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First compelling reason to switch to Windows 7

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Darwin:
[/b] If you say you "don't think the quote is accurate", do you mean that I may have misquoted it? I just checked and it seems to have been correctly quoted. However, if you disagree with the article I quoted, then that's another matter and you might be better referring to the author.
-IainB (March 14, 2010, 04:00 AM)
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Yes, sorry IainB! I meant that I disagree with author, or, rather that from my understanding of the situation the author seems to be misrepresenting the situation slightly (see f0dder's reply above).

Innuendo:
@f0dder and @Innuendo:
My apologies. I made a mistake in my post above and have corrected it. Where I wrote "XP" it should have read "Vista".-IainB (March 13, 2010, 09:11 PM)
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That's okay, IainB. Everyone makes mistakes, but everything that f0dder & told you about WinXP applies to Windows Vista. So while you made a mistake in naming the OS the reasons the way things are the way they are remain the same.

@Innuendo: It is categorically not my theory, and it would appear to be fact in any event.
To substantiate this, I have added a relevant reference to my post above. The reference is to a separate post on a rather academic site called "Geoff Chappell - Software Analyst".
--- End quote ---

I don't want to sound snarky when I write this, but it's impossible not to do so. Who is Geoff Chappell & why should I believe anything he says? I've seen plenty a blog & post on the internet by software analysts, Microsoft MVPs, etc. who didn't know their arse from a hole in the ground. What makes Mr. Chappell different than the rest?

Eóin:
That Geoff Chappell article is pure sensationalism. MS never hid the details of what memory various OS's could access, and they always limited the Desktop OS's to a lower max than the Server Editions. Big deal, you still get what you pay for.

IainB:
Putting aside the possibility of this XP limitation being a "conspiracy" for a moment:    ;)

The ARS technnica post is rather informative. I might put them back into my Google Reader subscriptions after this. (I had removed them after their what I thought was an extremely stupid article on ad-blocking.)

Just in case you have not already seen it, in the comments below the ARS technica post, there is provided this rather elegant work-around:
Metzen | Thu Mar 11, 2010 12:13 am | permalink
Windows XP works just fine with properly aligned partitioned drives. The only part it fails with them is with the initial "blue screen" install process as that is hard-coded for the 63rd 512byte offset. But you can get around it. I know this because when I worked at HP we had this issue. Microsoft's solution was some registry tricks in WinPE to format the drive the "XP" way, but we found ways around it while maintaining the proper alignment.
The trick we used was:
   1) Install XP first
   2) ImageX XP to another HDD or over the network
   3) Reformat the drive and install Vista
   4) Copy XP to the hard disk
   5) Setup bcdedit to dualboot XP

And for just XP we would skip the Vista install but use the new Vista bootloader as opposed to ntldr. It worked just fine, and we got the "faster" properly aligned partitions.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923332
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931760

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DrPizza  below that makes this comment:
That's an interesting workaround--rely on Vista to do the stuff that needs to be large-sector aware, but then just stick with XP. And I bet it's quicker than running WD's alignment tool, too. Good idea!

--- End quote ---

zridling:
Allow me a predictable retort. Why is this a compelling reason to upgrade to Win7? Why not another OS altogether? Not making assumptions, but I don't understand the inevitability of sticking with Microsoft after XP or Vista.

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