Vista mature enough?

Hey there guys! Quick question.

I put in the order for my new MBP a few days ago (should be here by the end of July). I've been sitting with Windows XP SP2 and Ubuntu on my various desktops and laptops for a VERY long time now. I like both very much and I'm ecstatic that I get to experience OSX in a personal (non work) setting for the first time because I love learning and messing around with new operating systems. Vista has been out for more than 6 months now and I decided it might be a neat candidate to use with Bootcamp (compared to XP). So, I went onto Amazon and ordered the Vista Ultimate Edition (32bit, Full Version). I still have all of my XP SP2 stuff (full version) as well as Ubuntu (free, full, of course).

So? What do you think about Vista these days you guys? SP1 is supposed to be out in a month or two I think (the beta version is out very soon, I hear). Do you think it would be worth it to install on my MBP 2.4 with 4GB of ram? Should I just stick with XP? What are your most recent feelings about using Vista? I hope I didn't make a silly decision. My other option would've been to wait till 2009 till the next Windows OS comes out. I don't really mind not having SP1 pre-installed because I had XP SP1 and just slip-streamed the disk to SP2, its completely legal to do and I think I could do it with Vista if I really needed to, which I wont unless I need to reinstall manually.

I'm not just dumping OSX or anything, I just want to have a great (optional) windows OS to dual boot with. I think by the time SP1 comes out, Vista may finally be on par with XP. Also, Vista GPU drivers do seem to be steadily improving.

Ok, no more rambling! Thoughts?

 

mature enough for.... office work? maybe...

games? no way.

touching with a 39 1/2 foot pole? i would consider it but then back down.

thats said: i have vista ultimate shipping to my house any day now

im considering whether or not to actually install it.

 

Well then! I have a Vista jump-off-the-deep-end buddy now! We should team up and test it out. Also, from what I've read SP1 wont even come out till November, so I don't feel so silly buying SP0. I want to run some 3DMark benchmarks and FRAPS tests in both Vista Ultimate and XP SP2 on my MBP to compare the two, but from what I understand it isn't possible to tri-boot bootcamp. I think its only dual boot so I'll have to install one and then uninstall, right?

 

I've had Vista sitting on my shelf since Februrary. I won't be installing it until Crysis comes out.

 

my intentions exactly.

the boot camp partition manager only allows you to make two partitions.

however, nothing is stopping you from splitting up your windows partition into two, from within windows.

i don't know if you could actually tri-boot holding down the option key, but you could definitely have three operating systems installed and boot into each one, somehow. im sure its possible.

it might be important if you want to do vista vs xp benchmarking (and probably screen shots for crysis)

by the time crysis comes out, leopard will be out, boot camp won't be in beta, and you can probably tri-boot then.

hopefully i will just get to abandon xp to avoid tribooting. (osx for most everything, windows xp for games, windows vista for vista only / dx10 games)

that would just suck.

ideally, osx will just suddenly get massive driver development support and will become a viable gaming platform of its own.

if open gl 3.0 hurries itself up (dx 10 cards can do open gl 3.0 - somehow, someone convinced someone else that they should open up the hardware for it *john carmack* *cough*) then we could get mac crysis.

w00t.

 

Heh, I was talking about for my desktop... no offense but I cringe at the thought of playing Crysis on a MBP.

 

I've been using Vista since April, hasn't had any problems with it. It really depends on what you do with your computer. Need to run ancient apps or use very old peripherals that had a 50/50 chance to run/be usable with XP? Is 2 extra FPS important to you, or are you satisfied with games running smoothly?

Honestly, I installed Vista on my ~4 year old desktop expecting nothing, since NVidia hadn't (and still haven't) released any chipset drivers for my NForce 3. No networking or sound would have meant going back to XP immediately. Everything except a "Midi device" got autodetected and works fine though. Doesn't really miss any Midi sounds ATi have drivers that work, and work well with my GPU (9800 Pro). I might have lost a few FPS in some games, but I don't really care since they feel like they run just as smoothly as on XP. No game that I could play smoothly on XP feels any worse on Vista. Subjective opinion, I know, but if I feel it runs the same, it's more important to me than a slight measurable FPS loss.

Conclusion: NVidia needs to shape up in the driver apartement (my experience might have been worse with an Nvidia GPU, I don't know). Unless you are a corporate user who needs a lot of backward compability or have an old machine with low specs, I'd say it's just as stable as XP, more user friendly and secure for beginners, and generally very pleasant to use.

