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Consumer Group Demands XP for Vista Victims

thefickler writes "Dissatisfaction with Windows Vista seems to be swelling, with the Dutch Consumers' Union (Consumentenbond) asking Microsoft to supply unhappy Vista users with a free copy of Windows XP. Not surprisingly, Microsoft refused. This prompted Consumentenbond to advise consumers to ask for XP, rather than Vista, when buying a new computer."

6 of 592 comments (clear)

  1. Re:In other news by Tim+C · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And once again we see how bad a car analogy can be - even if I've installed and used Vista, as long as any materials I received (eg disk, manual, etc) are in good condition MS loses nothing by swapping my Vista licence for an XP one and exchanging the disks.

    Cars lose the value the moment they're driven out of the showroom.

  2. Re:It depends upon the system. by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since the eye candy is off-loaded to the GPU it doesn't take CPU time

    CPU time is not the problem. Raw CPU speed * core count has been increasing as fast as ever lately, but GUI responsiveness has remained almost stagnant. That's because caching and buffering aren't perfect, and ultimately some things are dependent on disk seek time, which has hardly improved at all in the past few years.

    Now throw a bunch of eye candy on top of the situation, which is very data intensive and therefore just going to put that much more pressure onto buffer usage, disk drive seeking and bottlenecked I/O buses. That's a recipie for sluggishness.

    PCs are already like 60s muscle cars: a huge engine bolted into a crappy budget family sedan with bias-ply tires and drum brakes. A GPU is like bolting in another engine. It's not going to solve fundamental problems with the system that inhibit good all-around performance.

  3. Re:Vista isn't that bad by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Vista is nicer operating system

    does not sit well with

    Yes, it's new and breaks things

    WHAT? Operating systems ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BREAK THINGS no matter how "new" they are. Microsoft has had DECADES of experience writing operating systems, Microsoft has INTIMATE knowledge of computer components and how they work, directly from chip makers and motherboard manufacturers, in fact at times Microsoft even has the clout to DICTATE which direction technology will progress. And yet they still manage to "break things"?

          Give me a break (yes, it's redundant). For all you stick your tongue up Microsoft's corporate backside, you are not getting a free laptop. So please stop being a "gullible consumer" and stop accepting the "fact" that operating systems are supposed to break things when new. That's simply untrue, and Microsoft doesn't deserve to be "cut some slack".

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  4. Re:It depends upon the system. by pherthyl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not quite. When XP came out, all the geeks thought it was terrible and wanted to use Windows 2000 instead, because chances are they were already using it. The people that didn't care about computers loved Windows XP, because they were coming from Windows 98/ME. Now people are coming from XP, which is decent, and even the average consumer doesn't like Vista, not just the geeks.

  5. Straight out of Redmond - Conspiracy Theory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These "I had a wonderful Vista Experience Posts" sound
    very much like they are coming straight from Redmond's
    PR people. They sound way too much like the official
    press releases and media events.

  6. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion