The most important point is it does not matter what ships on a new machine (XP or Vista). Both ways, MS makes MONEY!!!
One thing to note is that there are companies out there that are starting to release their investing / trading packages for other platforms, Mac & Linux as well as the standard Micro$oft releases. These are the companies I like and will support. I am in IT as my primary profession, but have several machines that are not Windoz. My primary platform is still XP for most things, but if there is an alternative - I will try them and use them if possible. The learning curve for Linux keeps coming down while its usability and interoperability keeps going up. Hopefully in time there will be a valid choice so that we are not forced to take what ever Redmond ships out.
i think softy is one of the best companies there is and is still cheap. great balance sheet, market dominator, good management, great products. every new release brings these fears but how many people do you know who don't use microsoft?
Have to say that a lot of the problem probably stems from XP being (easily) the best OS that Microsoft have ever shipped. Where are the gains in moving to Vista? I'm a tech-whore and I like the look of Aero but XP is solid, fast and relatively user-friendly. I have prepped my hard-drive for a new OS that I'll dual-boot with XP...but it's not Vista - it's Ubuntu.
You are correct. My one sentence dispersion of Microsoft and Vista was intellectually weak. I have many faults, but pride isn't one of them, and I need to admit when I'm wrong.
Sure... when XP was shipped, it had its set of problems... However, XP was not a "brand new" OS as you think it is. If you have used Windows 2000, XP was 2000, with much faster boot time. It was like a 95 -> 98 transition. Nothing spectacular happened in between. I was more than satisfy with my Windows 2000 OS back in the days with its rock solid stability (compared to 95, 98, ME) More user friendly than NT4
I'm getting a laptop from dell next week, and I ordered it with Vista. I understand there is all this noise about it sucking, but I can't quite figure out what exactly the hoopla is about. I'm not going to use the laptop for anything mission critical, and I assume the stuff I use daily WILL run on it. If not , I can always install XP Pro, and probably get dell to send me a cd with it as a previous poster has done. But if the driver issue is moot (the laptop comes with Vista so it HAS to have working drivers for all hardware) , then what horror am I about to be subjected to ? Specific horror, not , I hate Bill Gates horror.
While I am rather reluctant to go Vista as the bugs haven't been worked out yet with many software programs, I have read that you can right click a programs desktop icon and set it to run in XP mode. Perhaps someone running Vista can confirm this?
You will in a few weeks from now. Let us know when you switch back to XP. I don't know why you bought a new laptop, but if it is for the better performance of the latest hardware (which is what you'r paying for) then be aware that running Vista with all options down to lowest will run almost as fast as XP on your old system. Meaning that with XP your new system would run about 4 times as fast. So, why did you order Vista? What benefit are you expecting from making this choice? Because I don't see any, certainly not with all options down. Ursa..
Yes there is a compatablity mode to run any program as XP SP2. When I first used it I thought it was garbage so I trashed it after using it for an hour. But, when I built my new computer I decided to give it another chance and I loved it ever since. All my trading platforms work, Metatrader 4, Vtrader, Ninjatrader, OpenECry... All without using compatablity mode. I had problems with .NET programs like Ninjatrader with XP but none with Vista. Pretty happy with it so far.