Its not a special business model for apple. Microsoft has the same model. Look at the zune. Look at Windows Media. Look at Windows. Look at IE. Look at Office! Its very common in the computer industry.
By the way going open can be lock in too. If you think about it, you are stuck on that open source program which is not supported by a company (possibly). Say you use some player with say ogg from source forge. Then next week the OSS movement decides ogg sucks. That guy stops writting the app, a new GTK version comes out and boom.. your little sound program doesn't ship with your linux distro anymore. You can't run the same kernel forever. Someday you'll have to buy new hardware and want it to actually work.
I know, you're thinking but its open so I have the source code. Well guess what, not everyone can write code. I'm not thinking of an old school linux user, but more of people in business environments or home users that are typical. (the ms/apple crowd) Linux adoption means the community has to standardize and support things for the long term. This has to be addressed in the OSS community. Some apps are replaceable like web browsers. Some apps are not. Read the palm article threads with users complaining about a switch to linux could mean the end for their favorite palm app.
Someone else pointed out that you are wrong about iTunes DRM. I'd just like to clarify that burning to a CD/DVD only works for music. Video is still DRM'd from the ITMS. I know because I've been using iTunes since it came out and now I have this huge collection of content that isn't easy to migrate to MidnightBSD. Oddly, I boot into windows to use iTunes (for videos) and for gaming to a lesser degree. I could move my music over if I felt like burning all the cds/dvds.
Obviously my argument applies to any open source operating system.
I have a very old model. It can run through most of my apartment which is a combination of Berber carpeting and Congoleum. In order for a Roomba to work properly, you must get rid of all clutter on the floor. This tends to be a problem in my computer room. I also have problems with the unit in my living room. It can easily get stuck on speaker wire. It also gets stuck under my couch. Most of the couch is above the roomba, but there are two or three places where it can get stuck near the back. Digging it out is annoying. So I end up blocking most of my living room off with the included device and must manually vacuum that.
The roomba picks up pet hair better than my regular vacuum. I find that I need to empty it in the middle of a cycle sometimes. I don't have one of the timer/base station models. It has lasted for at least two years and I have 3 cats.
Brilliant. Utterly Brilliant. This is similar to having a problem with your kitchen floor being wet due to a leaking roof & building a floor-mopping robot as a solution.
Its also similar to having such unreliable cars that you include a button in the dash to call for a tow truck. GM did this with onstar.
Yeah.. well the linux community stops supporting old hardware too. While the kernel is still quite usable on older machines, the software gets more bloated all the time. KDE and Gnome run like crap on old machines unless you use old versions. Don't believe me? Try installing say redhat 9 vs the latest fedora core on an old PC (say 200-500mhz).
There are reasons this happens. Computer Science departments now teach that memory is cheap. Many software products using RAM for caching which old machines have very little of.
The rule of thumb with OSX is that it will run faster provided you have the RAM. A first generation G4 iBook could run 10.3 with 128-256MB ram. With 10.4, many applications including mail.app would start crashing on that. Many old Macs only have 128-256MB of RAM. Hell my first iMac (400mhz) shipped with 64MB ram. I ran 10.3 on it before I sold it with 512MB of ram and it was fine for basics. So in the apple world you have to buy RAM when an OS is released just as you do in the PC world. Vista requires 512MB+ and modern linux distros require 256MB+ for KDE/Gnome to work with a similar experience. Yes you can run some linux distros on much less, but its not quite right. Remember, Gnome depends on mozilla and a slew of other packages.
At some point, the linux community won't optimize for Apple style PPC chips... IBM will continue to support their hardware. There are differences.
Also, don't assume when you ask for a manager that you get a manager. When I worked phone support, all the techs would cover for each other and pretend to be the manager. We almost never got caught and the one time I did my boss was OK with it. He didn't want to talk to the annoying customers either. Of course when a customer caught us we often lost that customer. It happened a few times, but those people bitched and called so much we probably saved money by them leaving. Most likely their friends were jerks too. Yes, I worked at an ISP. $14.95 for internet doesn't cover assholes.
At first, this sounded like a good idea. Consider though that the OS still needs to have code to detect what the USB device is. So windows must see hey i've got a USB mouse or whatever and then load the service for it. That means the service is started later after scripts have time to bork the environment, and many services common on desktops will get triggered eventually anyway. So an attacker or rather his script may have to wait some time to get his malware executed but it will still occur. Since the service is not started early in the boot process, the environment could be tainted as well.
