[Saracen]

Much of what that document says is probably true, and there undoubtedly are structural benefits to Vista, and some of them evidently do cause some issues with backwards compatibility, and that obviously does cause some issues in moving forward. Legacy hardware and apps always have caused that problem, and probably always will.

But none of that changes my assessment - the benefits to be gained from Vista do not, for me, justify either the cost (of Vista) or the changes required or hassle involved in bringing systems up to date.

It's this simple. I use, currently, about nine PCs at home. They all have legit OSs installed. To bring them up to Vista requirements will cost me a lot of money in licence fees, and I can't see ANY of the improvements in Vista that justify that expense. Then there's the hardware - a good proportion of it is getting on. Hell, some of those machines are Pentiums, some are Athlon XPs and a couple are 486's. And they're doing the job I require of them. They're stable, they're long written down and they just carry on working. So to upgrade, not only would I have to spend a lot of money on Vista licences (unless, of course, MS would suggest I use pirate software? No, thought not) but I'd have to spend a bucket-load more on upgrading PC hardware.

Then there's the question of legacy hardware and software. I regard both as tools for a job. If they're doing the job, why replace them? For instance, I still have some old tape streamers, several old SCSI-based scanners (including two film scanners and an A3 flatbed), dye-sub printers, A2 inkjets, and a host of other items. To upgrade to Vista either implies replacing those, or an extensive investigation to determine if drivers are available for them. And for gear that's 10 years old or more?

It comes down to this. Does Vista offer me anything I want, or need, badly enough to be prepared to spend either the time or money involved in upgrading? Right now, no, it doesn't.

And nor do I or other users at home want to spend the time learning how to do things in Vista that we already know how to do on the existing machines.

There's a time-honoured adage. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And Microsoft, as far as I'm concerned, my IT infrastructure ain't broke.

If you want to convince me to spend the time, money and effort required to upgrade, you're going to have to come up with a FAR better product than Vista. Sure, it's better than XP in many regards (at a price, in time and money terms), but not by anything remotely resembling enough to win the pro v. con argument with me.

As teachers are fond of putting on school reports ..... must try harder in future.