If 64 bit was good at compatibility, I'd move up, but the problem is that moving up to a 64 bit-OS has no guarantees of running everything.

Depends on who you're talking to and what you mean by both "many" and "problem." For some of us PC geezers, a close second in the Vista Annoyance races to driver problems is the frakkin' too-"helpful" UI that assumes that I want my PC to look like a Mac, I have no idea how to learn or modify my own settings, and I am completely ready to put my "personal" computer in more or less complete submission to a mysterious server farm off in "the cloud."

I've been running a Vista box for almost a year and a season now, and I will confirm that my hardware-related problems have been seriously reduced by a combo of Windows Update and my own efforts at driver maintenance. But that is basically just the decline of what struck me as the worst problems, and by no means all of them. Seems like MS-oriented devs are increasingly disinterested in keyboard support, folks who understand a folder tree structure, and anyone who might want to put time into personally supervising the security of "their" PC. I *still* have no certainty that I can even list, much less control, all the files installed on my machine. The warning tremblors came with XP, and since I started using Vista, I began to consider the idea that I just had no hope of being 'master of my own domain' in PC-land unless I made it more or less a fulltime job. I went through more than a few CPUs when a goal like that was perfectly reasonable for a 'backyard mechanic,' and the end of those days is still "a problem" for me.

I would counter that the'general standard' used by Windows actually doesn't consistently work, and happens to be hidden more deeply. So, yeah, Ubuntu has hundred of libraries and thousand of smaller programs that are individually accessible *if* joe user goes to synaptic, aptitude, or apt-get rather than using the add-remove programs screen, but the fact that Ubuntu has gnome separated from nautilus rather than having everyting compiled into one big lumpy morass is only a weakness inasmuch as joe user likes the one big morass.

As it turns out - if Joe user likes one big morass, he doesn't *have* to go any deeper than add/remove programs to stay with that - {G}.

I mean, as it turns out - Ubuntu is just Vista with a few custom themes anyway . . . - {G}

The UAC is completely unacceptable to me. I won't use ANY version of windows that does that to me.

I'll buy a Mac first (shudder) or find a utility that shuts it down!!

It doesn't bother me THAT much really. It's a good idea, even though it's stupidly implemented.

Imho software shouldn't be allowed to request adminprivileges from the system, it should request it from the *user*. The solution is simple, just remove all prompting and keep the "run as administrator" option in the context menu. Anything needing admin privileges could just fail with a popup saying "Rerun as administrator".

I expect that if Java ever gets a multi-application virtual machine off the ground, so you don't have to run an instance of Java for every application, then they probably would push to have it on Windows as standard. And Microsoft would say "no, there's J# support  on dotNet already, sod off", and then there would be a lawsuit. Fun.

There are also licensing concerns. Java should be fully open sourced be sometime next year, at which point Linux distributions at least will probably include it as standard.

Hope to get Windows 7 64-bit next Christmas (if it's released by then.)  I hope my computer can handle 3 OS's installed on the same machine. (Windows 7, Vista, and XP)

Yes, I do realise that. Sun are still silly though because without Java on Windows, Java isn't everywhere.

Microsoft's version of Java was superior to Sun's. It was faster and had better native integration. That was a problem for Sun and the only way to stop Microsoft was to sue them over the incompatibilities and force Microsoft not to use the brand name "Java" for their virtual machine.

Cannot say that this was bad for Microsoft. They simply rebranded their VM. It is not the ancestor of the .NET CLR. And Microsoft and Novell have been taking marketshare from Sun ever since.

"Malice aforethought" is exactly what went into .NET. It's Sun's stupidity, not Microsoft's malice that made this happen.

(It took Sun a while to find incompatibilities. Microsoft's VM was practically a superset of Sun's JVM.)

"monopoly"
noun
A situation in which a company uses unfair tactics like very low prices and superior products against competing companies. Very low prices and the existence of competing companies are symptomatic of a monopoly.

http://citizenleauki.joeuser.com/article/81628/The_American_Liberal_Dictionary

never got vista.... knew there were so many troubles with it

tough rlly,  why 64-bit only :/?     ive got plenty of old stuff (including games) that really need 32-bit to be playable   or was there a problem with those 2 working together :/?

Most of them are fixed.

. . . except that Macs and *nixes have elevation dialog boxes too. Windows is just borrowing it from the other OSes.

Despite what you've heard so far, 64 bit Vista is completely compatible with 32 bit applications. I am running 64 bit Vista on my system and I have not had a single game fail because it was 32 bit.

It's 32 bit drivers for hardware where you get problems, but these days hardware support is pretty good and most manufacturers are offering 64 bit drivers.

alright...  tough theres plenty of things that were here b4 64-bit was... so i doubt that's compatible...

and right now im talking about rlly old games like starcraft, red alert 1  etc.

@astyanax:

it's not that i refuse to get 64-bit  its that i'm unsure i'f i'll be able to continue using old software / hardware   becuase i dont think anyone here or anywhere for that matter can even argue about the fact that alot of "old" stuff  actually works better then most "new" things

the only good example i can come up with...

Transport Tycoon,  currently Openttd / TTDPatch & more

it's a great game,  still is  specially with improvements made,  tough the basis is still just the old Transport tycoon,

alot of "new" tycoons were made after that particular game... some trying to mimic it...   none ever catched as good as TT

 so im mostly just unsure if games & more  like discribed above still works on 64-bit

most people have 4 gb of memory?   seriously i just bought myself 2x 1024 and im happy about it.  i rlly dont know why i would need x2 that.... nor anyone else (unless your a Supreme commander player.. tough that probbly wont even help you...)

again not everyone has a quad-core  only using a dual core myself,  and it work fine,  you dont need a quad core unless your planning on playing supreme commander (and again i doubt that'll help reduce the lag)

so yes,  we'lll eventually have to get wrid of 32-bit systems etc.   but given that people still use 32-bit systems and that 64-bit sofware hasn't been here long enough to flush out the 32-bit  i doubt that it's time yet to throw away what i'v got here...........  not yet anyways

(i'll be forced soon anyways, can't compete with games being made 64-bit only... not that i care.. just that i dont have income to get all this latest tech...  atleast.. when i've finaly got myself ready for vista, i hear windows 7 = on its way... and probably more expensive then ever...)

http://www.monobjc.net/

This allows calling Cocoa and QuickTime APIs from C# and VB.NET. Once I can write a program that at runtime decides whether to use Windows Forms or Cocoa (or GTK on Linux), .NET has definitely won against Java on the desktop.

Ideally Windows and Linux would get support for bundles so the the same .app can be launched on all three systems.

I have tried on http://www.freecol.org/ on my Mac but the Java binary still requires more than double-clicking to launch. (For example the JVM memory settings have to be changed for Mac OS. (I think this has to do with how Windows and Mac OS X provide virtual memory to applications.)