There is a balance between good security and flat out disabling valuable functionality. This balance is why Microsoft made Windows so open to begin with. They didn't see any threat and wanted users to be able to do whatever they wanted. (minus view the source code and customize at that level)
One problem with open source is that we don't have everything users want yet. A typical end user wants to be able to surf, edit photos, read email, IM, listen to music, watch DVDs and run office productivity software. Then you start getting to specialized groups like people who use financial software, play games, develop software, engineering apps, math apps, etc. At the same time, these users expect usb devices, sound cards, tv tuners, printers, and any other thing they plug-in to just work. Some linux distros have this down, but there is no consistency in applications. Many projects actually have to put up translation lists telling the user what the browser, im client and things are called. IE = firefox, MSN = gaim and so on. When you start disabling services, things start to break or become more difficult for the user. It doesn't mean everything should be on (who needs an echo server running).
So your idea may work for a subset of services or kernel modules, but we need other approaches to secure many services. Lets face it the approach may not be right, but trend micro is correct in assuming they need some new tricks. Vista is slightly more secure than previous versions of windows and as such malware authors are going to step up to the new challenge. So detection software must also improve. Its like the transition from telnet to ssh. For awhile, I felt *safe* using ssh because there were so many other targets on a clear channel to attack. As more people migrate to vista, or better systems the type of attacks will change.
Your idea requires validation that loading a service is really necessary and safe.
Funny you should bring up the Road Ahead. Its interesting to compare the differences between the first and second editions of that book. The Internet "exists" in the second version.
OK. How many enterprises customize linux when they deploy it? This is often given as a reason to choose open source over Mac OS or Windows solutions. I'm sure some do, but I doubt all do. Its not really a feature if the user/buyer don't care.
Support for new hardware in the Linux kernel is much faster than it used to be. Surely dell's lowend (read older) systems should work. Perhaps this might even encourage dell not to use substandard versions of common hardware. They won't have to add support for hardware if it has a normal PCI ID. I have a feeling the linux community would be even willing to help write drivers for their hardware.
Tech support is another story. Dell is trying to move everything to india and I don't think there are enough Linux fans in india to staff their helpdesk. I just can't imagine the typical workflow steps are going to work with a linux box right now.
The linux community needs PC vendors to ship systems. Why not focus on the second, third and forth vendors? For instance, say HP, Gateway and Lenovo are the next three vendors and they all ship boxes. Linux users will buy from them and dell's marketshare might drop forcing them to adopt linux. Of course I'm assuming there is a demand. In reality, we just need one vendor to adopt open source that is rather large. If they start moving machines, the other companies will hop on board.
That's not true. The difference is now our politicians are trying to take Canadian rights away. Although I hope our northern neighbors tell us what to do with ourselves, I'm happy for the distraction in congress. Lets rights they can take from us if they are busy with canada...
I know how to configure a piece of software thank you. I know about all the ports I have to open for bit torrent. Even without a firewall enabled, I still have problems. Its not me.
Its either the ISP and/or shitty trackers. I really wish people who have good luck with bit torrent would stop assuming everyone experience low performance is an idiot. Clearly I can do something right since WoW works fine for patching.
Yes. More specifically it will enable the RIAA to blame one person for the spread of countless files. They'll have a number for a specific file and the first person they catch with it can be blamed in court.
The problem with enterprise is that it jammed the time travel shit down everyone's throats. I hate time travel episodes. They make no sense. I didn't mind part of the first season. There are 3 or 4 great episodes. Season 2 and 3 of enterprise were terrible. Season 4 began to show hope but it was clear someone pulling strings still didn't get what was wrong with the show. I think the actors worked miracles with those bad plots and weak writing. The writers at the end were obviously decent.
As for star trek shows, everyone will have an opinion about what is good or bad. Some people just like space battles, others like the episodes/shows which focused on social issues. I think TOS is by far the best and I was a TNG guy for a long time. The second half of DS9 is great and the first part grew on me after watching it via netflix. I didn't appreciate DS9 when it was on. Voyager was very hit or miss. I preferred season 4-6. Part of season 7 was ok.
I really wish we would get a movie or show about sulu as captain. The era between the last TOS film and TNG would be interesting and its not corrupted by enterprise. Jumping another 100 years is lame. Another idea would be to do a show about one of the other cultures. Perhaps a klingon or romulan show? Wouldn't it be interesting to see battles against the federation from the other perspective?
