On 30 Jan 2007 08:16:35 +0000, stewartross <(Address removed)> wrote:

thanks dave so u wouldn't suggest it to anyone then i also have to make sure
that its compatiable with me screan reader, happy anoraking to all wah wah
from stewart ross

Hi Stewart.

Personally I would not change unless there's something in the system that I must have. XP SP2, with all the patches, is probably the most stable desktop OS Microsoft have released.

Vista has some pretty bells and whistles and tries (badly and
bloatedly) to emulate some aspects of Mac OS X. It also has horrible concessions to DRM (Digital Rights Management, not DRM radio) and this means that the kernel and drivers are unnecessary large and unwieldy.
It tries to be everything: a business system, a home media system
etc...

Watching BBC breakfast early today, even MS admitted that it was
memory hungry. Dear old Maggie Philbin, presenting 'Tomorrows World (returned now as a slot on BBC Breakfast) said that 1GB of memory just about lets you explore the capabilties of Vista, but 2GB was more comfortable... 2GB !!! Most PCs only recently started coming out at
the low end of the market with 512mb of RAM. 256 is still common in some laptops and very cheap systems, and now the OS needs *at least*
1GB to work properly. Not to mention all the apps that sit on it (eg Office programs).

Vista truly is bloatware of the first degree. MS have spent 20BN dollars on it, so it has to succeed. But I await the arrival in a month or 2 of Apple's latest Macos X, which promises similar and other facilities with a much leaner (and more solid) system.

Or of course you could abandon paid for OS's and load one of the very easy to install and reliable Linux distributions, regularly given away free with PC mags or downloadable from countless places.

Geoff
(Is Mr Atkins still agreeing with me I wonder?)