We can still discover new things by trying out different sources, but unfollowing is more important than following. If you hit a source of noise (it's personal), then get rid of it. If the noise helps you discover new signal, well, deal with it. I'd rather not use algorithms too much, because they tend to flatten out the world, letting us all hear the same things. Having said all this, I realize I use Google on a daily basis ;-) - Alexander van Elsas
Well said Alexander! We share the same opinion on filters, and how the user and I mean the lambda-user, should be the center of content filtering. As I already said, Popularity of the content is the perversion of interest. It's not because something gets popular (by any mean) that it has to be significant for "me". Thus no algorithm that doesn't explicitly consults me on my needs will be able to filter content for me. Maybe people will be interested by our thread http://friendfeed.com/e/37cf27... - directeur
But as I already said: It's up to them :) - directeur
Random thought: In one respect, social networks do not distinguish between A-listers and listers of any other letter. Thus, the feed from Scobleizer has no more, or no less, validity than All Things Jennifer. Both are different, and both are interesting. I wonder, however, about the average Twitter user with only ten followers; if you only have a few people in your network, perhaps you should only have personal friends. - Ontario Emperor
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@Alexander I definitely agree that this problem is more of an early adopter problem and that the typical web traveller probably won't even consider this discussion anything more than just plain silly. - Steven Hodson
@OE it might be interesting if one could assign a importance value to those in our various "friends" lists so that one's near the top would bubble to the surface faster than those at the bottom. As such let's say I gave you and Alexander a higher value than Robert. I would still get Robert's input but anything from you or Alexander would automatically place higher then Robert the moment either of you posted something. Just a thought. - Steven Hodson
Robert does produce a prodigious volume. But his S/N ratio is still much higher than most bloggers/posters/producers. Even when the ratio slips sometimes the quality of the signal is so high that not listening means you are missing a lot. Others I turn off or on occasionally when their spew gets annoying (Winer, Arrington are examples) but so for I have never tuned out Scoble for even a day. Of course this is always one of those YMMV issues. - Brian Sullivan
@Brian I agree with you concerning Robert's S/N ration but I find that in FF at least I still see the more important "signals" of his via the "Friends of Friends" option so I don't *need* to be subscribed to him. Previously I was a follower on Twitter but the noise got to be too much. His blog (and link blog) I have always subscribed to except for one very short period when *everything* was video related and I wasn't interested. Like you said though YMMV - Steven Hodson
