IMHO, I support balance between supporting old hardware and upgrading features.

I don't think MS needs to support 386 33 MHz SX computer with 4 MB ram, but same time it should support in least 3 years old computer.

Microsoft made a special version for the EU because they were forced to.

Yah, I know that was sort of a tongue in cheek comment. I don't think for one minute that MS would create a small business edition of their OS because there aren't enough small businesses out there that will whine and moan loud enough to get the attention it would take to get something like that done.

I guess for the companies that are willing to invest some time in creating a corporate image they could always use something like nLite to remove the fluff from the OS that they aren't interested in. It's extra overhead they probably shouldn't have to deal with but at the same point it will do the trick.

...it wasn't all that long ago that someone fairly high up in the microsoft circles said "who could ever need more than 640Kb RAM..." please notice, kilobytes, not megabytes..!

who was that again..? oh yeah, bill gates..!

sure move with the times, and a graphic orientated does need RAM, but now we're talking about 1 giga just to get vista up and running... which for me equates to a 2 giga layout... not to mention the graphic card demands... and what exactly do i get for my money..?

vista..? no sir..!!! maybe in a few years i'll move to vista but for the moment i'm staying put with my 3 year old pc (according to the ms analysis program its vista aero capable) with xp, a few security add-on programs, and stardock ENHANCEMENTS plus a few other goodies...

i must say i really enjoy reading the wincustomise forum, an interesting community of people and ideas... it would pay microsoft and apple big big time to invest money in a department dedicated to studying forums like this... then, and only then would they have their finger on the pulse of what their users really need instead of serving us up what they think we want... light years separate the definition of "want" and "need"...

reading a little further on in theis thread...

kevin, i think you have made a very objective statement...

and yet the original theme of this thread was about the "bloat" of windows... and vista is bloated, mega..! or should i say giga and what do i get for my money that xp and stardock can't provide..?

"meet the new boss, same as the old boss" - quote from "the who"...

vista is just playing the catch up game, there is no innovation in it... sure, for people outside of the stardock and similar scenes, they will say "wow" and yet it's just eye candy, nothing really new that you can't already get hold of as shareware or freeware add-ons...

i dream of touch-screen functions (sure needs new hardware, and yet windows drives the hardware industry), REAL speech inter-reaction and language translation... language translation - i'm surprised that the internet hasn't forced that issue... afterall we don't all speak english...

anyway, that would be innovations that i would willinly give my money out for... vista, sure it's an achievement but i expect more of microsoft and its finacial ressources...

...it wasn't all that long ago that someone fairly high up in the microsoft circles said "who could ever need more than 640Kb RAM..." please notice, kilobytes, not megabytes..!

Actually that was IBM, not Microsoft.

The thing we windows users need to remember is that the bloat is partially for our benefit.

Entirely, not partially......puts it in perspective...

I'm not convinced Windows is bloated. Even if it is, you don't have to keep the bloat. The 'resource-hungry' Aero can be disabled, and you can remove or not use just about all of the other programs Microsoft puts in Windows. I'd say most people like what some of you consider bloat, for those who don't like or need it, all that's needed is a bit of tweaking to get Windows to run as small as possible.

When you install Office, you are offered a list of things to include/exclude during installation.  Doing this with the OS install could serve everyone.  If you want the bloat, everything installs.  If not, pick and choose what you do want.  This could include the media player, anti-virus/spyway, aero capability, whatever.

Didn't Win95 offer this?  Don't quite remember.

I would love to see this feature, werewolf. No Messenger, no WMP, no Firewall.....

They could imply that with an advanced/custom setup and a standard setup screen, similar to some programs.

What makes vista so bloated = the stuff that makes it backward compatable.

One man's bloated is another man's fully featured. No matter what you do someone will complain, so MS will (quite rightly) stick fingers in both ears and carry on. I would   

Exactly, people will bitch that it either has something or it doesn't have something, so they might as well just carry on.  More install options would be nice, though.

list of things to include/exclude during installation. Doing this with the OS install could serve everyone. If you want the bloat, everything installs.

A noble statement, however lets examine reality a tad.
Most of us reading and responding to this post are fairly proficient with Windows and can talk about it with some reasonable facts and opinions.
The average end user however is quite a different animal. A large majority of users just don't get it. Sure, they can surf the internet and print their digital cam pics of fido and the kids on vacation, but they haven't the first clue on what is happening underneath. They don't know if they need something or not. Vista's installation is very very easy just for that reason.
At work, the same applies. The user can navigate a spreadsheet or operate the company software and such, but the knowledge ends there.

The techs among us can uninstall what we need to, and scale things back JUST LIKE WE ALWAYS HAVE. The average end user can continue in his/her expierience on the PC in a more simplified environment which is harder for them to screw up, and they won't even miss those extra MB's of ram they are using.

yeah Phoon, I thought about that *after* I hit submit.  Excellent point.

How 'bout an option...'I don't know squat, just install what Bill thinks I need'

LOL

I find it interesting that people seem to expect a newer, more powerful and feature rich operating system to not need newer, more powerful and feature rich hardware on which to run. Let's face it, the majority of computer users don't care. Sooner or later they'll go to their computer store to buy a new box that may just happen to have Vista on it.

Afterall, as you talk about Vista being bloated in terms of hardware requirements - have you looked at the hardware requirements of games recently? Not the ones advertised on the box but the realistic "play it as intended" requirements? I think you'll find those to be way beyond anything Vista will demand of users buying PC's next year.