Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1

Having read horror stories about installation problems, I installed Vista Premium on a computer I seldom use. I found installation quick and easy with no problems I could find.

However, it's not a good sign when the best you can say about a software program is that you were able to install it. And that's the only good thing I have to say about Vista Premium.

Why the developers change old straightforward labels for confusing new labels and icons? Did they really mean to add hours to simple tasks just because I'm wandering around in the program trying to find the icon for what I want to do? Whatever happened to "user-friendly?"

An ugly side of Vista is that it's a space hog. It's absconded with more than 40% of the space on my hard drive, and I want it back! Another irritation . . . a software program I love and use weekly no longer works. I'm not in favor of spending another $350 just to get the newer version of the same program that will work and play well with Vista.

My computer, although used infrequently, is not my toy. When I use it, it's because I want to create something, not waste precious time looking at irrelevant eye candy. I can find sites that will help me disable much of the useless content, but why should I have to spend hours tweaking the computer instead of writing or doing graphic work. Doesn't make sense to me.

Why Vista? I can't think of a reason. I'm going back to XP, thanks!

Vista is not the horrible OS people make it out to be sure its not perfect but every OS has issues biggest one would be the Slowness sure i run a quad core so its not slow by any means but nowadays a single core is just not going to do it. that aside vista is a solid OS. the wireless connection center is tip top as well as windows update, search is now 1000% faster and very accurate. The OS is very pretty as well a good bonus.

Over all XP is done it was a good OS i used it for years and i still use it at work but i enjoy using my vista laptop and desktop at home. And the Sleep/hibernate function is amazing.

Regrettably, I'm unable to review this product because the processor Intel(Q9450), which I ordered over a month ago from Amazon, has as yet not arrived. I need it to complete building my PC. Without it, I can't load Vista. Once I get the processor, I'll be able to review it.

First, I found Vista very easy to install. It starts and does everything. There's minimal user interaction. I found that Windows Update worked excellently. People complained that Vista lacks drivers, especially for laptops, however on my HP laptop (which is about 2 ½ years old), it found all the drivers (memory card readers, onboard audio, video) automatically. I did not need to visit HP's support site. The start-up time is excellent. I've noticed an improvement over Windows XP Pro. There's an option called ReadyBoost that lets the USB memory stick function as additional RAM for the computer which speeds up processes noticeably. This laptop has 1GB of memory and using a 1GB USB thumb drive increased program start-up speeds quite a bit. Furthermore, there's no longer a need to search through an All Programs Menu. Now you just hit the Windows key and type the name of the program you want.

I'm not a Microsoft fan. I don't like their business practices and I don't like their software. However, Windows is everywhere, so as an independent consultant, I have to be at least marginally familiar with the current releases.

I deliberately installed this on very weak hardware - right down in the "minimum required" category, and actually a little weaker: the recommended minimum is 512M, but the box I put it on had only 384.. and the CPU was an 800 MHZ PIII, but by gum, it did install.. slowly, painfully, but it did it. And it ran, and although of course it was slow, it was actually faster than I expected.

My major gripe with Vista was it's inability to play nice with my Mac and Linux machines. I couldn't get it to recognize Samba shares - it saw the machines, but not the shares.

When I created a share on Vista, my Mac and Linux boxes could see it. Amazingly, they also saw a lot more: although I had only specifically shared one test folder, a whole pile of stuff showed up on the network - Music, Pictures, Videos and other stuff - really stupid to automatically go sharing things I never told it to share!

Obviously Vista's ability to play nice with other systems is typical Microsoft isolationist policy and that's only one of the many reasons why I could never use this as my daily OS (the others being lack of a decent shell, and that Microsoft is Not Unix).

However: I am impressed and surprised by how decently this performed on minimal hardware. If you are a die-hard Windows fan, I don't think you need to be overly concerned if your hardware isn't the latest and greatest. If Vista will install and run on the old geezer I put it on, anything of recent vintage should do fine.