anyone try it out yet?

yeah, it's pretty good.

whats this

and why'd they change the bottom bar?

*waits for people to come up with reasons to bitch about 7 when regular computer users with basic knowledge have no problems whatsoever with the OS*

i already did

the bottom bar, i dont like the look

thats not really a perceived technical problem like everyone but people I actually know (ensign9 doesn't count) seem to have with Vista.

the problems I have with Vista (which I had no choice but to have on my laptop..and I tried to find an XP one!) is that it nannies you (in a big brother kind of way) and take so much bloody space!
otherwise I had no particular technical problem, but then again I don't use it often.

But based on that, I have no desire/need to spend $100s on another Windows system.

ummm you can download it for free

and if you were savy about the OS, you could make it so it doesnt ask your permission for access to programs

yeah, its really easy to go into setting and shut off the user account controls or whatever they are called.
This reason that those were put there is because people are really fucking stupid and would run just any old .exe file and ruin their computers with viruses and the like. The thing is, the people who are savvy enough to turn off those controls are generally the people who aren't running retarded .exe files all the time.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

You can thank me later.

I know I should...but can't face the effort of trying (without being sure to find) all the drivers I'd need as well as the various progs I use.

I good friend of mind is a big Linux guy is attempting to convert me. I said I'd do it for my media box when I build it, but for my everyday PC I'm used to Windows. It definitely looks great, customization is solid... if I had to ditch XP I'd take it in favor of Vista.

BoP is so right !
Pegasus, tell me what are the progs you're using cause there's an awful lot of chances that the softwares already exist and are totally free

virtual machines guys. you can run as many OS's as you want.

I only do free anyway
it's more the drivers I'm worried about (though utorrent I'd sorely miss)..I've build (and re-built) my machine completely so it's a pain tracking down drivers..I'm already having a USB problem on Windows at the moment (I added a SATA card and had to guess a driver, that seems to have fucked up my USB. Can't seem to manage to fix it even uninstalling it...and I haven't find the time to try further to fix that, so starting a whole system from scratch.. yawn.).

I like it. A lot.

If it weren't for the inability to auto-accept unsigned drivers, it'd be my primary OS. As it is, I have to interrupt the boot sequence every fucking time, to force the OS to accept my unsigned wifi adapter driver.

it doesn't just do that on install?
man, I'd be at it all day I've had so many unsigned drivers installed!

Well that's basically the sort of thing that Ubuntu manages to deal out-of-the-box. You could perhaps give it a try without the need to install the thing. Just download an iso of the newest version (http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download), burn it on a cd (low speed (4x max)), put the cd in the drive, restart the comp and basically, it will boot on the ubuntu cd (if not, you'll have to change some configuration in your bios but that's easy and harmless). There you choose the "try ..." option and you can see if your hardware is up and ready.
My recent experience :
I've bought a brand new PC, devices by devices. I've assemblied it, tried to install XP but it wouldn't (sata drives are not recognized by my old shitty version of XP). I've put a Mandriva LiveCD, everything was working fine. I install the whole thing and after 3-4 hours of copying files from my old harddrives, my new comp is ready and rocking.