oops...because I meant to choose Economic issues right above it.

But you did mention Cigars and they (hopefully) help destroy the environment so it all fits.

Or, you can say this decision of the court helps the environment in cyber space.

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President Josiah Bartlet: Sweden has a 100% literacy rate. 100%! How do they do that?
Leo McGarry: Maybe they don't and they can't add.

There are plenty of quality applications, operating systems, servers - you name to take their place. I'm a pro web developer and use only one MS product (Win2K) because it came with the machine - what eight/nine years ago?. I don't even need to use IE for testing (a major part of past anti-trust).

Well i always like to burn things because it helps to damage the environment, all within the law of course. If its not within the law i do it anyway usually when it comes to polluting. Speaking of which, seeing as Cigars is in the title thread, have you ever got a pack of Cigars or Tabacci of any sort and just lit it so that it burns? I don't smoke but i love to take a bit fat juicy Cigar outside and just let it burn as much as i can. Unfortunately it keeps going out but its the thought that counts.

Does anyone here use Vista?

I read on slashdot a while back that vendors had basically forced Microsoft to allow XP to be shipped on new machines, which had to be a big hit for them. Also, I know that my company has absolutely no plans to upgrade either our production machines or our internal machines to Vista, and the same is true for just about everyone I talk to.

It seems like a fairly big flop, but I'm wondering what people here are using.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

I use Vista Ultimate on both my laptop (32 bit) and my desktop (64 bit). I'm very satisifed with it. I like the features, it's faster than XP, and more customizable. I REALLY like the Office 2007 changes, but, of course, that doesn't require Vista.

I know people love to hate Microsoft. What fascinates me is those who proclaim themselves to be capitalists who rail against it, when it's clear that Microsoft is just doing what companies are supposed to do.

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When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

The Slashdot Article is correct.
Our parent company purchased 356 Dells to be shipped Nov.1...they will all have XP Pro on them, I do not know what the problems were, only that the IT guys had too many problems with the Vista test machines they got from Dell.
I purchased a powerhouse PC for the graphics dept at the beginning of last month..using the corporate account I ordered it with XP pro.

I use RedHat Linux, Windows XP and Windows 2000.

At Humana, we use Windows XP/Server 2003 for our development environment. I haven't heard of any future plans to deploy Vista.

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"I miss the days when they made toys that could kill a kid."
- Jerry Seinfeld

I don't use it but as to what gets put on (or allowed to be used as the OS on new machines) and whether XP has to be available, well isn't that down to the maker of the computer? If Dell or Samsung wanna make their newest machines available to users with a certain "x" operating system and wanna make that software exclusive isn't that ultimately their choice?

No.
Up until now - M$'s ironclad contract with all major PC makers has been basically "If you want to put a Microsoft OS on you boxes then you have to agree to ONLY sell them with the newest OS"

They can and do (especially Dell and IBM) sell them with Linux installed (which by the way M$ tried to sue both Dell and IBM from being able to do this except for servers, and they lost)

This is the first time in history PC makers have been "allowed" to sell boxes with previous OS's.

P.S> I have 2 friends that have Vista and both of them say they average 2 updates a day from M$ - both stated it is aggravating when they boot up and an "important update" takes 3-4 minutes to download and install and reboot before the computer fires up - that would piss me off to no end.

Well of what i know Vista is riddled with problems anyway.

Interesting that they could bind in such agreements with computer makers...shows what total domination they must have gathered.

But having said that if they got such agreements how did IBM and Dell manage to get away with bundling in other software? That would seem a huge breach of contract...

Sorry, no. That's a gross exaggeration. I see maybe 1 update/week and most of them install in the background without requiring a reboot.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Microsoft is easy to hate.
It represents many of the things that plague modern America:

1) Gross concentration of wealth
2) Giant corporate Monopolistic practices
3) Corporate influence over government
4) Innovation and industry improvements stifled by "profit is king" practices.
5) Repackaged products sold as "new"

And that's just for starters.

This is still a classic paper :
Why I hate Microsoft