We're starting something new at InformationWeek: Every week, we'll do a quick roundup of reader feedback on our articles and blog posts. This week, readers talked back on Vista, Hewlett-Packard, Firefox vs. Internet Explorer, and robots milking cows.

Readers wrote in to our "Death, Taxes, And Vista" blog post to say there's more hype than reality to Vista.

The blog post argued that upgrades to Vista may be inevitable, but Tom R said, "This time may be different, since there are viable alternatives to Vista for the desktop. The upgrade cost part of the equation is not going in Microsoft's favor." Dave said, "Changes will be bullied through by Microsoft as it has done so often in the past," and Vista "really doesn't do anything more than Windows 2000"--it actually does less.

A reader signing himself as "96RT10" said, "It cracks me up that people are calling Vista an 'upgrade.' I have yet to hear someone who can actually tell me what Vista will deliver that you can't already get with WinXP and a few free progs."

On Firefox vs. Internet Explorer, readers seem skeptical that Firefox actually offers an advantage. Mike G says even though Firefox is buggy, users should continue to support it. "Smaller companies should be supported--not to defeat the big player, but simply to support innovation and to reward the hard-working small players who wish to contribute."

Reporter Sharon Gaudin had an interview lined up with former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and asked you what you wanted to ask Fiorina. Most of the responses we got were hostile. Bryan, who identified himself as a former HP employee, asked, "How can she justify her time at HP as good (and get over $20 million in severance)," given a list of problems, including declining stock prices, layoffs, employee morale that was "so low you had to dig for it," poor innovation, and more.

Jim Chesky said "NO THANKS" to a Homeland Security project to develop software that would automatically track foreign newspapers and Internet communications for anti-U.S. comments. "If we are worried about what people think of us, let us act in a manner that will bring praise rather then recrimination," he said.

Ed Haymond took issue with a robot cow-milking machine: "Cows and other sentient creatures were long ago reduced to the level of machines by these kinds of factory farming practices," he said.

And Gary S. Lea was offended by the use of the word "pretexting" to describe Hewlett-Packard's investigators posing as other people to obtain phone records and other personal information. "Apparently our culture has a growing penchant for inventing new words for old crimes so we can then say there is no law against it," he wrote.