Wrong. It actually made the news that Dell was bringing back XP.

Cnet

That's how I found out I could get it again. I went to Dell 2 weeks ago and XP was not available.

If your clients are corporate accounts, maybe it was available to them. It was not available to the average consumer until recently. Also, that is one company. I searched for a new XP unit to no avail. Most were refurbs or Celeron. Don't even think of walking in to a computer retailer looking for a XP machine. You'll get the "wtf?" look.

I bought my mom a new PC about 1-2 months ago. When I bought her PC it was next to impossible to find a cheap PC with anything but Vista. Actually, the only way that I managed to find a non-Vista PC was by purchasing a refurb PC from the Dell Outlet. I couldn't find anything new that came with XP.

Never buy an OS before SP1 is out.

While I agree, I've done the opposite with Vista, XP, and OS X. Only Vista gave me problems sufficient for me to to return the hardware before SP1 was released. SP1 for Vista is well under way and from what I hear, will be HUGE. I am far from being the only one who believes that Vista won't even be useable until SP3 if even then.

Aaaaaaaah! Relief. Laptop showed and everything works! Long live XP!

Bob, you posts about Vista, along with others, got me to try it out too. My primary PC is 4 year old Dell Latitude D400. It has a 1.7 GHz Centrino processor, 1.5 Gb of RAM and a new 80Gb 7,200rpm hard drive. I think this combo meets the official minimum requirements but is a bit short of what many in the industry would want.

I started by running the Easy Transfer Wizard on my XP install and it moved about 15 Gb of data to a share on a server in the home network. Then I changed hard drives and installed Vista Enterprise. It contained every driver I needed including the wireless networking card. I reran Easy Transfer Wizard, installed Office 2007 and most of my previous apps including Firefox.

The security “nanny” was a real PITA so I just turned that off. It also seems to run a bit warmer. Since I can’t use the Glass video feature I am not sure why that is. . . Or if it is just my imagination. There are other differences to be sure but nothing a few minutes of poking around couldn’t overcome.

All in all, I really like Vista. Internet browsing, for example is much faster. Pelican BB in particular performs much, much better. Office 2007 takes some serious getting used to but again with a little patience it is fine.

So, what were you problems with Vista that made you send it back for XP? I would like to try to recreate them so I will know what to expect when working next week. Also, we have a Latitude D500 too and it is a great box so I bet you will like the D520.

I'll reitterate that my criticisms are offered from the perspective of the average user. I am not a computer wizard - just a guy that has used computers for a number of years both for business and pleasure. That said, I too liked the "packaging" of Vista and it's speed on boot-up. I didn't find it any better or worse than XP for internet browsing, however. The problems I had were:

-The 1g Ram machine wouldn't work with Photoshop- at all.

-both machines occasionally would not do a restart when asked. I can't imagine why this would be. They would just sit there in the "Windows is shutting down" mode-forever. That is until I just held down the start button and forced a shutdown.

-Neither machine would accept some of my old (1 year old) software that I rely on. Roxio Media Creator 7 would not load at all.

-Roxio 9 is a dummed down version of 7. It sucks.

-The Nero version of my Roxio that was supposedly "Vista Ready!" was not nearly as comprehensive as the Roxio 7. Also, despite the claim that it is compatible with Vista, alarms went off when I loaded it stating that it has "known compatibility issues with Vista." Once loaded, it did not do half of what Roxio 7 did.

I didn't try to load Office 2003. I like it and feel no need at this point to go to 2007. Call me a ludite, but if it works, why fix it?

-Never did figure out how to network Vista with my home network, but admittedly, I didn't try too hard because the above were deal breakers anyway. Besides-should it be so hard?

I believe that Vista should have been an intuitive, easy to use upgrade from XP. Why change everything around so much? A simple improvement of things that are imperfect about XP would have made far more sense and been a bigger success. And again, I'm far from the only critic of Vista. As told to me by the Best Buy sales personel, Vista machines are being returned in droves. They don't even try to stick people with the 15% restocking fee.

While I tend to agree with you, there are a number of influences at play. First and most important, the main role of Vista is to introduce a new level of software with security as the main feature. I was deeply disappointed that MS caved into all of the whiners on this topic. What has driven its success has been exactly what you want: Simplicity. That’s not going to happen as long as there idiots out there that get their kicks writing viruses, worms and trojans. And as far as “security through obscurity” goes Mac’s and Linux as starting to see these issues pop up too.

As for a buying a PC at any of the big box stores goes, remember these are the same folks that promoted Packard Bell and other POS computers in the past. I don’t care what brand you buy, just make sure you buy it from a business oriented reseller. These folks know what it really takes to make a box do what you want it to do. Alternatively, go to the Dell Small Business site and look at their business oriented offerings like Latitude and Optiplex. Then see what their recommended configurations for mid-tier look like. That would hopefully eliminate 1 Gb boxes from the equation very quickly. :D

By any chance are you coming up to Kershaw in a few weeks? If so, I would enjoy meeting you. And it is a lot more fun talking cars than PC’s!

