[Fwd: don't we all just love vista?]

[Ben Scott]

On 1/25/07, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> A friend of my parents keeps saying to me "I'm putting off buying a
> new laptop until I can get one with Vista on it" ...

  For consumers, that's also my recommendation, but for vastly
different reasons.

  Window XP is scheduled to go out of "Mainstream Support" two years
from Vista's release.  That's basically the end of 2008.  Painful
experience has taught me that once Mainstream Support ends, support
from Microsoft basically evaporates.  "Critical fixes" my eye --
you're left out in the cold, unless you spend $50,000 or so on an
Extended Support Contract.  So unless some home user plans on spending
$200 to upgrade to Vista in two years time anyway, they should get
Vista now.  Given that most home lusers just run whatever Microsoft
says they should run, it's the correct strategy.

  Better still would be dumping Windows for *nix, of course...

-- Ben