Vista

OSX and Linux distros are perfect in this respect are they? Gnome 2.24 has some monumental fuckups in it and lets not even get into KDE4.

At least Microsoft don't charge you for every service pack unlike Apple. Linux is free only if your time is worthless.

Don't reckon so. XP was welcomed as a replacement for win98SE, because it's a vaguely proper OS in the way win95/98/me weren't.

Vista's been out for a while now - and there's no hint of our company moving to it. No justification for it yet, unlike for 98 -> XP.

min is neither.

+AD4- +AD4APg- Is slow and shit. +AD4- +AD4- What spec PC ? +AD4- +AD4- Bollox to everyone, in my personal experience it's no slower than XP and +AD4- is most stable MS OS I've used (on a quad-core, nowt special). +AD4- +AD4- Let the flaming begin :)

none required. Got a 2.4 P4 that's about 5 yrs old and was vistafied on vista launch day. It's in daily use and has enough power to play most games and stuff. My laptop stayed XP until november when I replaced it with a core2 duo 2.26, 4 gig ram, and vista. It's great. Plenty of my clients running mixed vista / xp environments. No problems.

Firefox / Chrome should be fine in 2k Pro (not tried them), and VLC or XMBC also.

Vista's only real disappointment was the lack of filesystem improvements. Stability and performance wise it's as good as XP on machines with 1 gig ram or more if installed with the basic user interface.

You should have just posted 'I don't know what I'm talking about', just to save any confusion for the reader.....

PLBCAK

Oh did you ever trace that crap driver in the Sprinter with no clue about his use of hazards?

Wrong. On Slashdot/Digg et al, they published links to stories from

2001 when XP came out. It was pretty much what was being said about Vista...slow, unstable, no drivers.

XP was unbelievably s**te up to SP1, the same as Vista.

Must've been one hell of a mickey mouse company if you didn't go to Win2K.

So what monumental changes are there between 10.5 and 10.6?

Saying that, this lappy is running a T2050 and is fast enough.

I don't have a crystal ball.

I don't even use OS X and managed to find...

Apple has stated that Mac OS X "Snow Leopard" will include the following changes and improvements:

• Support for connecting to Microsoft Exchange 2007 servers will be included in Mail, Address Book, and iCal.[2] * A smaller hard drive and RAM footprint and faster installation times, under 15 minutes versus over an hour for Mac OS X v10.5. [3] * Support for up to a theoretical 16 terabytes of RAM[2] by further developing 64-bit kernel technologies.[4] * Grand Central: a parallel-programming technology[5] that aims to take greater advantage of modern multi-core CPUs, which include all current Macs.[2] * QuickTime X which will feature optimized support for modern codecs.[2] * OpenCL (Open Computing Language) will allow developers to more easily code applications to take advantage of the GPU for non-graphics computing purposes.[2] * A 64-bit kernel which provides a complete 64-bit environment for applications, along with 32-bit support for older Macs. This completes a long-running attempt by Apple to completely unify their products in

64-bit capabilities, dating back to Apple's original adoption of the PowerPC in 1994 which was 64-bit with the PowerPC G5 and slowly built into OS X starting with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther" in 2003.[6]

So basically you're going to be paying £80+ for a few security updates, actually being able to make proper use of the dual core CPU your Mac has, the ability to connect to MS Exchange, the theoretical ability to shove 16TB of RAM in, an updated Quicktime and a 64 bit Kernel with

32bit support (which MS has had for over half a decade).

Wow. What groundbreaking changes.

Most of the changes an end user isn't even going to be aware of. At least MS make glaringly obvious ones in new versions of Windows.

Mind you, it might come with a different default wallpaper though so worth it eh?

Because I'm one of the few people who recognised that Windows was a heap of festering crap that has been a pale imitation of MacOS ever since it was released.

Apple don't charge for "service packs", I don't know where you got that idea.

Refer to my comment that Windows fanbois only admit the last version of Windows was crap when the new one appears.

Get a clue and admit that they're all crippled.

'Will include' - it's miles from release and that Apple update is several months old - when talk of Snow Leopard was only just coming out.

However, it's a real focus on quality, not stuffing the OS with extra features to slow it down.

But at £80 every 2 years, I don't begrudge paying for it - especially when MS want at least double that for a retail version of their latest OS.

Obviously, you've fallen into the eye-candy trap of believing Vista is some kind of huge leap forwards - but it really isn't - it has just been designed to make Win users believe it is.

Did in some parts, not others. Some of the overseas people were quite late to move from 98 (they're tight as anything :-) ), but I think they're on XP now. Some of the other overseas people are on win2K still though. GBP 1BN turnover isn't that big, I'll admit, but I think it probably doesn't count as mickey mouse.

Everything is Mickey Mouse if it doesn't conform with Conor's views.