Flame bait

[memnus]

Getting more serious about building my own computer. It'll be a similar setup to my current box, a dual-boot Windows/Linux system with media on a shared partition. I don't habitually store movies, and at current rates will never be interested in high-definition or protected Content. I rip CDs, but I don't have a problem with 128kbps MP3. I want DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.0 support, and sometime during the lifespan of this computer I'll have the free time to take advantage of them. I would like to maximize the length of time before products start coming out that will be simply unsupported.

[Poll #956551]

Defend your answer in comments. Particularly, I'd like some alternate opinions on this scathing condemnation of Vista design decisions.

Comments

[camlost.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that XP will be supported for a long while yet. As in, probably the expected life of a computer (even a shiny new one). I haven't heard many good things about Vista, and the gaming community seems to have an especially dim view of it, in my limited experience. I don't know much about WINE, so I can't comment. Given the dislike of Vista, unless MS changes a lot of stuff, I think there'll be a pretty high demand for gaming on XP for a while yet (barring another OS release by MS, which doesn't seem likely within the next few years).

[willworker.livejournal.com]

XP was basically the first OS where they finally got the whole "user friendly" concept down. 2000 wasn't a bad OS, but it lacked some polish and a lot of the nice features that I've grown accustomed to (better USB support, automagical driver-detection and installation, etc). XP Home is gimped in a great many ways, the most obvious being with networking.

WINE takes a whole lot of futzing to make work with a lot of Windows programs; for anything but fairly basic stuff, I've given up on it (although I'm not nearly the hacker some people are).

I don't know enough about Vista to say much about it, but everything I've heard has been negative, except that it's very pretty, rivaling OSX's prettiness. I seriously doubt you'll want to deal with the extra hassle for a minor "prettiness" upgrade, though.

Steve

[iluvsheep.livejournal.com]

ME forever!
What no Vista ULTIMATE?!? How are you going to be a true Windows fanboy?

Seriously though, I am pretty sure that DirectX 10 will only be supported under Vista, so to the extent that you want DirectX 10 for games or development, you need to go with some flavor of Vista. Also, don't forget that DirectX 10 also has its own new hardware architecture requirements, and as such you need to buy a video card that is DirectX 10 compliant.

[camlost.livejournal.com]

Indeed. "The latest release version of DirectX, DirectX 10, is exclusive to Microsoft Windows Vista." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directx_10)

That's ... odd. I guess MS is really going to push this Vista thing. I'm surprised. Of course, I'm curious how many games will be written for dx10, knowing that a substantial fraction[1] of its market dislikes Vista so.

[1] This is just a guess. It might just be a vocal minority.

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

if you want DirectX 10, you're stuck with Vista. Now, Vista Home Basic is made of the same monkey balls that it sucks. No features. So do you want Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate? Well, unless you can find a good educational discount on Ultimate, it's $400 you're never getting back. So ask yourself this: What non-basic features do you actually plan to USE? If you want Windows Media Center (which is not very user friendly, and is basically a shiny wrapper around WMP) or you want built-in video editing software, feel free to choose Home Premium. But you can get better media players for free, and why would you use Microsoft's video editing software over video editing software made by companies that actually know and care about editing video? Now, if you want non-sucky NETWORK tools, you need business. Also for some reason they put these features into business but not home premium:
* Backup/restore
* Scanning

and, which you don't care about, the evil, evil, terrifying Remote Desktop.

Business is about the same price as Home Premium. So, in short, unless you want to use Microsoft software for video editing, you want Business. (Also, do you really want to spend $200 extra for Ultimate to get Mah Jongg and Windows Media Center along with the Business tools?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/choose.mspx