Vista is a deal breaker. Well, please say more. I'm very interested in secure computing, and would like your input on Vista.
Well, I can't give you any first-hand feedback on it, I haven't used it. The closest I can get is that another developer that I work with switched to Vista, and "down"graded back to XP after about a month. He couldn't get it configured properly at first, and once he did, the annoyware and crashes were overwhelming. The company I work for (institutional level financial software) still won't support it, but they do have plans to start supporting Linux for the servers, so that tells me something as well.
As to why I won't take it, even for free.... XP does everything I need doing, and so there's no compelling reason to upgrade. On the down side, I'm pissed off enough at all the little annoyances of XP (forced reboot on unattended updates, all those pop-up messages, numerous things that get in the way of my work instead of making it more efficient etc), most of which derive from MS's attitude towards their users that I'm already decided to try a Mac as soon as I can afford one, and to get more experience with Linux, just to broaden my options. Given those XP annoyances, and the apparent fact so many of the problems with Vista seem to be those same kind of issues writ large, I just won't even take the chance. Seriously, if XP just stopped working for some reason (like the next update, I wouldn't put it past MS), I'd by a Mac or install Ubuntu on my existing Windows boxes before I switched to Vista - cold turkey.
Thanks for getting back to me. I don't know when I'll be buying again, but both of my boxes are showing their age, so it may be sometime after the holidays. On the other hand, like I said, I may just go with Mac. My girlfriend may be interested in your graphics box, that's what she does, and her computer is even older than mine - it's really bogging down with the newest versions of Photoshop and other tools she uses - even after upgrading to 1 GB RAM. She also does online training (using something similar "Go To My PC"), and she's had nothing but problems with clients that are on Vista.
By the way, I recognized the name Lightspeed as one that I've seen well-recommended in some forum somewhere. Could have been Slashdot. Can you get me in on the IPO?
