I read today that in a sampling of ~3000 PCs, a third of them had downgraded from Vista to XP. We've already seen close Microsoft partners hold off on rolling out Vista internally. And there's the whole Mojave fiasco where Microsoft--under pristine lab-like conditions--tried to convince people that all the setup and cofiguration problems aren't really problems as long as someone else sets up your computer under pristine, lab-like conditions.
But it got me thinking, how much money has this disaster of an OS release cost the PC industry? Are there many people out there like me, who might consider buying a new PC, but instead continue to make do with the old one primarily because they don't want to deal with reinstalling XP? Microsoft has all but given up at this point, focusing attention now on the new Windows 7 blog.
I know this is probably going against the grain, but I've actually grown to love Vista.
At first I was extremely skeptical, and when buying a new PC I spent some time researching how to downgrade to XP. However, the more I actually used Vista, the more I liked it.
It was easy to use, fast (with SP1 and a new computer), and very pleasant to work with. I have a small 15.4" screen on this laptop and so Vista's extremely clever ClearType worked wonders. I know XP has this feature, as I have an XP box too, however it works even better on Vista.
Sure: IE7 sucks, the sidebar takes ages to start up, and there's a bit too much security - but really, is it all that bad? I've found a solution to every one of the problems I've listed, including Firefox (duh!), sleeping instead of shutting down, and downloading Tweak UAC to silence Vista's nagging.
I love the new start menu - a few keystrokes and you have all you need. I also love the integrated search. It works extremely fast (especially v4.0), and, together with the built-in tools like file-filtering by type, helps you track down files extremely easily. I had once written a program that does all this for XP, but it's now long been obsolete under Vista.
However by far my favourite new addition is the new "C" fonts. True, they were more of a by-product of Vista than a direct addition, but they couldnt have come about without the invention of Vista. The fonts I'm talking about are the magnificent set of Calibri, Candara, Corbel, Constantia, Cambria, Consolas, and even Segoe UI. More info: http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/new-vista-fonts-and-the-web
My experience has been that there is no killer feature in Vista that can't be had by a bit of tweaking in XP. ClearType works in XP. The new C fonts are great, but anyone can have them for free simply by installing the PowerPoint 2007 viewer:
http://plumURL.com/powerpoint_2007_viewer/EOg
Windows desktop search v4 also works on XP, though I much prefer the stalwart desktop search from Yahoo! (a free rebranding of X1):
http://plumURL.com/yahoo_desktop_search_installer/Zi0
As for an application launcher, I use Launchy, but there are versions that look and work exactly like Vista if you're into that:
http://lee-soft.com/
LifeHacker has had some great posts on pimping out XP with Vista-like features (e.g. Vista Transformation Pack, Phlox, Shock Aero 3D, Xentient Thumbnails, Visual Tooltip...)
http://lifehacker.com/search/vista+features+xp/
As a counter-example, I look at Mac OS 10.5, and Time Machine alone is worth the price of the upgrade.