Without wanting to put too fine a point on it:

"In other news, the world is round, the pope is catholic and bears **** in the woods"

Looking at this from 'outside' (I'm a Mac user)

- How many of the people that complain about Microsoft have actually paid for all/any of their software?

- Some drivers don't work because Vista is significantly different from previous iterations of Windows. Isn't this in order to finally provide some semblance of security? Hopefully you'll find a lot of viruses & exploits won't work either.

Possibly a troublesome upgrade for some but surely worth it for the enhanced security alone.

(please don't flame me; I don't want a Mac vs PC discussion. It's just a comment on people's expectations)

Just got a new Vista machine.

Asside from everything being in a different illogical place, it's OK but I don't see anything that can't be done on XP.

A better spec machine also runs slower than my half the spec XP Pro HP laptop in serious need of defragging!

try turning on AERO

also try searching for something, Vista logs everything on a machine and when you search for anything it finds it all much quicker

its also a damn sight more secure.

on the spec of machines i have gone from a laptop with a pentium M 1.5, 2Gb ram, 5400rpm HDD, 64Mb ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 running XP to another laptop running a core2duo 2GHz, 2Gb ram, 5400rpm 8Mb SATA HDD, 128Mb geforce go 7300 running Vista and its lots lots faster

I am running vista on 3 machines, all legally.

1) The desktop I am using to write this, Amd 64 (non x2) 4400, 2GB ram, Geforce 6600 PCI express, 800GB of HD space.

2) My HTPC, P4 3.0GHZ hyperthreading, 2GB ram, Geforce 7600GS AGP, 500GB of disk space.

3) My Laptop, Core Duo 1.6GHZ, 1GB ram, 160GB HD.

All perform well, and number 1 and 2 are also folding for the briskoda cause without problems.

Regarding the 64bit code, currently virtually no applications except those that come with vista 64 exist. Even some of the vista included apps are still 32bit so there is little to gain from using 64bit even on the 64bit cpu's.

Ive been running vistaaaaa for pretty much a year now in one form or another. since Beta..

This current install on my main machine was installed on 2nd November.. and tbh the simple fact ive not had to do the M$ dance since is a credit to its stability... i would have been through about 3 installs of XP by now!.. and i can safely say that Vista is still running smoother and faster than XP would be once i got all my crap installed

Granted some of the drivers were a bit flakey at first because most were beta until around feb.. Nvidia mobo drivers particuarly have been a PITA with the network card randomly stopping working, but a driver rollback sorted that..

Today, the only thing that doesnt work properly is my LiDe 25 scanner.

Vista has a kinda snappyness to it that XP never had.. even more so now ive got dual-core... it just manages memory, disc I/O and multi-core better... the indexer doesnt choke the system like it does in XP is a good example

i give Vista :thumbup::thumbup:

try turning on AERO

It is, although I had the XP aero tweak for some time along with a host of other tools.

Still slower and this is a core duo machine! Seriously how can I speed this bugger up? Browsing is painfully slow in any browser than IE7 surprise suprise.

So far, not impress and it's NOT faster!

well my brother installed Vista on his machine that came supplied with XP and had been running XP for a year or 2 and it runs faster on vista, i can't give reasons for your poor experience as i have had nothing but a good experience with vista.

I especially love the fact that drivers run in a different way to they used to so i can upgrade my video card driver for example without the need for a reset as it can simply restart the device, the same if any hardware goes doolally it can simply say sorry mate but i had to just restart ********* as it threw a paddy but its all good again

the only annoying thing i have with my laptop is the fact that i want a better video card for games but cannot upgrade it as far as i know :( but this isn't the fault of vista

I'm with Col on this one - I've been impressed so far, and it's been more stable than XP ever was. I can now hibernate which I couldn't with XP and for some reason, XP took ages to boot up whereas it flies with Vista.

Also, I think Vista benefits from a dual core CPU much more than XP does, or rather the difference in performance with a DC CPU on vista is a lot more noticeable. I installed Vists on my old man's PC which is a 64X2 and it flies, a lot more than my PC which has the same speed but single core cpu.

And once I turn off some of the fancy stuff which I just find confusing, I've been able to get the "best of both worlds", i.e. have the familiarity of XP and the "traditional Windows look" with the benefits of Vista. For example, renaming files now just highlights the file name and not the extension so you don't have to retype in the extension every time. Every day, I discover more and more which I like about it. Turn off the overly fancy stuff (like video desktops in ultimate) and it's surprising how with a decentish spec machine, it can run so snappily.

It is, although I had the XP aero tweak for some time along with a host of other tools.

Still slower and this is a core duo machine! Seriously how can I speed this bugger up? Browsing is painfully slow in any browser than IE7 surprise suprise.

So far, not impress and it's NOT faster!

you've bust it