Where are these magical good trackers you speak of? Direct downloads are almost always faster. I can get download faster from source forge than I can most torrents.
His connection might suck because his ISP limits his traffic. With my previous cable provider (charter), I was unable to multitask on the connection. One download would work fine, but say 2-4 or bit torrent would cut my bandwidth in half. I figure there wasn't enough upstream for the downstream I had anyway. Adding bit torrent throttled didn't help much. Many trackers setup ratios so if you cap your speed they don't give you data as quickly either. Even now I'm on a 8:1 download:upload ratio with my isp.
As for the router, I tried an SMC, airport express and a FreeBSD dedicated amd 2300+ with dual gigabit nics as a router. I understand where this guy is coming from. Few websites are hosted on a T1 anymore. There are a few people could have specialized needs (like me) that run them on cable modems which have equivalent upstream to a T1 though.
The only positive experience I've ever had with bit torrent is downloading WoW updates.
Vista is very foreign feeling compared to any windows release since Windows 95. OS X is not that hard to use. Most people can barely print documents and view websites. I think corporate users can be just as lost on OS X as they are in windows.
The real argument against a transition is software compatibility. However, its possible that even a vista deployment would require virtual pc + windows xp for some applications. Lets face it, many products just don't run on vista yet. Some will never be supported. I still know people using Lotus 123 in upper management in a hospital. IBM is not going to update smartsuite for vista compatibility. They claim it mostly works in 32 bit vista but not x64. This is one example. Since lotus is not available for the Mac, its an even transition. Of course the real problem is that corporate users think they need all the extra crap in office. There's always two or three people who just love access or infopath and can't get enough of it.
In the end, it all comes down to requirements. Its just as possible that Linux could "penetrate" the desktops.
"Unloading" doesn't take much time, but you could argue loading does. You must read data off a very slow hard drive into system memory. If the caching system is smart, it will be very careful about what it caches so this becomes a benefit instead of a curse. The advantage comes if vista can precache something before you need it and keep the disk busy instead of giving it short bursts of large IO to do. Its also helpful if the file system has been defragmented first.
Caching is usually a benefit in operating system design. Apple's been using this trick for years with OS X and many unix like systems do similar things. I know it seems counter intuitive, but many operating system design decisions do. Its the same reason browsers cache previously viewed pages in memory. You very well could hit back or part of the content could be reused. Hard drives are slow.
I doubt they are a target, but don't assume for a second that someone can't write malware for Linux. If there were a lot of machines out there running linux on desktops, you can assume someone will care to do it. What would be really interesting is how these numbers might play in with apple's sales figures... macs vs linux desktops. Many people think one is out there much more than the other... for once we have actual hardware shipped with linux we can count.
I don't agree with most people's numbers. Not all Macs run OS X. Further, with vmware and parallels you can run linux on a mac or windows box.. etc. Still its numbers that can help convince PC vendors to support Linux with drivers.
The gamecube didn't do that well.. now the Wii sales show Nintendo clearly ahead. Why don't we compare to the newest consoles and to the predecessor... next you'll compare sales to the Turbo Graphix 16 or perhaps the Sega CD....
What planet are you on? Vista has less games and less users than the ENTIRE OS X population. Maybe if you limit to 10.4 it would be close. There are games I can get for Mac OS X and Windows XP that do not work on Windows Vista. As the article stated, it is nvidia and ati's fault for their shitty drivers. OpenGL based games have terrible frame rates. With the nvidia 8800 driver I can get my 7300 to run Enemy Territory without crashing but not the official driver for my card. WoW, Halflife: Source, ET, Darwinia, uplink and age of empires II work on my system. I have not gone through a full install of all the games I like yet. Star Wars: Knights of the old republic will not run at all. It seems to be a detection issue with the video card. I hate companies that do that. The configure/splash screens work but then it just crashes.
When I first installed vista, ET, Quake 3, RTCW and several other quake 3 based games would not run. They do work on my iBook G4. I only get 13fps in ET on that iBook and yet it was faster than Vista on a Pentium D. Funny how that works.
By far the worst issue with vista is nvidia and ati. They can't seem to ship stable drivers for it. My audigy card sometimes drops audio after several hours of use but its still working better than my video card. If you haven't gone to vista, wait until there are drivers. I don't know how OEMs are shipping computers with vista yet. The drivers can't be working right on those systems.
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Its not a special business model for apple. Microsoft has the same model. Look at the zune. Look at Windows Media. Look at Windows. Look at IE. Look at Office! Its very common in the computer industry.
