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Mailbag: Vista Antidotes

Readers share their methods for dodging Vista:

As long as I was being forced to buy a new system to upgrade the OS, I went and bought a iMac. Parallels gets me the few XP Windows apps I need to use; for the rest I use Mac-based programs. Love the new Mac. It's a lot easier to use and maintain than Windows. For supporting Mac users, iChat is great and the built-in mike is live during screen-sharing sessions so we can hang up the phone. XP is still in use in the corporate environs I haunt, no change expected there.
-Eddie

For any of you who want to see what is involved in removing Vista, see this thread at CR4.
-Ari

But Jim chimes in with a defense for Vista:

I have been surprised by all the Vista bashing that has been going on. I have been using Vista since RTM and have no issues at all. Even Mac users did not complain this much when they had to learn a new OS. The early versions of OS X were terribly slow and had major issues with applications and driver support. I never heard such vocal complaints about having to buy a new machine because it would not support the latest version of OS X. I guess it is all love for Apple now; they can do no wrong.

Microsoft definitely needs to fix the bad publicity that surrounds Vista. Sure, Vista is different than XP but if it wasn't the same folks would still be complaining. Vista should not be expected to run on a five-year-old machine just like you wouldn't expect Leopard to.
-Jim

And William weighs in on Microsoft's new ad campaign, featuring -- for starters -- Jerry Seinfeld:

I just went to the Reuters link in your story to read the article on the new Microsoft ad campaign. The one thing that stuck out was that the only names other than Gates were comedians. You know, those people that are used to standing in front of a crowd and making a fool of themselves. Maybe that nerdy guy in the Apple campaign will actually help Microsoft's image after the new campaign.
-William

Tell us what you think! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].

Posted by Doug Barney on August 26, 2008


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