I don't know if you realize this or not but Vista was released over a year before Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and will be supported on the desktop for a year longer than 8.04 LTS (On the server they say support extends to April 2013). Here is how it breaks down:

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, released April 24 2008, supported until April 2011 (Desktop) and April 2013 (Server)

Windows Vista, released January 30, 2007, supported until April 10, 2012.

And keep in mind that date for Vista is Mainstream Support Retired. They've gone out of their way to keep products afloat as evidenced by keeping XP alive as long as they have. These numbers pretty much show that Vista is more of an LTS release than Ubuntu 8.04, if you're going by raw amount of time where the system will be supported. I like Ubuntu myself and recommend it to people looking into Linux, but come on now, Microsoft isn't allowed to release a new Windows until their previous one has been completely EOL'd?. It's not like Ubuntu isn't releasing non-LTS versions while still supporting 8.04.

And if you were just fooling around with your posts, well... well played, sir.

The thing was just recently announced, today. How about we let some time pass before we try to definitively state what is and isn't going to be added or removed? It's not entirely unlikely that during the course of development new spells abilities and talents will be fleshed out.

That gear you're complaining about, the previous arena season gear, is not only complete crap for PvE (Compared to gear you can get as drops in instances) but it doesn't even cost just honor points. Lots of these items are purchased with tokens and badges or require a minimum amount of rating. You get what you pay for, and if you think you're hot stuff in your easy PvP gear, well, have fun getting owned.

As far as what's happened to AV, AV has been the way it's been since what, the release of TBC? To call it mindless is a bit of a stretch, though a lot of the time it does come down to a match to see which team can manage to b-line to the other factions bosses. AV is still fun, I don't see what your objection could be, and there are plenty of other battlegrounds with differing playstyles. Personally, I thought the old, original AV was just about the most boring thing ever until they streamlined it.

P.S. -- "huge wave" of AFKers is a bit of an overstatement. I hardly ever see this problem, maybe it's just because I'm lucky to be in the Cyclone battlegroup.

EasyBCD is free you know... 3 hours of "messing with the new BCD crap" is completely unnecessary, and adding your XP x64 boot entry would have taken a mere minute. And this "new" stuff isn't really new, unless you consider "since Vista" to be new.

But yes, I suppose it could be mildly upsetting that the bootloader didn't automatically pick up on your other Windows installations. You really made the troubleshooting hard on yourself though. :)

Is it really -that- difficult for you to check beforehand whether or not the driver version you are currently using will work properly with the kernel upgrade? You do realize that you never ever absolutely have to upgrade your kernel if everything is working hunky-dory, right? Right? You get what you deserve if you upgrade willy-nilly without taking into account such a thing.

That list shows a whole bunch of relatively trivial user interface changes, many of which could easily be achieved by third party add-ons for XP already e.g. launchy instead of new start menu).

Maybe people like having the stuff built into the OS instead of going out and collecting a bunch of third party applications to provide basic functionality. On the topic of launchy, I found it to be completely useless and no substitute for the start menu, and guess what, a lot of people feel that way too. You know, a lot of people don't even like Firefox! I'm not one of those people though, it's my favorite browser, but I digress...

Many of the changes are just arbitrary, and many are completely irrelevant to me - new media player (don't use it) etc... They complete whacked up the configuration part (LAN/IP settings), at least before SP1. Haven't tried it since.

And this is where we get to some real beef of your post, which proves that you have no clue what you're talking about. You admit that you haven't tried post-SP1, and I'm willing to bet your pre-SP1 experiences lasted about a day or two. That's how things seem to go with Vista bashers. The changes are not just arbitrary, though I will grant that not all of them are going to be relevant to you. When was the last time you saw a new Linux kernel release, or Ubuntu/Fedora/Debian release, where every single change was applicable to you and entirely beneficial? The answer, none. I find that the figure of 25% which you pulled out of your ass is about 24% higher than the amount of useful stuff for me when it comes to new Linux distro or kernel releases (Which is, by the way, a completely irrelevant metric to be using because I am not the center of the universe). Does that mean that Linux distros are just throwing on a bunch of fluff because it's not always stuff that is directly applicable to me and my usage scenarios? Not in the least.

The new media player was a welcome addition for the people who actually enjoy using it, and the people who have to use it from time to time. I know this might be hard for you to understand, but diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. One of my old friends would insist on WMP because of his multimedia keys, among other things. Other friends just plain like it. You can't convert everyone to software that you personally feel is superior (I always push VLC). The TCP/IP configuration, I have no idea what the hell you are talking about because undearneath all of the new stuff, behind the new Networking Center, it's got the same goddamn configuration dialogs that have been here since 2k/XP. Boo hoo you might have to dig one level deeper to get to something. Every Average Joe desktop user I come across likes the way the Networking Center presents information instead of just having Interface 1 Interface 2 Wireless 1, stuff like that. It's more accessible and it gives more information on the surface, with the same amount of depth underneath.