By the way going open can be lock in too. If you think about it, you are stuck on that open source program which is not supported by a company (possibly). Say you use some player with say ogg from source forge. Then next week the OSS movement decides ogg sucks. That guy stops writting the app, a new GTK version comes out and boom.. your little sound program doesn't ship with your linux distro anymore. You can't run the same kernel forever. Someday you'll have to buy new hardware and want it to actually work.
I know, you're thinking but its open so I have the source code. Well guess what, not everyone can write code. I'm not thinking of an old school linux user, but more of people in business environments or home users that are typical. (the ms/apple crowd) Linux adoption means the community has to standardize and support things for the long term. This has to be addressed in the OSS community. Some apps are replaceable like web browsers. Some apps are not. Read the palm article threads with users complaining about a switch to linux could mean the end for their favorite palm app.
Someone else pointed out that you are wrong about iTunes DRM. I'd just like to clarify that burning to a CD/DVD only works for music. Video is still DRM'd from the ITMS. I know because I've been using iTunes since it came out and now I have this huge collection of content that isn't easy to migrate to MidnightBSD. Oddly, I boot into windows to use iTunes (for videos) and for gaming to a lesser degree. I could move my music over if I felt like burning all the cds/dvds.
Obviously my argument applies to any open source operating system.
Yes, which makes it difficult to port to new platforms. Mozilla isn't much better.
Using this logic, it may even push people away from Vista.
I have a very old model. It can run through most of my apartment which is a combination of Berber carpeting and Congoleum. In order for a Roomba to work properly, you must get rid of all clutter on the floor. This tends to be a problem in my computer room. I also have problems with the unit in my living room. It can easily get stuck on speaker wire. It also gets stuck under my couch. Most of the couch is above the roomba, but there are two or three places where it can get stuck near the back. Digging it out is annoying. So I end up blocking most of my living room off with the included device and must manually vacuum that.
The roomba picks up pet hair better than my regular vacuum. I find that I need to empty it in the middle of a cycle sometimes. I don't have one of the timer/base station models. It has lasted for at least two years and I have 3 cats.
Its also similar to having such unreliable cars that you include a button in the dash to call for a tow truck. GM did this with onstar.
Yeah.. well the linux community stops supporting old hardware too. While the kernel is still quite usable on older machines, the software gets more bloated all the time. KDE and Gnome run like crap on old machines unless you use old versions. Don't believe me? Try installing say redhat 9 vs the latest fedora core on an old PC (say 200-500mhz).
There are reasons this happens. Computer Science departments now teach that memory is cheap. Many software products using RAM for caching which old machines have very little of.
The rule of thumb with OSX is that it will run faster provided you have the RAM. A first generation G4 iBook could run 10.3 with 128-256MB ram. With 10.4, many applications including mail.app would start crashing on that. Many old Macs only have 128-256MB of RAM. Hell my first iMac (400mhz) shipped with 64MB ram. I ran 10.3 on it before I sold it with 512MB of ram and it was fine for basics. So in the apple world you have to buy RAM when an OS is released just as you do in the PC world. Vista requires 512MB+ and modern linux distros require 256MB+ for KDE/Gnome to work with a similar experience. Yes you can run some linux distros on much less, but its not quite right. Remember, Gnome depends on mozilla and a slew of other packages.
At some point, the linux community won't optimize for Apple style PPC chips... IBM will continue to support their hardware. There are differences.
Also, don't assume when you ask for a manager that you get a manager. When I worked phone support, all the techs would cover for each other and pretend to be the manager. We almost never got caught and the one time I did my boss was OK with it. He didn't want to talk to the annoying customers either. Of course when a customer caught us we often lost that customer. It happened a few times, but those people bitched and called so much we probably saved money by them leaving. Most likely their friends were jerks too. Yes, I worked at an ISP. $14.95 for internet doesn't cover assholes.
At first, this sounded like a good idea. Consider though that the OS still needs to have code to detect what the USB device is. So windows must see hey i've got a USB mouse or whatever and then load the service for it. That means the service is started later after scripts have time to bork the environment, and many services common on desktops will get triggered eventually anyway. So an attacker or rather his script may have to wait some time to get his malware executed but it will still occur. Since the service is not started early in the boot process, the environment could be tainted as well.