 

..........y?

 

Serious *sigh* of relief from me. Thanks for calming me down.

 

Erm... seriously?

A computer with a 2.4GHz laptop proc and a 256MB 8600MT is going to be raped by a game like Crysis unless the graphics are scaled way down (but then what's the point)?

I'll be playing it on an E6400 OCed to 3.2GHz and an 8800GTX (621Mhz core) and I'm STILL not all that confident it'll run how I'm hoping, esp. in DX10.

 

You are full of crap!

 

About what? MBPs get a 3Dmark06 score of what, 4500? That's seriously a joke if you want to play games like Crysis. That means low resolutions, low quality settings.

 

If Crysis is as scalable as the developers have hinted at, your 8800GTX setup will run the game at max settings. There is a quote of one developer saying specifically that the 8800GTX would run the game at high-max.

Another developer noted that he could play with medium settings on a desktop 7800 (I think, or was it a 7900?). An 8600m GT performs similarly to a 7800, so I doubt 8600m GT owners will be playing at low everything. Besides, the MBP 15.4" maxes at 1440x900 anyway, it'll probably run Crysis at that res with low-mid settings (AT LEAST) with a playable 25-30+ FPS.

 

Exactly! That is what I meant by full of crap. You are being too harsh on the young cute 8600gt in the MBP.

 

Only time will tell, but that's that's what I mean.. I would not want to play a game like Crysis on low-medium settings. I guess I'm just the type that wants to enjoy it at the highest settings. But any claims are just speculation until the final product is out.

That said, I would be a bit surprised if a MBP could maintain 25fps. It's one thing to average it, but it's the minimum FPS that the game drops to that will be noticeable and kill performance.

But again, we'll just have to wait and see.

 

Just wait until you use DX10 on it. Bahahaha.

 

Remember that DX10 (in its true form) is supposed to be more efficient than DX9. This means that real DX10 games (Crysis) should look better on the same hardware at the same FPS when they run in DX10 mode. Recent DX10 titles are just patches and they don't fulfill any efficiency requirements (except maybe Lost Planet, which shows a 1% gain in recent cases, heh).

In other words, Crysis should run on my Geforce 8400m GS at Max Settings and 1920x1200 resolution, or else.

(That was a joke)

 

Vista will most likely be better on SP1 however Microsoft isn't very reliable on their promises as most people have noticed. Not to knock your buying decision but these type of questions should have been posted long before you just bit the bullet and spent $400 on Vista Ultimate. You may even get better answers and more help on the Windows forum since the Mac forum most likely will be using Vista as a partition and not our main OS. Shocks me how people complain about Apple's pricing on the Macs yet you and many others drop down $400 on Vista without even knowing how it's performing.

That being said, my recommendation would have been to buy an OEM of Vista Ultimate from EBay and saved a ton of cash.

 

I had two friends recommend that a few months ago. At this point in time, one of them has had to deal with his account deactivating, apparently he bought a pirated version (I didn't think that was so common with Vista, but oh well). Of course he didn't intend to buy pirated windows, but it seems Ebay isn't the most reliable source of software.

Anyway, your OEM software advice is solid, I usually buy OEM off of NewEgg.

I didn't buy Vista just for myself. The rest of my family wants to try it out. My question was if I should install it on my MBP. I couldn't buy the OEM version because I would be violating its EULA.

Its easy enough to head onto one of the dozens of reputable tech sites giving week to week updates on Vista's progress. Its a lot safer than XP, not really much more buggy, and GPU performance is steadily reaching that of XP (nearing 5% range). So I don't mind spending $350 on an operating system that my family will be using for a couple of years. Also, I don't mind the pricing Apple uses, its worth it for the style/hardware.

 

XP is at the height of its maturity. Vista is at the start.

I run Vista because I wanted to get going on what will become the new standard. That said, there are a lot of times when I wish I was still on XP.

I have a lot of permissions issues with Vista. Even simple things like deleting a folder full of files can become a multi-step process.

I have some issues networking with my OS X machine. I can pull files from either OS, but I have a lot of trouble pushing files.

The UAC still pops up a lot and is pretty much only annoying and not really anything else. I know that eventually it's supposed to make software authors write better software that does not kick in the UAC, but for now, it's just kinda in the way.

I don't always feel in control of the OS. If I turn something off, like a firewall or the UAC or automatic updates, then I get warnings that I turned something off. If the updates automatically fire off, then I get bugged about rebooting the damn thing.

