Vista
I'm hearing a resounding yawn at the release of the new Microsoft OS. Most people have the same plan. If they get a new computer and it comes with Vista, that's OK. No one has plans to upgrade really. I don't blame them. So far, the biggest advantage I've read about is a one click presentation mode for laptops that disables the screen saver and beeps and such. Thats .... nice. There are some security updates. That is handy too, but not much more than you could get from third party folks.
The 64 bit support is supposed to be better. No one cares about that until it doesn't work.
The only thing that I really miss from Windows is playing games. I don't have time to play games anyway. Pretty much everything else I can get done via Linux. It is getting to the point that I do not need to mess with too much to get things to work any more. It was really bad a couple of years ago. Everything you wanted to do required massaging the code a bit to get thing to work on your box. Nightmare. There are easily a dozen projects out there to allow Linux to run Windows games.
In Linux, some programs like Adobe and Open Office take ages to open up. This is because the whole program is running when you click on the file or evoke it from the command line. In Windows, many programs have a pre-loader that just sits there eating up environment resources waiting for you to click on something that they pay attention to. This approach does make applications like Office and Adobe pop up faster upon a click, but enough applications do this that it causes a general slow down of the computer. You can't even tern most of the m off. You don't get the choice.
So, I click on programs and it takes a while in Linux for the application to pop up with my data file. I have to remind myself as I sit there twiddling my thumbs that I will not suffer as much slow down or crash time because of this. I think in the long run it is faster the Linux way. Though I understand why MS has made the choice it has. People notice the initial delay more than a general slowdown. It won't be much longer that computers run so fast that it won't make much of a difference. I hope that is the case any way.
People say Vista has a new look, but from the screen shots it doesn't look that far off. I still like Mac OS feel better than any other I've used. Gnome sucks only slightly less than KDE so I stick with it on Linux. One of the guys at work got a Mac and told us stories of getting nEdit to work and other programs that he was used to using from Linux. it sounds like a snap if you find some good examples on the net. Apparently there is quite a following of Mac OS for hackers willing to share their talents at getting things to work.