There is a balance between good security and flat out disabling valuable functionality. This balance is why Microsoft made Windows so open to begin with. They didn't see any threat and wanted users to be able to do whatever they wanted. (minus view the source code and customize at that level)
One problem with open source is that we don't have everything users want yet. A typical end user wants to be able to surf, edit photos, read email, IM, listen to music, watch DVDs and run office productivity software. Then you start getting to specialized groups like people who use financial software, play games, develop software, engineering apps, math apps, etc. At the same time, these users expect usb devices, sound cards, tv tuners, printers, and any other thing they plug-in to just work. Some linux distros have this down, but there is no consistency in applications. Many projects actually have to put up translation lists telling the user what the browser, im client and things are called. IE = firefox, MSN = gaim and so on. When you start disabling services, things start to break or become more difficult for the user. It doesn't mean everything should be on (who needs an echo server running).
So your idea may work for a subset of services or kernel modules, but we need other approaches to secure many services. Lets face it the approach may not be right, but trend micro is correct in assuming they need some new tricks. Vista is slightly more secure than previous versions of windows and as such malware authors are going to step up to the new challenge. So detection software must also improve. Its like the transition from telnet to ssh. For awhile, I felt *safe* using ssh because there were so many other targets on a clear channel to attack. As more people migrate to vista, or better systems the type of attacks will change.
Your idea requires validation that loading a service is really necessary and safe.
Funny you should bring up the Road Ahead. Its interesting to compare the differences between the first and second editions of that book. The Internet "exists" in the second version.
Apparently they are not.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308259
OK. How many enterprises customize linux when they deploy it? This is often given as a reason to choose open source over Mac OS or Windows solutions. I'm sure some do, but I doubt all do. Its not really a feature if the user/buyer don't care.
Support for new hardware in the Linux kernel is much faster than it used to be. Surely dell's lowend (read older) systems should work. Perhaps this might even encourage dell not to use substandard versions of common hardware. They won't have to add support for hardware if it has a normal PCI ID. I have a feeling the linux community would be even willing to help write drivers for their hardware.
Tech support is another story. Dell is trying to move everything to india and I don't think there are enough Linux fans in india to staff their helpdesk. I just can't imagine the typical workflow steps are going to work with a linux box right now.
The linux community needs PC vendors to ship systems. Why not focus on the second, third and forth vendors? For instance, say HP, Gateway and Lenovo are the next three vendors and they all ship boxes. Linux users will buy from them and dell's marketshare might drop forcing them to adopt linux. Of course I'm assuming there is a demand. In reality, we just need one vendor to adopt open source that is rather large. If they start moving machines, the other companies will hop on board.
It works?
That's not true. The difference is now our politicians are trying to take Canadian rights away. Although I hope our northern neighbors tell us what to do with ourselves, I'm happy for the distraction in congress. Lets rights they can take from us if they are busy with canada...
I know how to configure a piece of software thank you. I know about all the ports I have to open for bit torrent. Even without a firewall enabled, I still have problems. Its not me.
Its either the ISP and/or shitty trackers. I really wish people who have good luck with bit torrent would stop assuming everyone experience low performance is an idiot. Clearly I can do something right since WoW works fine for patching.
Yes. More specifically it will enable the RIAA to blame one person for the spread of countless files. They'll have a number for a specific file and the first person they catch with it can be blamed in court.
The problem with enterprise is that it jammed the time travel shit down everyone's throats. I hate time travel episodes. They make no sense. I didn't mind part of the first season. There are 3 or 4 great episodes. Season 2 and 3 of enterprise were terrible. Season 4 began to show hope but it was clear someone pulling strings still didn't get what was wrong with the show. I think the actors worked miracles with those bad plots and weak writing. The writers at the end were obviously decent.
As for star trek shows, everyone will have an opinion about what is good or bad. Some people just like space battles, others like the episodes/shows which focused on social issues. I think TOS is by far the best and I was a TNG guy for a long time. The second half of DS9 is great and the first part grew on me after watching it via netflix. I didn't appreciate DS9 when it was on. Voyager was very hit or miss. I preferred season 4-6. Part of season 7 was ok.
I really wish we would get a movie or show about sulu as captain. The era between the last TOS film and TNG would be interesting and its not corrupted by enterprise. Jumping another 100 years is lame. Another idea would be to do a show about one of the other cultures. Perhaps a klingon or romulan show? Wouldn't it be interesting to see battles against the federation from the other perspective?
Where are these magical good trackers you speak of? Direct downloads are almost always faster. I can get download faster from source forge than I can most torrents.
