Thank goodness for the official validation. I had no idea i was using a really good operating system (well apart from a feeling in my gut).

While I am in no way attempting to defend MS, this is still beta, so some of the functional quirks may change. For the most part, the cumbersome functionality of Vista should come as no surprise to a windows user. While I admit the Windows OS can, in some areas, give you more control over the details of components and hardware, they have certainly done nothing in the way of simplifying the GUI to make this capability appealing in any way. Besides, if it all worked the way it was supposed to in the first place, who would need to tinker so much?

... including a link to the ARTICLE in addition to (if not instead of) all the advertising links?

That was FAST! Thanks!

I read the entire 13 pages of this review and my favorite part is in the last paragraph:

The bitter end

After more than 15 years reviewing Windows operating systems, I didn't just suddenly begin hating Microsoft or Windows. (Although I have to admit, OS X is looking better and better of late.) . . .

Beta 2 of XP (Whistler) was perfectly usable as an everyday OS whereas betas of Vista have significant issues with memory usage and resource handles which may not go away in the final release.

removing the typical menu structure from Office and Explorer??? just weird!

Check out "Scot Finnie's subjective operating-system rankings" graph on page 2 or the linked article. That's pretty inpressive if the author has actually used all of those OS'es. He's got NeXT, BeOS, Mac OS (classic), the Apple II OS, MSDOS, and CPM in the rankings. It's a bit silly comparing Windows Vista to CPM, isn't it...?

than I ever wanted to know about Windows Vista. It's quite apparent that Mac OS X is an OS designed to make Macs better. Apple is not trying to make a huge profit selling Mac OS X in a box, which explains why there is only one version that has all the features for $129. The main purpose of Mac OS X is to sell more new Macs.

This was a well thought out article and hit on some interesting changes Microsoft was making for its new operating system. I don't think Windows will be more usable but it will be an improvement over XP security wise ten fold. The User Accounts Control is worth it just for keeping kids from downloading junk on the computer. The one thing that is not really discussed in this article is how Mac OS X 10.4 is better than Windows Vista, XP, or Windows 2000. I did see him talk about it in the beginning, "Beyond security, Vista's single best feature is the graphics subsystem and Aero "Glass" user experience it enables. Direct support for advanced 3-D graphics processors, vector-based graphics and fonts, DPI scaling, reflections, transparencies, 3-D movements and a whole range of visual improvements account for the most profound change to Vista. The new integrated desktop search features, the ability to save searches as dynamic collections, and some new data sorting and visualizing options make up the next most significant feature set." Allow me to rephrase that so we can all understand, "Windows Vista copies just about every feature introduced in previous versions of Mac OS X and the new Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Apple has the most advanced operating system in the world but it won't matter because people will think these are Microsoft features and Apple copied them. It's a win win situation for Windows users"