Foolish of me to hold my breath. Tonight I am going to promote (X)Ubuntu from its current position of "Saviour of Old Computer Hardware", to "Wine Gaming Platform Experiment on my Main PC".

Time to reach for Acronis and buckle up. Vista Ultimate 64, kindly shuffle over a bit, you're about to get dual-booted.

After over 20 years of making computer operating systems, Microsoft STILL hasn't learned to do proper localization like the trusty old Amiga did flawlessly (remember language catalogs ? No ? poor you ...) and like most open source systems do problem-free too.

Gits.

But they got what they utterly deserved for trying to fully control their (l)user's computer experience down to driverspace.

Microsoft - where shall we drag you to today ? (And let you pay for the privilege)

If An OS Were An Airline, Windows Vista would be the clunky jet sitting at the farthest gate going to a destination nobody wants to go but everyone has to use because it's using up all the other airport capacity - and then it fails to take off.

Natch.

Since Vista was 5 years late, who expects the service pack this decade anyway

I guess they arn't wrong when they say that the ultimate edition has more "features" than any other edition

Didn't he originally say that "it is the highest-quality, most secure and reliable Windows operating system ever, there should be no need for a service pack." and also when asked if Microsoft had set a date for the first Windows Vista service pack, Ballmer bellowed, "No! The goal is not to need one."

So what went wrong Steve?

Yes but what language will the message warning the users they can't install the service back be in? Will the error message supports those 31 languages? If not, will we get another error message saying that an error message can't be displayed because our chosen language pack is not supported? Which will trigger an error message saying that the error message reporting the error message...

Mine's the coat that has all those funny foreign words written on it.

Only Microsoft could get away with charging customers $200 more for an 'Ultimate' version of an operating system, make these customers wait over a year to see any of these super-duper (read: pointless) extras, then tell these customers that they'll be getting the service pack after other Vista users because the extras break compatibility.

Scandalous.

I hope they plan to release a UK English language pack. I hate seeing "Personalize", "Color", "Customize" etc. etc.

Ah, & within a day of them dropping the Vista retail price, & of their OEM-based activation being well & truly hacked. Beautiful.

Should have known better, holding my breath whilst Microsoft did anything. Stupid really. No! I mean really stupid.

"Scandalous." ...... By Pseudopath Posted Tuesday 4th March 2008 16:09 GMT

I don't know about scandalous, Pseudopath, but what else do you expect whenever they are making it up as they go along. The Needs of the Virtual Machine appear to be outstripping the Traditional Giants/Founding Fathers of the Business's Ability to provide Mentored Business Intelligence Programs. Their Phish Pharms need restocking with SMART IntelAIgent Sperm/Sprats/BabelFish so that they can XXXXtrapolate/MetaDataAnalyse for Provision of Future Feeds ....... which if you think about things logically, would in a society which is supposed to be evolving/changing/growing, not necessarily be Feeds as they are today or were yesterday In fact, go back yesterday to perhaps only fifty years ago and there will be hardly anything delivered the same. Change is the Norm of the Status Quo and Chaos the Result of Resistance to Change and Retention of Systems and Protocols/Things as they are.

I'm truly decimated by this (1/10th of my personal Roman Legion that refused to obey an order and/or rebelled against the command structure, drew losing lots and were crucified).

.......Really....

anyway, its LA so no coat here but what are those scribbles on that sign?

I hate seeing "colour", "that funky 'L'" (some kinda money lol), etc etc...

KInda petty, don't you think? I put up with it here at El Reg because it's a Brit website, I'll get by, day by day, and try not to kill myself over it. No biggie.

I suppose I could whine because I get errors that say:

"Fatal System Error"

instead of "Ain't no point in beatin' a dead horse...'course, can't hurt none either" or

"PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA"

instead of "That dog ain't gonna hunt"

yeeeeeeeeeeeehaw!

The camo field jacket that smells like cordite......

apart from bitlocker is there actually any other part of ultimate thats not in the cheaper versions - especially now it seems that the ultimate version is going to be the least up to date version...

come to think of it truecryot 5 now does full drive encryption so theres 1 less reason to bother with ultimate

now if only someone would create a linux driver for my laltiude d420's internal 3g card i could drop vista altogether!

When are you Americans going to learn, it is English not American.

Well unless you live in the deep south, then that there is a whole other language thems speak down there.

Since the vast majority of users of Vista are most likely in languages mentioned there is no delay for them. I loaded SP1 when it was released to technet on a Vista Ultimate laptop and it went flawless, well other than it taking 40 minutes. Seems like an over blown issue, especially or the Enlish, French, etc users out there....

use ndiswrapper for your 3g card. now go format that sucker and install a real OS, something with an X in it.

Like Windows 'X' P? Sorry couldn't resist.

It was worth reading all that just for amanfromMars' comments. Fantastic!!

My Ubuntu box here nicely lets me use its "Control Centre", where I select a coloUr to customiSe things... :)

SP1 is not offered ONLY if you've installed a different language using the language pack.

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/03/03/language-packs-and-windows-vista-sp1.aspx

"PCs running Windows Vista Ultimate with any of the other Language Packs installed will not be offered Windows Vista SP1 through Windows Update until they are released. Once the Language Packs are released, Windows Vista SP1 will then be offered for installation. "

A pity in one way the team behind AutopatcherXP could have taught them how to do it right the first time .

Well given I got offered SP1 for download like 4 horus after it was announced by the world and next doors cat that it had been pulled due to issues and I run ultimate I'm like thinking either I'm in bizaro world or the reg is.

i would ask what colour the sky is there but personaly I dont care, what the women like - details details :).