I was doing some simple After Effects CS3 renders and got out of memory errors after a while. Just simple resizing and outputting uncompressed files to .wmv on a laptop with 2GB ram.

For the most part my wireless works. Sometimes I have trouble connecting to the basestation that is like, 20 feet away. It mostly works, but when it doesn't, it's a bit PITA.

I knew it would be like this, and for the most part, I'm ok with it.

I guess what gets me is I've yet to be blown away or impressed with any Vista feature. The UI is nicer, the explorer is a little nicer, but that's minor stuff. The networking is more convoluted, it has yet to impress me in a heavy lifting situation and so far it has not really gotten my trust. If a large project walked in the door tommorrow, I can't say I would not consider converting a machine or two back to XP.

If you were to use XP for the next year or so, I really don't think you'd be cheating yourself.

I still hold out hope that Vista will multitask better, manage memory better, and eventually be a better OS in comparision to XP, but as of today, I'm not convinced that that is the case.

 

count_schemula, I have the same expectations going into Vista at this moment. The difference is that I haven't experienced it yet. Honestly though, it really should be the future, right? Some people say that its ME:2, but I seriously doubt it (I actually had ME on my laptop, it was a battle every time I pressed the power button *shudder*). I think that over the last 6 months I've seen a move [in the opinions of Vista] from negative to neutral for most clear minded folk.

XP really has hit its final maturity. I think its a fine OS, I've been using it for years, but I also remember what it was like before SP1. I think that now is an 'ok' time to jump into Vista. I assume that by the end of the year that neutral feelings will turn into slightly positive opinions, especially due to the release of SP1 for Vista in November, and DX10 games like Crysis coming out.

Really though, UAC doesn't seem that annoying, Ubuntu has a password pop-up just the same.

 

Well, I am sort of in the same situation. I've basically decided that because I got a Mac I should be using OS X pretty much all the time. XP is more than fine for what I need to do with Windows (for now). If I need to run a CAD program or play a quick BF2 map, XP is rock solid. Also, because I only have the 120GB HD, with all my media, I've become a space freak. XP uses much less HD space.

In the end, for what I'm using Windows for, Vista just isn't needed. I don't want to reboot and face compatibility issues or anything else that isn't ironed out (although, in my short time using it, I enjoyed using it). Maybe in a year, I'll upgrade to Vista.

Also, about UAC, you can turn it off in User Accounts, and, at least, my OS X always asks me for a password whenever I launch VMware or install something. Can I turn that off?

 

the only real reason i am getting vista is for crysis and dx10

you don't need non-existent components to run crysis well. a core 2 duo clocked to 3.x ghz? im pretty sure that doesn't even exist. if it does, its overkill. that guy can go fry his $400+ proc. and get maybe an extra frame per second. if that. woo hoo. the 8800gtx is probably even overkill for crysis, but it really depends on the resolution you are running the game at. 1920x1200, maxed settings, toss in a little aa/af and you probably wouldn't want anything less than the 8800gtx.

i thought the 7800gtx was basically to run crysis at high settings according to the devs (and that is the unoptimized version of the game) - although obviously the 7800gtx does high settings on the dx9 render path. even though we haven't seen it yet, i expect dx10 to offer slightly better visuals AND slightly better performance. thats what they told us to expect. maybe they lied, but i don't have much faith in the patch jobs we have seen so far. crysis will be a better indicator in my opinion also.

8600m gt will be able to handle crysis. to what degree of settings im not sure. i think 1440x900 is reasonable, and i think medium settings are as well. its the new midrange gpu, i expect to play new games at medium settings and a medium resolution. hopefully that means a dx10 render path. crysis is still going to look very good at whatever settings we run it with. probably best to date regardless of medium vs high. of course, if 1440x900 is pushing it, i will just run it in 720p 16:9 on a huge TV and have an awesome experience.

vista has some obvious driver / compatibility issues with certain games, but in large part it has closed the performance gap to reasonable levels. in some of the best cases it matches performance of xp. that is a good sign for a pre sp1 windows release in my opinion.

crysis may very well sell vista.

 

That's true, but it's still untested. The fact is, no one knows how well any DX10 card will really handle DX10 games yet. It's first-gen hardware for something that doesn't really even exist yet.

I was hoping to skip the 8800GTX, but with the announcement that ATI was basically quitting the high-end market, and the ludicrously overpriced Ultra, I decided two months ago that I may as well, since we won't be seeing the next-gen high end card for a while yet.

