According to a report in 'The Register', a third of all Vista machines have been put back to XP. Read more here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/19/windows_xp_vista_7/

Personally, I think that home users are wrong in doing this unless, like commerce, they have mission critical procedures vital to their well-being.

Dubious support from 3rd parties in the early days, castigation by the press for the lack of promised features, and a completely unfriendly way of dumping people into standard user mode has done a great deal of damage to Vista's image. Most people who talk to me about how bad Vista is have never actually used it or had it installed on any machine of theirs. Their views are based entirely on OLD hearsay.

Upgraders whine about how much more resource Vista requires over XP, but look back to the average Win 9x/ME machine specs.

• PIII processor or less
• 64mb RAM or less
• 10gb HDD or less
• 4Mb Video card or less

The picture was better for users of Win 2000 Pro because it required 256mb RAM to be anything special, but most home users and hobbyists didn't have it, and commerce was not about to upset the apple cart with a Fisher-Price operating system anyway.

While XP would accept a PIII, 64mb RAM was not acceptable despite claims on the box, and installing XP on a 10gb drive was like stuffing a large animal into a small transit cage. The cheapest way to get a half decent XP system was to buy one, notwithstanding the downside of OEM operating system constraints.

Nothing has changed. Vista runs ok on a system sold with it pre-installed, although that can't be said for some of the early boxes which were only just about fit for XP.

So Windows 7 will be released in 2010. Vista would have been released earlier had Microsoft not tried to base it on XP, and then have to start from scratch because XP was not a suitable base. The fact that Microsoft is putting its weight behind Windows 7 now is no different to what they did when XP was released in final form. It is because of the amount of time we all heard about what the new OS would be that caused problems when it was finally launched.

Take note, people. XP was simply not good enough.

It may have been the best Microsoft operating system, but it isn't anymore. Get with the times or be left way behind.