Well, let me be the first to say then that I too kicked and bucked about upgrading to Vista here at work- but having used it at home for 1+ years and here at work for about 3 months (on my computer for beta testing), I've grown to prefer it to XP. Sure there is a learning curve and things are not where you always remember them but from an IT perspective I find the increased control and granularity refreshing. Plus, instead of messages that say "Application Error in memory block 0x00000xyz to the 3rd power located in some alternate universe " you get "This appears to be malfunctioning, do you want me to fix it? Look for a solution online? Wait for it to respond? Or just give up and shut the darn thing down?"

Plus searching for network printers, loading programs faster with SuperFetch, built-in support to play DVD's (no 3rd party codecs here!), Offline files that work well, slick user interface, Windows sidebar (I use it all the time for RDP, Weather, news, XM radio via the internet, and most of all monitoring dual core CPU and memory usage). I even loaded Vista on one laptop, pulled the hard drive and stuck it into a completely different laptop (not one piece of similar hardware) and it actually booted and ran! Try that with XP!

Les we forget getting used to XP from 2kPro, such as a whole new start menu, new themes and graphics, better recovery options, better management tools, etc. Took a little time to get used to, but we all managed.

Do I particularly care for Microsoft? No - they are overpriced, smug, and their software is far from perfect. Fact is they do produce a lot of decent software titles that play well with each other and they have become the de-facto standard in business. If you want play with others, your best bet is to go PC and Windows. Are they counting on that mentality? Sure are- else they'd be fighting for their lives against Mac and (more recently) Linux.

In summary, it's always about growing pains. It's the price we pay to evolve - sometimes you have to change the way you think and do. And all 3 of the Vista installs I use are x64 installs - which makes getting it to run perfectly in this still very highly x86-centric world even harder! If I can do it, then perhaps there is hope for mankind yet.