Vista, lol.
Yes... Vista is just one big joke, isn't it? I have one problem with this. Why can nobody who laughs at it tell me the punch-line? Why can they not name a single factor about it that they find laughable that isn't completely vain?
They say that UAC is the "hah hah" factor. But what's ridiculous is the fact that Windows has defaulted to having everybody run programs as an administrator. Sure, you could create limited accounts, but in order to install software you would need to log out and then log back on as an admin. (well, except with XP you could switch users). UAC makes switching users completely easy, in that an operation that requires you to switch to the administrator account brings up a prompt to do it.
Many people say the prompt itself is superflous- that windows should be able to know that you just clicked on the item that required elevation. The problem is windows doesn't actually know this; for example, any program can start up the display control panel; any program can run, say, task scheduler or services and add and remove services; and they do it the same way that windows itself starts these programs. So the suggestion is basically to add another way to start these programs that windows uses to bypass UAC. the issue is of course that MS will need to document that function, and even if they didn't malware creators would use it to do their evil, making UAC useless to begin with.
Other say the "ha-ha" is Aero. Well, then shut it off and stop complaining. Aero Basic is the Luna Engine, and I believe you can even do a little hacking and get the standard XP theme as "Aero Basic". But then again, XP's default Luna theme is probably the most ridiculous default configuration ever, so people that think Vista/7's default Aero theme is somehow more gaudy and colorful then XP's they need to have their vision checked over.
Most other complaints are directly the fault of the developers of some old program. people say that "vista changed inside so these programs don't work" which is true, but at the same time, changes to the inside of windows will have absolutely no effect on programs written using the standard API's provided. Then people say That some things aren't usable without hooking deep into windows. And of course they cannot actually name a single one. The best anybody could come up with was the MS commandbars that you see in Office, but again the issue is that that is not a component of windows but rather a component of Office. Windows has listboxes, buttons, checkboxes, listviews, treeviews, tabs, and other controls available, the controls that other programs might use, wether by MS or otherwise, are not part of the API spec. If you want commandbars, right them yourself. Microsoft is not obligated to write your code for you. *censored*, the fact that they give you controls other then some basic canvas type class is overlooked in favour of what they don't provide.
Windows Vista is Version 6.0.
Windows 7 is version 6.1.
Honestly, I can hardly tell the difference between them on my desktop and my laptop (laptop has 7, desktop has Vista). I changed some of the defaults so I don't have to go retro with that ridiculous "hey, let's only show the icons" taskbar, and now the only difference is that the buttons on the taskbar on my Laptop (7) lights up based on where my pointer is within the button. Yep, that's a huge improvement.
And of course, Calc and all those other programs have been "rewritten" which actually isn't true; sure they look completely different, but that by no means implies rewriting. Besides, even if they were, it wasn't the first time. It would just be the first time the GUI changed a noticable amount.
Neither one seems any more reliable then the other; this machine I am writing on now (the vista) has an uptime of a little over 227 hours, just over a week of consecutive run-time. I have no idea how long my laptop was on because it appears to have rebooted at some point recently.
Anyway, this thread is about 7 as opposed to XP. And it has been said- go with whatever you want. If you don't want seven, put XP on. And really, you can always put BOTH on and dual boot. That's what I did while using Vista. the laptop came with Vista and I originally reinstalled everything... it has XP-32 bit, XP 64-bit, and Vista Ultimate x64 installed. I've booted up the XP's only once or twice. I always use the Vista install- and yet I thought I would only use the XP installs.