As for Vista, if Microsoft releases a service pack for it in November, it will SOLELY be for the purpose of drawing in more people to buy it with the expectation of a better experience "because SP1 is out." It will probably just be a cumulative security update and a few minor tweaks.

Microsoft has always been awful about service packs. They said they were going to make a final service pack for 2000 to package it up in a nice final "complete" version. They never did of course.

XP should be at SP5 by now. SP3 for XP was supposed to come out in 2005. Then 2006. Then 2007. Now it's "scheduled" for the first part of 2008. It will never happen.

 

Clearly you're not into overclocking.

I plainly stated that I have an E6400 (2.13GHz stock). $400? Try $185.

Core 2 Duos are EXTREMELY good processors for overclocking. They can be highly overclocked and remain rock solid. I used to have mine running at 3.41GHz (air cooled), but I decided that was a bit... unnecessary and took it down to 3.2. At 3.2GHz, it idles at about 38-40C and runs at ~52-55C under load; well within safe limits. When you get into watercooling, you can get over 4GHz out of these things (though quad cores aren't really reliable past 3.7GHz or so).

When you start getting that fast, it doesn't really help for games anymore since it's not even close to being your system's bottleneck, but they're monsters for CPU-intensive tasks.

 

i disagree. microsoft thrives on service packs. i dont really care about sp3, because sp2 is really stable as is.

their new OS's are always incomplete and they underperform and have massive issues with compatibility and drivers and everything. the service packs complete the product. remember windows xp before sp1? after sp1?

exactly.

as far as i'm concerned, windows vista's final release is just windows vista beta 2. after they release sp1 it will probably meet a much higher standard of expectations.

 

I think unless you have a specific need for Vista, I would stick with XP. I would say XP is going to be a little less of a headache for now. Plus, spending $400 on an OS is just crazy, especially considering it is doubtful you will use most of the features Ultimate offers.

 

agreed. i don't recommend that anyone else do that. its generally a really bad idea. you are basically getting price gouged for features you are unlikely to use.

personally i got it because i was required to have at least vista business for like one obscure feature im sure, and i wanted some home premium stuff.

i recommend home premium to anyone who feels the need to get vista.

 

i was disinclined to read your post closely enough to determine what model of processor you had because you seemed very adamant that only a 3.2ghz core 2 duo / 8800gtx would be able to run crysis reasonably.

i never found a need for overclocking because my components have always been fast enough stock for what i wanted to do.

if you run a game like half life 2, how do your frames / second change from 2.13ghz to 3.2 ghz? just curious. thats a massive difference in clocks- up about 50%. does it have ANY effect on your frames per second in like, a counter strike source stress test, or lost coast stress test? (assuming you have all the gpu settings maxed out, a lot of aa/af, full res - 1920x1200 i guess)

or just use any in game benchmark. im curious as to whether or not it has any effect.

 

Still, SP2 is three years old. Three years. That's an eternity in this industry.

Microsoft spent five years making an incomplete operating system; what makes you think there will suddenly be drastic improvements? True, there's the benefit of it being out in the wild, but I think the fact that MS is releasing a service pack for Vista less than a year after its consumer launch (have they EVER done that? ) speaks volumes to the fact that they want everyone moving to Vista, and that they're hearing the volumes of people that aren't explain how they're holding back until Vista has a service pack.

So what does MS do? Make a service pack of course! They would've done it months ago if it wouldn't have been so ridiculously close to the OS's launch.

I'm not saying that SP1 won't bring crucial improvements to Vista, I'm just saying that Microsoft cares more about the service pack giving the image of maturity than actually providing it. Remember, we're not talking about an OS X release where they have the benefit of knowing exactly what sort of hardware it will be running on; the best thing about Windows is also its biggest hurdle.

 

windows sp2 is really old now, but its stable and powerful also. it has scaled really well to modern hardware. apparently- you can even run dx10 on it. microsoft's original intention was that you wouldn't be able to, but they changed the dx10 specs last minute. thats what i heard at least.

when you look at osx vs windows xp, you can see that windows was far behind. like you said though- they were at a disadvantage, with a massive hardware base that all wants support.

people expect service packs, we have good hopes for the service pack. if it sucks, we are going to know. its just that in the past, service packs have generally been good experiences. but people aren't lining up at the gates just waiting for sp1 to buy vista.

people who already use vista will be the first to try it out.

i definitely see your point though- microsoft has a pretty large motivation to get sp1 out. still, if sp1 is junk, its going to hurt them more than help, only because people who are smart enough to know what sp1 is are also smart enough to decide whether sp1 is good or not before buying vista.

