Yesterday a neighbour of mine bought a new computer. It was a decent-ish desktop (3.0Ghz with HT, 1G Ram, 300G HDD, 19" LCD, 5.1 speaker system) but way overpriced. Could have bought an iMac probably with those money.
Anyhow, since I'm the computer guy in the building, they came to me to get it started. First, because they had no sound. Also, because they have a speaker system with 5 or so satellites and only a 2 way sound card.
And this is how I saw Windows Vista for the 1st time. I was really weird as I haven't used any Windows in a while but Vista made me even more uneasy as I just couldn't find the settings I was used to in the XP-using days.
So, fast-forward 1 hours or so after I've installed the sound drivers. The strange thing was that the system was rather slow and unresponsive, especially while installing stuff. I mean, this is better than any machine I own so I expected it to fly. But no, it was just about as slow as my iBook G4.
About those accept/deny dialogs I've read about on the internet, I have to say I only noticed them a few times. I guess if you let Vista be, it doesn't bother you with messages :-)
But the thing this experience showed me is just how foreign Windows looked to me. Mostly due to Vista but the point was that Windows in general is something I don't know much about anymore.
I've used so much other operating systems that I've become more or less a Windows beginner.
I think that generally there isn't a need for Microsoft anymore. Windows is redundant with OSX / Ubuntu, MS Office easily replaced by OpenOffice, Explorer by Firefox.
They don't actually seem to have any product anymore I would need. And this is a nice feeling.