Computer geeks pretty passionate systems, I wondered about putting it in Proctology Section. Well, anyway here goes.
I guess they’re giving up on Vista, Windows 7 is in the works:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7714518.stm
From what I’ve read, this is essentially Vista, with the graphics requirements for the eye candy backed off a bit, the degree of deliberate user annoyance backed off a bit, with a slightly different desktop layout.
Favorite quote from that demo, as he goes to watch a movie, “Maybe it won’t crash this time…” 
It’s still Windows, ain’t it? 
–James
P.S. Vista isn’t all bad: I’ve been running Vista 64 as my main OS for months now with no difficulties. I like the 64-bit version much better than the 32-bit version, as it has comparable speed to XP for gaming, sometimes even slightly better. Another major irritation was fixed when Creative finally fixed their drivers and provided full software support for the X-Fi. I think i have crashed once in the last three months, and I routinely leave my system up for a week or more at a time now without rebooting; I usually wound up rebooting XP every couple of days by comparison. Finally, turning off UAC made the system quite a bit more friendly.
This doesn’t sound right, somehow. I have had XP up and running for years with out a crash. Perhaps you have some sort of unusual usage that is causing this.
I have heard similar remarks about W7, that it is more an effort by MS to put all the negative press about Vista behind them by relabling virtually the same product plus a few updates. Time will tell.
djm
I have had XP up and running for years with out a crash.
Then you have had an extraordinary degree of good luck.
–James
Not sure what you’re saying here. Are you talking about running continuously without ever turning the computer off, or hybernating the computer at night and restarting without reboot, or shutting down the system in the evening and booting WindoZe next morning?
Owen
Years? You mean, apart from all the reboots after updates?
I mean apart from restarting after updates. The only thing that ever crashes regularly on my system is Firefox.
djm
Our corporate IT still wants us to use XP/32 and XP/64 for what its worth
Its my observation that many are.
On the extreme side, this is a not-so-smart move for M$, at least from the perspective that so many people and organizations are opting to stay with XP. I’m wonderoing if next step up to Winders7 is going to catch people off guard after the ho-hum Vista experience.
Vista didn’t really add anything that you couldn’t already do on XP.
There was no killer app, no single special thing that made Vista a “must-have.”
The other major issue: because of the mandated DRM device driver hooks, development on sound and graphics drivers in particular lagged severely. This has largely been fixed, but people who had a bad experience at first with Vista aren’t likely to want to go back to it.
Yet another crippling blow: for all of Vista’s famous draconian DRM, there’s really not much out there that will play on Vista that won’t play on XP.
–James