 

Hmm, well for family use that's a lot of money. You can get a very low end PC for that type of money (brand new). Everyone thinks Steve Jobs is the only great salesman. Bill Gates can get you to spend more money on something when the offering of the latter isn't very much. Unless you needed Bit Locker drive encryption (mostly needed for large corporations) and Ultimate Extras the Home Premium OEM version would have been a much better value considering it's just going to be installed on a partition on your Mac. What will be interesting is that your family most likely will grow quite fond of Mac OS X and Windows may only get used for required programs. Remember it's just an OS. Apple's Mac OS X system has only ever cost $129.00 and you get the same drive encryption, multimedia and business networking. I think you spent too much.
Unless you just want to keep it, if you haven't opened it, exchange it for Home Premium OEM. Amazon carries that as well.

 

some people need some of the business features and the home premium features.

tough life it is.

bill gates gets you to spend 400 for vista. thats pretty impressive.

steve jobs gets you to pay $129 for osx.... 5 TIMES.

you pay for what you get- no doubt. windows xp was all you needed from windows for what, 5 years? i imagine the new windows os supposedly released in 09 will be pushed back to 10 or maybe 11. that means the $400 license for vista will keep you up to date for at least twice as long as osx, possibly 3x or more times as long. (osx updates are released approx. yearly)

if your goal is to stay current, you will be forking over plenty of cash to microsoft, and you will also be forking over plenty of cash to apple.

no mention as to which is the better overall value, just that neither is cheap.

about OS needs:

Domain Join, Group Policy support, Windows Fax and Scan, Encrypting File System (EFS), Shadow Copy, Corporate Roaming, Offline Files and Folders, and Remote Desktop are available in Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate.

Windows Media Center is available in Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate.

Therefore, if you want both windows media center and you need some of the business features, your options are limited. Its not just about bitlocker.

 

The whole DX10 on XP:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/07/11/will-directx10-come-to-windows-xp

Basically, MS wanted a TurboCache like feature to be standard to improve performance, but nVidia could never perfect it so now the feature is optional. That, it seems, was the only reason DX10 would not work on XP.

However, that means that the current cards should work (nVidia's at least, ATI might've got the feature to work), but future cards may lock you out.

 

Interesting, I thought DX10 being Vista-exclusive was solely marketing driven.

 

as of right now, it is. it should* be simple to port it back to xp.

im sure there are people in basements working on it as we speak.

 

I mean, I wasn't aware that there would be any significant expense in making DX10 work with XP, I always thought it was a decision made solely for the purpose of getting people to buy Vista.

 

I really don't like this argument. People always forget that Vista was originally supposed to be released in 2003 as a minor update to Windows. It was nearly 4 years late! MS has the same OS release cycle as Apple. Just because they cannot keep dates that does not mean they are a better value. MS would have had you paying for a new OS every 2 years as well if they could have kept their timetable.

 

My mistake, I was only trying to help the OP Save Money. He WAS asking how Vista was doing and if it was worth his purchase at this time. I never said MS stole his money by offering virtually nothing for $400.00. Even MS states on the features and benefits brochure the biggest difference is Bit Locker and business networking which is not on Home premium.

 

Sure it does. It doesn't matter that it's not intentional, if it's still supported it's still a perfectly legitimate value. If you bought XP in 2001, that same $200-250 or whatever kept you up to date for five years (and it's still being supported despite Vista's existence).

How many times was OS X updated for "only $130" during that same period?

 

Thats a really good point.

 

First off, everyone quotes exact figures for an Apple OS, $129. Vista Ultimate (Ultimate overkill if you don't need all the features) costs $339 on NewEgg. Home premium is $215, by the way.

Here, check for yourself.

So now that the price of Ultimate is 60 dollars lower than everyone seems to think it is, I think that I made the proper choice. I use VPN and Remote Desktop (I know, some RD stuff is in Home Premium) very aggressively, my usage of such will only increase over the next several years. I didn't mind buying a single package for my entire household/business that contains everything I need to keep working.

Microsoft self-proclaims that SP1 will mostly be bugfixes and optimizations, it will not be feature-heavy. I'm glad they decided to tell it like it is. In reality, SP1 will probably just be a huge pack of all of the recent bug fixes smashed into one, maybe Ultimate users will get some of those promised extras.

