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 - It's not as bad some people say it isOk. To be honest when Windows XP came out I thought it was the worst thing ever. I had constantly fix things or reinstall due to errors that were not fixable. Fortunately, over the years it became stable and ran well. Now on to Vista. This is my first Vista computer and must say so far so good. I haven't had any significant crashes or things of that sort. StartUp is REALLY fast compared to XP, it might be due to the fact that I have a faster processor as well as more memory in this new computer, but it still is pretty fast. Search function is much improved if say so myself. Type in the first couple of letters and boom you got what you're looking for. Much of other things haven't changed much ideally wise, but just in appearance. Installation of drivers is easy. I haven't had any problems installing new hardware. While Vista does have some nice things in it, it does suffer from some compatibility issues with some things like Musicmatch Jukebox 7 (errhh can't use it anymore won't work with Vista) which is a downer because I use it often. Hopefully, Microsoft will fix these in the future with another update. 4 stars. Pretty Good. Rating:  - my visaIt took a few days to get used to the changes but I love it. Glad I changed. Rating:  - What were they thinkingI bought a new Dell with Vista included about 4 months ago. This is my home main desktop. I have two other home desktops;HP and Compac and three laptops, Toshiba PC, Dell PC and a new Apple (actually my 12 year old daughter's). Vista is a total redesign by people who are not into computers. There are SO many things missing, which we have all grown to need, I can't list them all. My main thing is the "view" function in folders. Now you can choose larger or smaller versions of this sophomoric 3D open folder. I want my thumbnails/icons/lists/filmstrip back. I was listening to streaming audio tonight when I realized Vista decided to dump the balance feature. ??? Who's mom designed this piece of crap? 50 years of audio science ignored? My 40 year old lear jet 8 track had a balance control. ICONS. I save a few favorite sites to my desktop. XP dispalyed their favicons. Vista show the "e". I have 25 "e"'s on my desktop. I hate the folders, when you open them. MS dumped 40 years of evolutionary development and said "here the new way". The folders are almost impossible to navigate. My wife (an RN) calls me in 5 times a night to help her find "lost" items. Vista sucks Microsoft....upgrade XP (or don't...it was fine!) Rating:  - Stability, speed, hardware support are poorMicrosoft's latest OS is, indeed, more secure than Windows XP. But I have installed it twice on two different machines, and subsequently uninstalled it and went back to XP a few weeks later both times. Why? - Stability is poor. The system frequently blue screens (crashes) or, more commonly, hangs. It's not a hardware problem, because both systems experienced these issues, and neither system has any issues running XP. Vista Media Center slowly degrades over time (one of the computers is my living room DVR) until it is unusable without a hourly reboot (seriously!) - Speed - I play a lot of games, and Vista is consistently and significantly slower on every single game I've tried. The difference is significant, even WITH the very latest "Vista Certified" video and sound drivers. Then, there are games that crash on Vista, but have no issues on XP. You can say "Well, they were tested to work with XP", and you'd be right, but I'd rather be running an OS that games were tested with. And the DirectX 10 effects, which only Vista supports, are very ho-hum - they're not worth the performance hit, in my opinion. For an example, check out the Crysis DirectX 9 vs. DirectX 10 comparisons on the net. - Hardware support - this really is not Microsoft's fault, but it is still an issue. Many hardware manufacturers quietly refusing to release drivers for their existing hardware, in an effort to force people to buy new hardware for Vista support. That's totally not Microsoft's fault - but make sure your devices are Vista compatible, BEFORE you buy Vista. Microsoft has a good compatibility guide on their website for this. Scanners, printers, music players, phones, and wireless network gear are the gadgets with the worst Vista driver support, as are notebooks not specifically "designed for Vista". I'm not saying you should NOT buy Vista, but if you do, be prepared for the problems you will encounter. It might be better for a business user who is buying all new Vista compatible hardware. Rating: - Great upgradeUpdated from Windows XP MCE to Vista Home Premium with virtually no problems. Amazed at how it handled unsupported drivers (disabled them and directed me to the manufacturer's site where I could get updated drivers...slick). I had fewer problems with this upgrade than I had applying SP3 to XP. I was nervous about this upgrade with all the negativity surrounding Vista, but now I'm sorry I waited so long to do this. I installed on a pretty beefy machine (Dell XPS M1710 notebook with more than 2Gb of RAM) so YMMV.
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