Vista

No dodgy software here....

Of course they do. That's why more people than the entire install base of Mac OS X downloaded Win7 BETA 7000 for free in January.

How does it feel to have an OS with such a high market penetration that a beta of a Windows OS beat it?

You can uninstall any of the Windows email clients.

Yet it was still rated higher. What does that say about the Passat other than despite having slightly better build quality the rest of it was s**te?

Wow, watch those goalposts shift. With a production run of 30 years, there's bound to be one that's crap in there.

...and that wasn't it...

Because the Austin Metro/Maestro, Vauxhall Astra, Volvo 340 and Nissan Cherry were all far better weren't they?

The only one that gave them a run in that class was the Golf GTI which the XR3i gave a very good run for its money and the MK1 RS Turbo absolutely annihilated.

Minor detail that... apparently. ;-)

XP Pro, for one.

Windows 2000 Server for another.

Just because you appear to have not got on with them, don't state as fact that no-one else has.

Indeed.

You will note that most businesses hang back on adopting *any* MS OS until it's been out for a while and has proven itself to be stable.

Just like they did with OSX, in fact mine still dual boots...

Well I had to download the latest Vista-compatible driver software. And then uninstall the original software, only to discover that the Vista-compatible stuff required the other stuff to be still installed as it was an add-on, so reboot a few times etc etc, but it did work eventually.

And the whole reason for this was that XP suddenly refused to shake hands with said scanner, giving me the unexplainable "USB Device not recognized" message.

I still bet it wouldn't work on a Mac anyway.

bwahahaha.

I happened to like the Mk3 XR3i I had... was quite quick and not bad to drive.

But the Mk3 did rot fairly well, and this one was no exception.

I've had a few Mk4s, and yes, a few didn't age well... but if you got a good one they weren't a complete horror at all, at least for their day.

As I have said in here before, I seriously looked at Mk3 Mondeos as a potential replacement for the Passat when it got written off.

My take on the two I tried was '

The Maestro was a pretty good car in a lot of respects.

I'm still thinking of getting a s**te old diesel one of these or a Montego, as something for work when that eventually picks up.

That, or if I can find someone to give me reasonable money for the Passat, I'm considering replacing it with a cheaper Berlingo HDi Multispace and something cheap to sling round a track, as in a JDM Prelude H22a.

Erm, I think you'll find the Maestro Turbo 'annihilated' both, out the box.

Ten minutes worth of wastegate tweaking, and it was even quicker.

They handled too, especially if you threw a bit of money at the suspension.

They also rot... and blow their standard intercooler if you run it with said wastegate tweaks, but then an aftermarket alloy intercooler wasn't overly expensive or hard to fit.

The Mk2 Astra GTE 16v was a better car overall than either as well - fitting a couple of strut braces and a set of Konis to tighten up the handling wasn't exactly the end of the financial world.

The Golf GTi was however, better built than the lot... but whether it was a better car to drive is another matter.

Oh, and then there's the 205 / 309 GTis... but if this is a pissing contest relating to build quality, it's not exactly a strong contender. ;-)

...no, not that I had nothing to say. ;-)

No, my take on it was that whilst it was a reasonable car, you could tell it had been built down to a price.

And when I read up on them, it would appear they have a tendency to develop plenty of expensive issues if you actually sling a few miles under them, with the most notable one the 'Timebomb DMF' which they *all* suffer with without fail at some stage, diesel wise anyway.

The most telling of all for me though, was how little they're worth at relatively low ages.

Whilst you can blame some of this on over supply of the secondhand market due to their popularity when new, the other side of that coin is that not many want them once they've done their time in a fleet.

So like I say, a reasonable car... but nowhere near as well built as a B5.5 Passat at least, and not really much to write home about when driven either.

Subtle? Personally I'd take the Mondeo because I like the way they drive.

Another reminder that Steve's not driven much in his time. The Mk3/4/5 were generally crap, but the RS Mk5 was a gem. Shame they ruined it within a couple of years.

The 2.0 EFi Maestro certainly went well and had loads of room.

Hey, it's got a VW gearbox. It'll be a proper cross country missile.

Bloody quick the Maestro Turbo. 0-60 in 6.7 or summat as standard.

Now here I have to disagree. The Mk2 Astra 16v was a decent engine wasted in a s**te car. Having said that, all the 'tweaked' ones I drove at the time had been played with by people who read Max Power and set the suspension to zero ride height / zero damping..

Nice to drive, but wasted by the Strada Abarth 130 and 205 GTi on any twisty.

Indeed, they weren't known for cupholders or squidgy dashboards, rattly dashboards being a different matter... Money went on making 'em fast, light and nimble.

I had a Golf GTi 16v, then a 309 GTi followed by a 205 GTi 1.9. Preferred driving the 309, the Golf was a nice car but the Peugeots always put a grin on the face.

Nowadays I'd go Golf / 309 / 205 as there aren't as many opportunities to give anything as much stick as there used to be.

IME early Mk4s rotted equally if not a lot worse than Mk3s. All depends on where they were made - the German-produced ones used a better quality steel and didn't rot nearly as badly.

So, from the early 80s, all the way through to the end of production, they made *one* decent version, which was around for a very short space of time..... and how many do you see around now? - mostly none, unless at an anorak show - because they all rotted away like every other Scrote ever did.

Christ aye, chap I know had one of the first Mk4 XR3is. That thing was holier than a Pious drivers argument within 7 years.

C999EVR was the reg and it was white. Proper shed.

The Mk3 RS1600i also drove well, the Mk3 (Series 1) RS Turbo drove ok, the Mk4 RS Turbo wasn't a complete disaster.

I'm not saying that FWD Escorts were brilliant, but the good ones were at least as good as most of the opposition.

Ah the Pious. The perfect vehicle for a Macboi.

Funny how a top condition MK1/2 Escort sells for more than your entire vehicle collection in your sig put together.