I don't want to come off like a Microsoft Fan-Boy, but my experiences with Mac's over the past three years has been absolutely horrible. Designing with them and just working with them in general was an absolute pain. I had constant crashes, and anything I did on a Mac I just felt I could do 10x better on XP. I didn't have any choice in the matter, so I slowly learned how to use the Mac.

So, based on my past experience I should NEVER have gotten an Apple computer, but I did anyway. Why? Because you people, in this very forum, convinced me to give it another shot. I don't really mind trying Vista and trying out OSX (which I'm going to give a second chance) at the same time. If Vista really sucks that bad I'll save it for Crysis.

I know XP might run DX10, but I can't help imagining that Vista DX10 and XP DX10 will perform differently (it could go either way, maybe XP will totally smoke Vista in the DX10 department if it comes to fruition).

*sigh* Anyway, my main purpose in making this thread sort of got lost in "should I have purchased Vista" instead of "Do you guys think its mature enough to install on my MBP?" I should have mentioned I use VPN, RD, and several other Business edition features and I also like Window based games.

I know! I'll just format all of my computers and run Ubuntu only! Then I can stick it to Apple AND Microsoft! (Another joke, trying to keep this light).

 

Much of this discussion would have been shortened had you mentioned what you were using Vista for as you just did now. You came across as sort of a lost soul that just bought Vista Ultimate that didn't know any better.
Also be nice, this is a Mac forum your recent rant is coming across as Mac bashing. Not everyone has your past Mac experiences. Congrats that you are trying it out again but don't hold anyone accountable here if it doesn't work out the second time around. Everybody is here to help but not to take responsibility for unfortunate purchases. Take care.

 

Being supported and being up to date are two different things. XP is a very old OS at this point. There have been no real new features since it was released. Each OS X update comes with new features and added usability. Now, if MS had a release cycle of 5-6 years then you can make that argument, but just because they went way past their deadline, does not mean they are a better value. MS intended to release Vista 4 years ago. We should have Blackcomb by now. MS would have charged you for a new OS every 2 years if they could get one out the door that often. Their inability to release a new OS on time does not translate to a good value.

 

I have to agree with cashmonee on this point. It was really more of a fluke that XP was sitting around for so long while Vista kept standing in the wings. I think you'd have to go back to Windows 95 and on to get a better idea of what the release schedule SHOULD have been.

 

I see no problem with Mac bashing, in a Mac forum or elsewhere.

Anyway, to answer the question of it being mature enough to run on a MBP, I say definitely.

The reason I haven't installed Vista yet is because my desktop is my gaming computer, and there were initial video card driver woes with Vista which are only now starting to be cleared up. Also, I have hardware that is most likely not supported on Vista, so at the moment there's simply no compelling reason for me to install it yet.

But as for installing it on BootCamp, I think it's perfectly ready. Apple supported Vista as of version what, 1.2 beta? So you know you'll have zero hardware/driver issues.

 

Again, their inability to push out a new OS every other year is in no way deterrent to XP's value, only the opposite.

How do you define "up to date?"

It is synonymous with support to me. I define it as having security fixes and compatibility maintained. If you think it means a pretty GUI and worthless widgets, then you're absolutely right, XP is clearly no longer of any value.

But to me, as long as Microsoft supports XP with current fixes and security patches, it is up to date.

In 99.99% of all cases, using Vista will make you 0% more productive than using XP, so what exactly is the true value of having an "up to date" OS?

 

WOOO!!! *dances around merrily*

Thanks, that's all I wanted to know.

I'll try to do some comparisons of gaming in XP vs Vista on the MBP when I get my MBP (very excited). Oh and when I mentioned that it was you guys who got me to get an Apple computer, that was a good thing, not a "OMGSH ITS YOUR FAULT NBR I HAV DED PIXALS!"

I know exactly what you mean, I think what cashmonee is trying to communicate is the idea that Microsoft would've charged just as much or more than Apple for OSes if they could've had them released on a similar time frame.

I also think XP is feature filled enough, anything that it doesn't do I can do with Open Source programs. Although, I AM a bit excited for the OSX program suite (iLife?). That comes free with your MBP, right?

 

Did you read my post?

 

Indeed I did. I was commenting on the general direction the thread was going in. I was completely set on the same path as you (No Vista for one year) until my family begged me to go out and buy a copy. That's why I made this thread.