Wow. Your customers must only be spending 3-400 for PCs. Sucks to be them.

We build desktops and haven't sold anything but a dual-core system for over a year.

There's just no excuse now.

Also, on our home user systems, we offered Vista OR XP up until January 31st. You know how many people took me up on XP from last July to Jan 31? Maybe 5. Why? Because we built systems that run Vista the way it's supposed to run. Proper spec's, certified hardware, and no crapware.

What's the result? 1, maybe two customers who had a few issues that we resolved easily, because we're familiar with the hardware AND software (because we took the time to learn Vista properly.)

I've got scores of happy Vista customers out there... what am I doing wrong?

Yes you can. It just sucks for you that you're not as tech-savvy as I am.

Wiki "whitebooks."

Right. You could go OSX and not be bound to one company's prod--- oh.

You're wrong due to one major point.

Microsoft is NOT selling XP. They are making available a discontinued product as an additional NO-COST service if you choose to take advantage of it.

While they restrict this no-cost service to only a few versions of their choosing, it's their option because it is a fully discontinued product.

They're not charging extra, and they're not selling it anymore.

Keep tossing out the "convicted monopolist" thing too, as i'm sure that if you look at their current policies and behavior since, they are less monopolistic than other "non-convicted" companies which have monopolistic behavior *coughapplecough* since the government intervened.

You're living in the early nineties.

The average user doesn't have a clue. We've sold probably 75% Vista PCs to our HOME users in the past year, and i've heard very very few complaints. Why? Because most of our customers are novices and they trust us to build a PC which runs Vista WELL.

Also, they don't get bombarded with people who think they know better and recommend using an OS which has significantly lower security, lower stability and a limited life-span just because the first 6 months of its release were rocky and they haven't touched it since.

The bottom line is Vista Post-SP1 is good for 99% of home users if they buy a machine that runs it well.

Now, for business users, we sell Lenovo units almost universally pre-downgraded to XP. Why? Because businesses typically have costs involved in adopting a new OS, so Microsoft makes the downgrade option available to ease the transition.

All this lawsuit BS is ridiculous. Research your purchase next time.

No. Very simply, XP retail and OEM is still available in most wholesale tech distributors' stock today. Microsoft has ceased shipping XP to distribution, which means at some unforeseen time in the very near future, the CURRENT stock from distributors will dry up.

Which then means that resellers' stock will dry up, and XP will not be available.

*shrug*

I just tried your test on my installed Win7.

Clicked the start menu, selected control panel, immediately spotted "all control panel items" in the lower left with the rest of the selections.

Clicked it, found "Mouse."

Two minutes? More like 10 seconds. Need new glasses?

Also, the Windows 7 Start Menu is still slow and stupid just like the Vista one. Too much clicking and scrolling to find what you want. Stacks is better than this solution as well. The only place Stacks fails for this purpose is that when you click on a folder, it opens up a new Finder window. Id' rather see the grid expand in grid-mode or the list fly out horizontally in fan-mode on OSuX.

What... don't know how to type a few feckin' letters? Jeez, man. I don't need a bloody Asian fan show to find my apps, I just need to type 2-3 letters of them on the Start Menu.

Bloody Mac users... always want a 20-minute Hollywood production to do what I can do in two keystrokes.

*shrug* I find that i'm able to do things much quicker and intuitively with the Ribbon once I got used to using it.

I've talked to other long-time (10+ years) office users who think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

It's all subjective. Personally, i'd never sacrifice usability and feature-set by going to OpenOffice when Office is a choice.

Anytime i've tried to use Openoffice, i've been frustrated as I routinely put together sales documents and Office can make them look professionally-made very quickly.

What you're saying is that ANYthing else is better than Excel, but that there is no better replacement?

So tell me this, oh genius AC... if there is no better replacement how do you expect people to use said non-existing better replacement?

Sounds a lot like you're criticizing Excel just to criticize Excel and MS. Pretty weak, actually.

There are certainly valid criticisms of Office, but that sure as hell wasn't one of 'em.

See what I did there?

No, they just clarified it.

I can sell ANYone a sealed OEM package across the counter with no attached hardware.

In other words, someone comes in and wants a single OEM license of XP Pro, as long as I ordered it as a single and didn't open it, I can sell it across the counter with no requirements.

If I order a 3-pack, I can sell it across the counter IF SEALED with no hardware requirement. However, if I then open that 3-pack, I can't sell the individual licenses one at a time. I then have to sell them with a COMPLETE system, pre-installed.

All Microsoft did was eliminate the partial hardware requirement. It's now a complete system or nothing.

Completely legal (IF THE RESELLER ORDERED IT AS A SINGLE 1-PACK UNIT). MS's current OEM licensing states that parts ordered as a single unit license OEM can be sold with no hardware requirement.

However, if the reseller orders a 3-pk or above qty unit, those licenses must be only sold with a new system and pre-installed.

actually they did. You can sell a single (1-pack) OEM license with no attached hardware as long as it is sealed.

The stipulation on hardware still exists, but only on packs above qty 1. (i.e. 3-pk, 30pk)

However, you can't do the single part trick anymore, it's now a complete system or nothing.

To lay it out simply:

1-pk - NO HARDWARE REQUIREMENT
3-pk and above - CAN ONLY BE SOLD WITH COMPLETE SYSTEM AND PRE-INSTALLED WITH ALL OEM REQS.

If you're talking about the non-tech types, they see the Mac commercials... GREAT marketing. Most of the major issues with Vista are ironed out at this point, but non-tech folks don't know that, only what they get from TV and "techie friends."