[familyop]

And for those who want to avoid legal problems possible with the GPL/LGPL (Linux), BSD systems and licensing are an alternative for business applications.

[peyton randolph]

If Mr. Softee The Cash Cow decides to use spyware, you can bet there will be trial lawyers lined up around the block to sue the company six ways to Sunday. It will make the Vioxx/Bextra drug class action bonanza or the tobacco litigation look like peanuts in comparison.

What is going to happen is Mr. Softee is going to fully disclose the piracy monitoring in its OS licensing agreements...and the user has to accept as a condition of using the software. As long as there is full disclosure, the company will get away with it. If your typical Democrat can't understand the lingo, expect class action lawsuits to a lesser extent.

Of course, there is the perennial antitrust concerns. To what extent will the DOJ and the EU allow Mr. Softee to impose conditions and restrictions given its share of the marketplace.

[Constantine XIII]

Epic Footbullet.

[Fraxinus]

As far as consumers are concerned, unfortunately no Linux distribution has shown itself to be ready for prime time.

Do you think the apps and games will start to be developed for Linux? If so when?

[thegreatbeast]

... only to face the prospect of constant check-ups from some server in Redmond ... Redmond or some jobber in India?
I'm not a Gates-hater but he won't be able to sell this development to his friends in China.

[sure_fine]

that program has been trying to d/l on me for weeks now

I long ago check off from having automatic updates on XP installed for this very reason

[johnny7]

What's a... filip?

[FreedomPoster]

We need to ID some hackers, and draw and quarter them on Pay-Per-View. Do this, say, quarterly. Make sure we nab some international ones from, say, Russia and Bulgaria and China, every now and then.

I predict the incidence of hacking goes *way* down.

[Gorzaloon]

I have already had to call MS to beg them to let me run a purchased (Of Course) XP CD. I was building a system, changed a vidcard and added a SATA drive.

Well, I have Red Hat on two systems now, so it looks like it's time to really get to know it better.

What other flavors of Linux do people suggest?

[Hazcat]

Every OS Sucks!

http://www.deadtroll.com/index2.html?/video/ossuckscable.html~content

[MichiganMan]

In some cases, users who have activated a legitimate copy of Vista may need to do a number of reinstalls because they have suffered a hardware failure or their system isn't running well. Hopefully, Microsoft will be able to differentiate between that and users installing a single copy of Vista on multiple computers.

Ok, I'm a full on Linux convert, and wouldn't consider putting MS software back on my machine precisely because of their registration and DRM shenanigans (oh, and hello? Sony root kit?) but this part right here is pure FUD. The registration relies upon a hash that is produced from the PC's particular hardware. And its tolerances allows a certain amount of upgrading, ie. the video card, while major upgrades such as the mother board do indeed require a call to MS to beg permission again. But a simple re-install of the OS, even multiple times, is a non-event. XP's exhibited this behavior for years and I haven't read anything indicating that Vista will be more stringent on re-installs that don't involve hardware changes.

As far as consumers are concerned, unfortunately no Linux distribution has shown itself to be ready for prime time. Perhaps for them, the best option is to upgrade to an Apple Mac. Then they can run their Windows XP stuff in a virtual window using Parallels or in dual boot mode using Boot Camp, while also taking advantage of all the cool Mac applications that come with their system.

If the user is capable and willing to run vitualization software, then they are more than capable of successfully running Linux. The writer needs to revisit a modern Linux desktop distro if he doesn't think Linux and Linux applications are "ready for prime time"

[Vinnie]

I remember all the dire predictions concerning XP when it first hit the radar.
There were posts and articles about MS 'security' and shutting down machines because of pirated software, etc.
I refused to load it for some time, but I'm using it now and like it.

That said, I had decided some months ago that these were my last PCs.

I'm tired of having to run several (3) separate programs in the background plus several more I manually start in order to keep my computers clean.
If I leave my machines alone for 5 minutes, one or another 'anti' program starts scanning for one type of malware or another .
Sometimes they start while I'm in the middle of doing something. I have to drop what I'm doing to deal with it.

When you add up the extra money spent, the time involved, the inconvenience preventing some louse taking command of your computer, well, Apples look much more attractive.

I stopped by an Apple store in a local mall about a month ago.

Think when I upgrade, and it might be a year or two, I'm going to take the plunge.

[ekwd]

Appleganda disguised as a critique of Microsoft. My Vista Beta activation was no different than the XP activation, which generated the same kind of paranoid speculation when it came out.

My concern is program compatibility.

[antiRepublicrat]

And for those who want to avoid legal problems possible with the GPL/LGPL (Linux)

What legal problems?

[RichardW]

I've found XP to be about perfect. What's in it for me to upgrade to Vista except aggravation?

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

My pet peeve on all these threads is the false assumption that it has to be either/or these days. I have 4 machines. One laptop for work has XP pro. An older laptop I threw Fedora Core 4 on it - don't use it for much but it's there and works fine.

I have a desktop with XP home that I use mainly for Quicken, but also for multimedia - photos and mp3s. I have a FC2 desktop that I use as a samba server, web server, and all around stable machine.

If I could convert completely over to linux I probably would, but there are typically a handful of apps that require one to use windows. There is Quicken to be sure, and then a lot of digitial cameras are a pain to get working with linux. And at work there are a handful of apps with no linux equivalents.

Windows does crash, expecially when you wake it up from standby mode multiple times. It also slows down to a crawl from time to time. I know what I'm doing and I still get these problems. It's not me.

Hardware is cheap, most folks have more than one machine in their lives, and it doesn't have to be all one, or all another.

[Defiant]

This article says that Vista will search for pirated software, but doesn't say whether that means just Microsoft software, but any pirated software. I am assuming that it will only police MS software, but knowing MS, they might have grand designs to police all software. In which event, they will grandly screw up, as it would be impossible to determine whether all the downloaded games and applications are legit--which mine are.

Anyone know whether they are referring only to MS software?

[Doohickey]

Damn it, they should quit making ignition keys for cars too. I should be able to steal anything I want any time I want.