this is completely assenine and a crock of shit! Excuse me, but I'm a tad pissed off about this.
If I wanted a piece of garbage forced down my throat I would ask for it.

Ok, I am just interested, I am not very computer savyy about some of the Names of things. What does OEM mean. Thanks , still learning. Have Vista, like it. but not as well as my XP, got a new computer , already loaded. It was expensive to upgrade a lot of my software and some I can't use at all.

OEM XP should be phased out, but not that soon. wait until Vista is corrected. there is no way it'll be done by then.

OEM phasing out isn't that much of an issue....as long as the OS is still commercially available as an option for those frantically hanging on to the past.....[like me]...

Why should OEM XP be phased out? Vista Vista Vista - I am sick of hearing about it! Having said that it's because my machine could only run basic and I can't afford a new machine. Sour grapes. On the other hand it would be wise of Microsoft to give people more choice in what OS they can have.

i will fight vista to the bitter end.

Good riddance, I can't stand XP after being on Vista since it went RTM. When I go to work and have to use XP everything is so much slower and less responsive. Glad to hear its getting the well deserved boot.

I use 2 different types of Macs at work and 2000 professional. At home it's XP home. So I've been around the block a few times. I've only played with Vista in the store. There are so many things that can affect the speed a computer runs at. Astyanax0 - Is the XP computer you use at work connected to a network? What sort of work is the computer used for? Is the computer defragged and are all the service packs installed? Has the registry been cleaned? Is it spyware and virus free? All these things make a difference as far as the speed of the computer. If you take a Vista machine and put it on a screwed up network, then you let the machine get mucked up, no defrag, let spyware get on it, yadda yadda - It will slow to a crawl no matter how much RAM etc it has. It's apples and oranges my friend. If you let a Mac go without any maintenance at all it will eventually crap out too. I've read more than a few articles comparing Vista and XP speed. From what I can see XP is over all still faster. Actually it's pretty close between the two. Vista runs more services. Vista needs more RAM. Vista is more expensive. I'll stick with XP for now cause I have to but I don't mind. With Windowblinds etc. it's a pleasure to use. I make sure all the maintenance is done on the machine and it's as fast as I want it to be. It's good to go my friend.

chasbo i totally agree.

OEM means the OS preinstalled on vendors PCs.

Why shouldn't MS require that manufactures ship with the "best and brightest" product they have?

How will this affect the average user?  Not at all I think.  The average user doesn't care about the OS.  They want to surf the web, chat, maybe balance a checkbook and write a letter.

If they are power users and want XP for whatever reason they can buy a PC with no OS and then purchase XP and install it.

MS is not phasing out support yet.  They are just not letting vendors sell their older product.  Seems to make good sense to me.

all i know is that vista runs 5-10 times faster on my machine than XP did and thats with not changing any hardware. I have upgraded my memory since but thats it. and my specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4Ghz
2GB Ram
Visiontek ATI Radeon X1300 512 MB ram

and vista ran amazingly better than XP. since them i've upgraded to 4GB of ram just so video games run a bit better. and compusa just had a good sale.

And out of the 60 programs i have installed i've only had trouble with 3. Panda Antivirus wouldn't work because they didn't update their software to work with vista so i had to use a basic version. Motorola Mobile Phone Tools needed special drivers. and Need for Speed Carbon has a tendency to crash. but it crashed all the time in XP so i dont think that has anything to do with vista. thats just EA doing a crappy job.

so honestly i dont know why you all are bitching about compatibility and all. i upgraded a little over 2 weeks after the launch date, found all my drivers within 2 hours and haven't had any trouble (aside from those 3) since. I have found that Photoshop gets slowed down by aero a bit, but not enough to cause any trouble.

Chasbo im not some noob end user lol, I work for a consulting company that does IT support for mortgage companies.

Computer Specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo 2.2GHz
OCZ Platinum Series DDR400 2GB (2x1GB) 2-3-2-5 T1
Abit KN8 v1.1 nForce 4 Motherboard
ATi connect3D Radeon X1950XTX 512MB
Thermaltake Truepower Trio 550w


And about 3 hard disks, 1 200GB and 2 80GB.

My boot time is nearly cut in half, in between sessions in which a reboot is needed are twice as long if not more and memory management dances around XP's wile senselessly beating it to death.

The generic PC is not all that great, some are decent with a standard 2.4ghz p4 and a gig of ram, sorry but even that is pathetic to me, the performance still isnt as good as it could be, get off XP, its nearly 7 years old and its time has come.

And the only compatibility issue I had was having to download my sound card drivers (Realtek AC'97) and throw them on one of my backup drives before I switched. If you find that to be troubling and you are pretty good at computers then I must say that is pretty damn sad.

Sour grapes on M$ part I think. No one wants to buy their newest toy so now they will force it down our throats. Thank (insert your deity here) that MFG's are seriously considering Linux as an option during a PC build. My personal gripes on Vista are the hardware snafus, which will probably get worked out sooner or later, the obvious lean towards DRM satisfaction rather than user satisfaction, the lofty hardware requirements - making upgrading an expensive option, the annoying UAC (I know you can disable it but then what's the point of it?), and last but not least: the fact that this Vista could have been effectively marketed as an upgrade to XP rather than a whole new OS! That one really gets at me. This OS (AFAICS) offers little benefit for upgrading (IMHO), you are better off buying a whole new system, which is probably what M$ and the PC Mfg's had planned all the time, although now it seems not be working out as planned. I have XP and use Kubuntu Linux PCs right now. Xp is now a mature OS, the ins and outs of this OS have been ironed out (mostly) and I believe users can use it effectively for what they need to do, so why rush to upgrade? I don't know, that's why I didn't. To tell you the truth, nowadays my Kubuntu Linux PC gets most of the internet action these days, leaving XP to do my games, web publishing, and office tasks. I won't be upgrading to Vista ever, I'm not trying to be vindictive or rebellious or anything against M$, I do like M$, I just can't think of a reason to spend my bucks just to have more problems using Vista!!

That is incorrect. You cannot buy a top name brand PC without an OS.

Yes you can, I've read Dell is offering it. Unless that has changed... I don't keep up with the proprietary crap.