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 - No, don't do it!I successfully installed Vista Home Basic on my laptop, and whilst being far from overwhelmed with the product nevertheless believed it to be a step up from XP**. I then decided to 'upgrade' my desktop PC to Vista Home Premium, and boy I am wishing I had never even started that process. I used Upgrade Advisor, and confirmed that my PC was fine, and then satisfactorily installed Vista, but then the problems started. First off: Vista is significantly slower than XP, and that slowness becomes creeping until your PC virtually stops to allow Vista to do basic chores one takes for granted in XP. Suddenly, your PC can spring back into life, and all seems okay, then ..... back into the slow lane again. Also, Vista has fallen into the Adobe trap - it is much more invasive than XP and wants to take control of your life, not just your PC. Pehaps I could have adjusted to its way of doing things, after all at 40 something years old, I'm no young Turk, and the onset of grey hairs and a fear of social networking makes me a techno-geriatric, however Vista gave me no opportunity to adjust. You see the software kept crashing! When I say crashing, I mean that the PC would switch itself off and re-boot (I don't mean anything so gentlemanly as log-off or shut down, I mean power off in an instant). It kept doing this, and I could find no pattern to its decision making in this respect. Plug in a thumb drive - CRASH! Adjust a couple of photos in Photoshop - CRASH! Browse the web - hmm, seems to like this .... - CRASH!. I didn't try everything I could to solve the problem, but I gave it a good attempt for a couple of weeks, and I have no patience left in my soul for the condescending remarks of an ultimately hopeless support system. My PC worked fine for a long time with XP. My PC now seems to be working fine again - with XP. Yes, the solution for me was to scrub Vista and re-install XP. Hey Vista looks nicer/more contemporary or whatever, but XP works. In summary, if you are thinking about upgrading to Vista, please think long and hard. It is prettier than XP, but it offers very little added functionality. The killer though, is that it is very unreliable - you may be lucky, but in my view luck should have nothing to do with it. An operating system should work, all the time. Vista doesn't. ** The reason for me moving to Vista was for the much better sound capability it offers. I use my laptop as a music player through my main hifi and Vista's handling of high quality sound is much better than XP. On my laptop Vista has been a success. So there we go - one reasonably competent computer user, and a 50% success rate at switching to Vista. Rating:  - Windows SP-1 UpgradeAlthough I purchased this as an upgrade, it did not work on my HP Laptop. It over-wrote all files! Fortunately, I had backed up my computer. It took over 15 hours for full restoration. Beware if you have not backed up your data you may loose everything on your machine. Rating: - So Little for So MuchI've been a Windows user since... Windows 1.0. I purchased a Dell laptop with Vista on it and I must say that after the first 24hrs of honeymoon (looking at the pretty new mouse trail, listening to the new sounds, etc...) the really bloated and inefficient OS starts to show its ugly face. It operates like its predecessor with a more visual and accoustical punch, but esthetics aside, like an American SUV, this thing is a hog. It takes a ton of RAM, a lot more of CPU speed and a bucket load of HD space. Frankly the security and other upgrades are miniscule when you compare to all the things the OS requires to run smoothly. In the end you get a couple new pony tricks instead of a tighter security integration and easier usability experience. All of this is at a heavy hardware premium. Many simple tasks and operations start to become a headache as they are over complicated to execute leaving you with an uneasy feeling of why you got this damn thing... Stay with the older OS. Rating: - Vista Upgrade, a challenge - Are you sure you want Vista?The all-purpose upgrade is only 'all-purpose' after several hours on the phone and in chat sessions with very courteous and willing people from far, far away. Seems MS forgets to include all the set-up steps in their 'works with XP & 2K' upgrade to Vista. Oh, and did you know that you will lose your reliable laser printer and many of your other PRE-Vista hardware and software tools....either MS doesn't speak their language or they do not speak Vista. It is like going back to the early days of IBM....the new model comes out and you can toss the old one, only MS is not the maker of the com-pooters...??? Apple keeps looking better and better, though so much more priceyl; if Mr. Jobs weren't such an eletist, marketing at the highest prices and caring nothing about the consumer's wants or needs.... You will appreciate the Vista help folks, when you finally are able to be transferred to them....they have a special department just for helping you load the software....if that doesn't give you a clue as to the holes in their programming, you will find out when you load the DVD. Good luck. Rating:  - ExcellentI guess I am one of the few who like vista. I feel it is the best os from Microsoft bar none.Even compared to xp sp3 which is faster than sp2 Vista is still faster on my system anyway. Works very well with my computer what can I say I am satisfied.
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