Vista is alright but damn is it slow doing some basic things. My work machine takes no less than 10 minutes to get from from power up to "ready to work" state. And most of that time is spent after I log into Vista. 

Well Vista runs on my machine like a dream just a few seconds boot time, Linux too and I guess XP would also run well.
But thats not really the point, it does not mean that I have to like it. 

Jago: You are a braver man than I...

Vista is fine, on machines with 1GB ram

I would still not want to try with anything lower than 2GB. Good thing this computer I have now has 4GB...

ijed: I switched about a month ago. Some things will piss you off in how they've changed from XP. UAC has high "marmite factor", but I would definitely try with it on first before turning it off. 

It's alot faster than my old machine in any case. Downside is it's capable of playing games after 1997. 

Very quick, but don't know if thats the machine or OS. 

http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=pubuntu0vk1.png 

Meh, pretty good. Very similar to Vista in a lot of ways, but generally seems more polished and less annoying. Doesn't seem like a huge leap right now, but maybe it isn't supposed to be. I like some of the new desktop backgrounds, for what that's worth :)

Still can't stand the Aero theme though, it's just way too busy and it takes up way too much space. Unfortunately, as with Vista, they haven't taken much care with windows classic mode, looks a bit buggy and crap.

I'm curious, what do people here go for, the full pazazz of the modern OS themes, or something clean and simple?

Currently I'm using a custom theme which is very close to windows classic, with the Vista font, and Icons from the tango project ( http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Desktop_Project ). Very happy with this at the moment, about as clean and inoffensive as it gets. 

As a Mac nerd, I feel the OS should deliver nice aesthetics without slowing to a crawl or causing crashes. 

I am a big fan of OS X.

As soon as they finish letting the HackBook people write drivers for everything that's not standard apple hardware I'll switch to the universal release (it'll happen, trust). 

I agree except replace "nice aesthetics" with "clean, non-offensive, functional aesthetics" and I think OSX and XP's "windows classic" skin both provide this. OSX is probably a little more "nice" but in both cases, you can get used to the visual appearance and it doesn't get in your way with attempts to be flashy. 

Functionality is first consideration.

One thing I have a semi-irrational dislike of is when buttons have a circular image but sqaure contact area - why fucking bother?

Form should always follow function. <rant> 

Yes, and form following function is exactly what OSX does IMO. It does many nice looking effects but none of them get in the way of using the OS. The OS responds as if those effects weren't there. 

window wobbling streching fucktarding does so follow function. As do coloured balls. Oh, and reflections. Didn't some mac app practically DEFINE those? Ah, and slideshows that use all the mac mambo jambo 3d rotating cube effects, i love how the Mac designers hit the form follows function concept spot on with those. :P 

None of those things interfere with the function they are supporting. I'm not sure what the "mac mambo jambo 3D rotating cube effects" are but the rest of them are innocuous.

By "window wobbling streching fucktarding" I assuming you mean the genie effect when you minimize and restore windows. Non issue.

By "coloured balls" you either mean the buttons on the top left of the window or the busy cursor. Non issue.

"Reflections" is pretty clear as to the meaning but ... how is that a problem and how does it interfere with the function? The dock has reflections on it. It looks good and doesn't get in the way at all.

Is this just irrational Mac hating or do you have an actual issue here? 

I think he was disputing the form following from function rather than being merely (possibly ott) fx for the sake of fx.

tbh I go with It looks good and doesn't get in the way at all


And there are so many entirely rational reasons to hate on Macs that I fail to see the need for irrational hating... 

to be honest, the colored ball thing is legit -- the fact that the icons aren't visible all the time can't have any functional purpose, they hid it just to look more sleek at the cost of reinforcing user expectations.

Now, i do think it's pretty nice the way unsaved documents have a modified "close" icon, though. Better than the silly windows "put an asterisk after the document name in the title bar" hack. 

"to be honest, the colored ball thing is legit -- the fact that the icons aren't visible all the time can't have any functional purpose, they hid it just to look more sleek at the cost of reinforcing user expectations. "

How do you mean? The only thing I can see is when a window loses focus, the 3 balls turn grey. I've never seen them disappear entirely. 

 

 

Out of interest, I thought I'd do a quick comparison of Windows 7 Aero against classic mode. I think all I really proved is that Internet Explorer looks absolutely shocking.

Windows 7 Aero
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/2530/aero7.png

Windows 7 Classic
http://img369.imageshack.us/img369/1773/classic7.png

XP Classic (ish)
http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/3435/classic.png 

Do you mean the translucent frams that the windows are in?

Whats wrong with that? Looks good, works fine on my missuses Atom processor, whats the problem with that? 

frams = frames 

includes transparancy etc. I think it's a bit visually noisy and generally gash personally. Does seem more refined and clean than in Vista though, for what that's worth.

Transparancy isn't always bad though, I've seen it looking sexy in KDE, e.g. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__CMac9X56-o/SI-HAKBE_CI/AAAAAAAAAi4/UhJLUZBU0TQ/s400/kde-plasma-folderview.png 

Does Windows 7 force that giant taskbar on you?

Part of the reason I rate OS X is the effecient use of screenspace. 10% of my screen as a bar is hardly maximal usage...