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aye

As I said when they fired Seinfeld,this is just sad.I build and repair PCs for a living and when I offer Vista as an option on a new build I get a loud "EEEEEW!" from the customer,like I just cut a big fart in front of them. And folks wanting to "downgrade" have gotten so bad that if they have one of the Vistas that have downgrade rights I send them down the street because I don't want to deal with it,and what is their big answer? Maybe bringing back XP in a new package like XP SP3:Reloaded? Nope,that lame Mojave bit and now a very sad Mac ad ripoff.

If anyone at MSFT is listening,your problem ISN'T mindshare,okay? Folks already know who you are. And lame ads ain't going to help either,no matter how much money you throw at them. The problem is enough folks have gotten a taste of Vista to know that they hate it,and one person with a bad experience will tell 10 friends. Which is why I have folks that have never even tried Vista looking at me like I took a crap when I even suggest it as an option. Whether you can fix it now or not is irrelevant,okay? You screwed the launch,and the DRM and buggy drivers have already made folks minds up for them,and that can't be fixed with ads.

Accept the fact that the public hates Vista and considers it WinME-II,and be glad that unlike most companies you have a product to fall back on the folks will gladly buy. So accept your mistake,bring back XP with maybe a new theme like one of these and enjoy the truckloads of money you will make,as well as the goodwill from the OEMs and buying public that hate Vista. Then take the time you need to get Win7 right. Worry about your customer base instead of the big media companies,who won't go with you anyway because Apple owns media with the iPod. But all you are doing with these ads is making yourself look a day late,a dollar short,and unable to do anything but ripoff Apple. And it is just sad. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

You must be a pup then,to not remember the pile of offal that was WinME. Man,running that thing.....you could use it to force confessions,it was like being tortured. The second you'd start to get something done...BAM! BSOD baby! My sisters you could even set your watch by it,that thing would BSOD with 30 minutes of starting every single time.

That said,there is a damned good reason why folks hate Vista,and it is all MSFTs fault. They pushed it onto the single core "Best Buy specials" with 512Mb of RAM and Vista Basic,which again....torture. But I have never seen Vista run without a buttload of HDD activity,even with a ton of RAM,and it really sucks on file transfers. And on a single core Celeron 3GHz with 2Gb of RAM that I use to test OSs it was just freakin' painful. Considering I have run XP and had it play nice on a 600MHz Celeron with 256Mb of RAM,needing a dual core just to run an OS is freaking insanity.

Instead of trying to fool the users with Jerry Seinfeld,they should buy some new bling for XP,maybe something like this,and repackage XP SP3 to tide them over until they can hopefully learn from the mistake of Vista with Win7. Because you know the OS is in trouble when a customer comes to have a new machine built for his daughter and when I say Vista as a possible OS she goes "EEEEEW!" like I let loose a stinker. I don't see how the ad campaign is going to save them now,the damage is done. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Well the thing is this: I work in PC repair and I almost NEVER see a "stock" Fisher price XP layout,except in offices. The home users always seem to have a (insert brother,smart teenager,cousin,etc) that "jazzes" up their XP for them. The few that have come in,when they see the heavily customized machines I have lying around running,go "Ooh! That looks VERY cool! Would it cost a lot to have mine look like that too?" So I say take your pick and I'll give it to you no charge and then simply open this page and let them choose their look. Crystal XP and Vista Inspirat seems to be running neck and neck. But the big draw with both seems to be Rocketdock,which is included with both packs. When folks see how easy it is to get to where I need to be with the dock along with how easy it is to add stuff to it they're sold.

What MSFT should have done IMHO was save Vista,after trimming it down to only Home Premium and Business, for the higher end machines while repacking XP with a little more bling(maybe buy Crystal XP and have it as a theme choice) and selling the "new improved XP SP3!" for the lower hardware. But trying to force the single core 1Gb of RAM(or even less) Best Buy specials to run Vista Basic just left a really bad impression on the buying public. Too many folks buy simply based on price and on less than 2Gb of RAM and a single core Vista is a slug. Nobody wants to get their new PC home and find out their 5 year old XP machine runs circles around it. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_9_208_21882.html-Here you go.It took me about thirty minutes to build my own custom fully patched unattended XP cd for my gamer rig with this.It even let me get rid of that awful Fisher Price theme for the much nicer Crystal XP.Here is the link if you want to try.I use and recommend the one on the bottom---http://www.crystalxp.net/bricopack/

Low resources,nice look,and I even get the "spinning cube" multi desktop like on my Linux Laptop.

Low resources,nice look,and I even get the "spinning cube" multi desktop like on my Linux Laptop.

Low resources,nice look,and I even get the "spinning cube" multi desktop like on my Linux Laptop.

Honestly, with titles like "Debian Woody", "Breezy Badger", "Dapper Drake" etc. is it any wonder the rest of the world thinks the Linux crowd are a bunch of Nerdy Nutcases?

It's several years and millions of dollars later.. and CrystalXP still looks better: http://crystalxp.net