At a quick glance I can find no major "killer" feature - just a bunch of minor changes. Out of these: - 25% are nice and useful - 25% I hate - 25% Are complete useless to me (new fonts, media player, language support etc...) - 25% are arbitrary interface changes

Are you so dense that you can't understand that stuff like language support and an enhanced user interface are things that most users appreciate? Language support especially because uhhh hey guess what, lots of people like to use their computer in their own language/locale. Localization progress is touted by every software project including Windows because it's important. If you really think these are arbitrary user interface changes then what it really boils down to is how resistant you are to change your own computing habits, even if those changes would ultimately result in increased workflow and production. When you stop resisting these changes and start learning their advantages, the reasons why they were implemented begin to become very clear. You probably think the breadcrumb navigation is a pain in the ass when it's as simple as clicking the location bar to turn it into the old-style. But no, that extra click is unforgivable to you, and you can't be bothered to adapt to a more efficient paradigm. This particular one I hear a lot of people complaining about, and it just so happens to be the same change that every other desktop environment is implementing or has already implemented.

Wow, how awesome. Coupled with worse performance than XP, I think it is fair to say that, for me, Vista blows.

You keep throwing around this worse performance as if you have anything to stand on when you make these claims. You admit yourself that you haven't used Vista post-SP1, you most certainly haven't tried the new Windows 7 beta, and you haven't the slightest idea apparently that for standard everyday usage and tasks, especially gaming, Windows Vista SP1 and beyond are almost always on parity with XP. The problem at launch was drivers, and that has been fixed. But you can't be assed enough to do some testing of your own (Real benchmarking in game performance, in everyday task performance) so you sit there on the sideline complaining like an old geezer about changes that are beneficial but don't exactly apply to you directly, and resisting learning new more efficient methods of doing things or looking at things.

None of it is DRM, did you not even bother to notice that the protected media path is not even being enabled/requested by any content yet because Hollywood hasn't decided to start the push yet? Playing the DRM card is nonsensical and completely irrelevant to the issue of Vista performance woes.

The biggest problem with Windows Vista was the changes to how things like file copy progress is indicated as compared to previous Windows releases and the complete lack of readiness on the part of hardware vendors (Which can largely be attributed to them simply being incredibly lazy, they had plenty of time to write proper drivers). Vista reached parity for XP in most if not all desktop tasks a long time ago, as well as gaming performance. Does it use more resources? Sure, there will be some additional CPU cycles being chewed up because the OS simply has more features and capabilities. Is this noticeable on recommended or better hardware? Definitely not.

Note that I specifically do not mention workloads like the ones described in this article. Environments like that are probably better left to XP unless they need to migrate, and you can (and plenty of people do) say the same thing about moving to Linux 2.6 from 2.4. Different versions have different strengths and weaknesses, but Windows 7 does seem to do a lot of fixing (primarily focusing on feeling faster, which was a big issue for Vista in the early days especially. It wasn't exactly slow, it just didn't feel as snappy. This has been, at least in my experiences, completely resolved).

P.S. -- Please stop parroting the line that there is nothing new in Vista compared to XP. The list of improvements is very long, and the list of improvements only gets longer once you look at Windows 7.

I like Schneier and respect him with regards to a lot of positions but on this particular topic I don't think I can. You say that Bruce is on Gutmann's side as if Schneier had some some sort of analysis on Gutmann's claims in order to verify their authenticity. He did not, he simply discussed the article in question and said that he agrees. Nobody has ever posted an actual analysis of the XP and Vista systems to see if indeed the DRM path is the culprit in anything. Maybe instead of attacking the DRM path for playing protected media (Which I might add is only invoked when one decides to playback DRMed content) people should focus their ire on the true culprit - Lazy programming that causes slowdowns in certain situations.

You may want to have a look at the entire section here on Wikipedia about this particular issue, which specifically mentions Guttman's article. The most important bit to note, in my opinion, is one of the responses from Paul Smith (There are many good ones):

# Vista does not degrade or refuse to play any existing media, CDs or DVDs. The protected data paths are only activated if protected content requires it.

Emphasis mine on the second half of that, and right before that bullet point is the pointing out that this stuff isn't even supposed to be turned on until 2010 or 2012.

Sounds like you've got bigger problems than the Vista audio stack if you have problems like that. Read: you have shitty drivers. My Q6600 has no issues like the one you describe, and nobody I know with single a single core, dual core or better processor has that issue. But hey, it's much easier to just blame the Vista sound subsystem than to actually deduce what the real culprit is.

Apparently I need to learn to read will_die's post, I see where the 2 million figure came from but I hardly see why it's entirely relevant. We don't need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we need to reduce our dependence on oil, period.

Uhh, learn to read his post, he said at 20 million barrels a day, and that comes out to roughly 2.46 years. I don't know where will_die got his 2 million figure but that's not how much the USA uses daily. info

It is pretty frustrating to see a Vista install balloon, it's because of the winsxs folder mostly. My Windows folder is currently at 12.9GB (Windows 7 x64 upgraded from Vista x64). 5.82GB of that is the winsxs folder alone.