>>Which may be good. Imagine if they had adopted the Vista en masse. Brrrrr.
>
>My reaction to Vista was not nearly as bad as some other people had. I'm not saying I was in love with it but it wasn't a fate worse than death.
I had one machine with that on it, and I first put up with it for a few weeks, then scrapped it and put XP, and then that too had trouble with (HP's proprietary HW) drivers so I installed Ubuntu on it and lived happily ever after... until the infamous 1cent bug (the amount of copper missing on the duct which cools the video card is easily replaced by inserting one cent coin... but you have to dismantle the whole machine). Eventually sold it, with Ubuntu still on it.
These few weeks with the Vista weren't happy, but then weren't too long. Just enough to taste it and remember.