As I mentioned to Prof. Geist at his own weblog: Not interested in doing that kind of business with any company. Microsoft's cost themselves more than one sale for the foreseeable future by doing this: mine.

This has been coming for a long time. M$ had left themselves with woefully lacking security measures of all kinds for so long and as such making their users so vulnerable, there should be no surprise that they've gone overboard given their corporate culture.

And besides who cares, there's Leopard (that can run Windows but only if you really need it to) and pretty useable Linux out there.

This is the reason why this may pose the long-awaited downfall of microsoft, or at the very least windows. In fact, Peter Gutmann has aptly labelled Microsoft's Output Content Protection and Windows Vista "the longest suicide note in history", in his paper, "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection".

The strange thing is that platform openness and free software development were the reasons why Microsoft Windows had succeeded in the first place back in their first (and one might argue, only!) major competition between their Windows 3.x and IBM's OS/2. Since then, years of a market monopoly have allowed Microsoft not to care anymore, as the vast majority of its users are content with what they have, as long as it works. In fact, most people don't even know what an operating system is because of this. I'm sure many will be glad windows Vista was released simply because it looks prettier -- and it does too. I can give them credit there.

This is about to change, though. With Microsoft's latest step backward, and with Apple and Linux gaining ground, users will soon appreciate the need for a better operating system, and be prepared to make a choice again. I, for one, am glad of this. I hope "Vista" (shudder) is the last cheezy, meaningless name for a new version of Windows I'll ever have to hear about. This time, however, I won't be putting up with it.

PS: I wrote this article on a computer running Linux.

I must say Vista is the most annoying operating system making you regret every second you spend on your pc . The saying applies well to vista " Looks can be deceiving " Although vista might have great looks , i can assure you buying vista is a regret , Not only do you lose control over your pc , you also lose patience and work time .

I have been using Vista, on a personal computer, for a few months now. So far, I have no quarrel with the new system, it seems to work fine and I havent noticed any lack of freedom on my end.

I dont know why everyone is up in arms on this one. I recommend Vista over XP to anyone who uses a personal computer for moderate use, games / web surfing and music/video downloads.