His connection might suck because his ISP limits his traffic. With my previous cable provider (charter), I was unable to multitask on the connection. One download would work fine, but say 2-4 or bit torrent would cut my bandwidth in half. I figure there wasn't enough upstream for the downstream I had anyway. Adding bit torrent throttled didn't help much. Many trackers setup ratios so if you cap your speed they don't give you data as quickly either. Even now I'm on a 8:1 download:upload ratio with my isp.
As for the router, I tried an SMC, airport express and a FreeBSD dedicated amd 2300+ with dual gigabit nics as a router. I understand where this guy is coming from. Few websites are hosted on a T1 anymore. There are a few people could have specialized needs (like me) that run them on cable modems which have equivalent upstream to a T1 though.
The only positive experience I've ever had with bit torrent is downloading WoW updates.
Vista is very foreign feeling compared to any windows release since Windows 95. OS X is not that hard to use. Most people can barely print documents and view websites. I think corporate users can be just as lost on OS X as they are in windows.
The real argument against a transition is software compatibility. However, its possible that even a vista deployment would require virtual pc + windows xp for some applications. Lets face it, many products just don't run on vista yet. Some will never be supported. I still know people using Lotus 123 in upper management in a hospital. IBM is not going to update smartsuite for vista compatibility. They claim it mostly works in 32 bit vista but not x64. This is one example. Since lotus is not available for the Mac, its an even transition. Of course the real problem is that corporate users think they need all the extra crap in office. There's always two or three people who just love access or infopath and can't get enough of it.
In the end, it all comes down to requirements. Its just as possible that Linux could "penetrate" the desktops.
Al Gore is already on the board at apple.
http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/bod.html
John McCain registered with GoDaddy? How professional of him. Glad to see he's supporting American jobs...
Netcraft confirms BSD in politics is dead.
"Unloading" doesn't take much time, but you could argue loading does. You must read data off a very slow hard drive into system memory. If the caching system is smart, it will be very careful about what it caches so this becomes a benefit instead of a curse. The advantage comes if vista can precache something before you need it and keep the disk busy instead of giving it short bursts of large IO to do. Its also helpful if the file system has been defragmented first.
Caching is usually a benefit in operating system design. Apple's been using this trick for years with OS X and many unix like systems do similar things. I know it seems counter intuitive, but many operating system design decisions do. Its the same reason browsers cache previously viewed pages in memory. You very well could hit back or part of the content could be reused. Hard drives are slow.
I doubt they are a target, but don't assume for a second that someone can't write malware for Linux. If there were a lot of machines out there running linux on desktops, you can assume someone will care to do it. What would be really interesting is how these numbers might play in with apple's sales figures... macs vs linux desktops. Many people think one is out there much more than the other... for once we have actual hardware shipped with linux we can count.
I don't agree with most people's numbers. Not all Macs run OS X. Further, with vmware and parallels you can run linux on a mac or windows box.. etc. Still its numbers that can help convince PC vendors to support Linux with drivers.
The gamecube didn't do that well.. now the Wii sales show Nintendo clearly ahead. Why don't we compare to the newest consoles and to the predecessor... next you'll compare sales to the Turbo Graphix 16 or perhaps the Sega CD....
i &name2=PS3&type=2&align=0
http://www.vgcharts.org/japconscomps.php?name1=Wi
What planet are you on? Vista has less games and less users than the ENTIRE OS X population. Maybe if you limit to 10.4 it would be close. There are games I can get for Mac OS X and Windows XP that do not work on Windows Vista. As the article stated, it is nvidia and ati's fault for their shitty drivers. OpenGL based games have terrible frame rates. With the nvidia 8800 driver I can get my 7300 to run Enemy Territory without crashing but not the official driver for my card. WoW, Halflife: Source, ET, Darwinia, uplink and age of empires II work on my system. I have not gone through a full install of all the games I like yet. Star Wars: Knights of the old republic will not run at all. It seems to be a detection issue with the video card. I hate companies that do that. The configure/splash screens work but then it just crashes.
When I first installed vista, ET, Quake 3, RTCW and several other quake 3 based games would not run. They do work on my iBook G4. I only get 13fps in ET on that iBook and yet it was faster than Vista on a Pentium D. Funny how that works.
By far the worst issue with vista is nvidia and ati. They can't seem to ship stable drivers for it. My audigy card sometimes drops audio after several hours of use but its still working better than my video card. If you haven't gone to vista, wait until there are drivers. I don't know how OEMs are shipping computers with vista yet. The drivers can't be working right on those systems.