Hal-I agree with aota.

Also-I'm very pleased with my Dell computers. Everything is as it should be now. I even got OS disks! Not typical these days. The Latitude seems to be a newer, zippier version of my trusty E-machine and the desktop is working out great too. It has the Athelon 64 processor- my little rebellion against the man. In fact, everything I own save the Latitude is AMD.

I'm not familiar with Kershaw. Is it a track?

Yep, Kershaw is Carolinas Motorsports Park. The Carolinas Region is hosting a 2 day DE there May 19 and 20. There "might" still be space. Check http://www.carolinas-pca.com/ to see.

While nothing is ever 100% the lack of threats for OS X are hardly due to security through obscurity.

Writing malicous code for OS X or any OS is actually simple. Infecting OS X is exceedingly difficult. Getting it to replicate and spread, (which is what defines it as a virus) is near impossible.

The difference isn't market share, it's the foundation of the operating systems. Given that most virus authors and hackers are in it for the ego, don't you think that there would be a huge incentive to be the first one to write a widespread OS X or Linux virus.

In the OS 9 and before days viruses were a real threat for Macs. People were writing and releasing them. Not on the magnitude of Windows but we got a few a year.

OS X has been around 8 years now and Macs enoy a larger marketshare than they did 9 years ago and not one documented virus in the wild.

So what happened to all the guys writing Mac viruses? Where did they go?

Apple ship 3-4 Million machines per year. 100 million computers is not a large enough target?

The obscurity argument is stupid.

Thanks for the heads up. I would love to squeeze it in between sessions at Road America. I'll check with the boss.;)

If perhaps you had read the context of what I was saying, I too believe that "security through obscurity" is not too smart.

My point was that as Mac and Linux gain popularity, there will be attacks. Quote CNN:

"And Symantec identified six threats of malicious code written for the Mac OS X operating system in the first half of 2006, versus zero in the second half of 2005 and two the year before that."

That is nothing compared to MS, but there wasn't much to worry about in the early '90's either.

Apple does not practice security through obscurity. It's a false statement. It is not the reason that the platform has been secure.

The whole notion of it is an opinion that I have never seen verified or proven. Did someone interview all the hackers? Is that their response? It is a position taken up to make an excuse for the fact that Windows is full of holes and a way to dismiss the fact that it can be much more secure as evidenced by other OS's.

Symantec make money selling a product that no one needs, yet. What do you want them to say, "no one really needs our product?" In fact the biggest threat to OS X to date came from a hole in Norton AV for the Mac. There was a hole in their SW that could have lead to an outsider gaining remote control of a Mac. yeah, they're credible.

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/12/26.7.shtml

The recent identified threats were not found in the wild. They were attempts at proof of concept and raised by Symantec for no reason other than to protect market share.

Any half competent programmer can write malicious code for any operating system. It is not the nature of the code but it's ability to infect and propagate itself that defines a virus.

The level of complexity for that under OS X is staggering.

.nix OS's have plenty of documented vulnerabilities. They are Open Source so the information is available to anyone that cares to launch a browser and look it up. They are published meaning hackers don't need to look for them to try and exploit them, they have a head start yet they are still unsuccessful. Why, because for every 1 guy out there trying to screw it up there are 100 guys working to plug the hole. That's the benefit off Open Source.

I think someone will be successful. But the notion that no one is trying due to market share is rubbish.

We called Dell the other day to buy a laptop. The sales rep said they had some "older machines" around that still had XP that we could get instead of one with Vista, but Dell would not be supporting XP much longer.

Hearing what has been written here, other online sources and the IT guys here at work, I get the impression XP will be around for a while.

Clearly Mac and Linux are less likely to be targets of worms viruses and trojans. But they are not immune.

It was poor wording on my part if you thought I was saying that Apple was practicing poor security. My intention was was to say that USERS often practice that type of security. No matter what the OS, one must be diligent.

I can't even imagine why they would say that. It seems as if they have decided to offer XP for just about every laptop they sell.

laptops

I believe XP will be the retailer's safety net until at least SP1 is offered for Vista. Maybe even after that. If Microsoft tries to force it's hand too soon, I suspect you will see a huge jump in Apple sales. I was one click away from buying a Macbook when I saw the Dell news release about XP. It bought me a little time- but how much?

I think Bob and I have agreed to disagree on pre-SP1 Vista, but he is dead on about Dell and XP. Read here .

There are others who seem happy with Vista. I bought my first Vista machine because of positive comments from those people. Everyone's needs vary. I found Vista does not currently meet my needs, which are very simple and ordinary imo. Now that I have 2 new XP machines in addition to the XP units I already have, everything works as it should. I guess if I wanted to go to a lot of effort, buy new software, and change the way I do things, Vista might work for me. But, even then it's iffy. I'll wait.

I'll say again, I think Microsoft seriously lost it's way. I don't believe they will find their way back to path on which I, and many like me, wish to travel. At that point down the way, Apple will probably meet my needs better. I really need to buy some Apple stock.