I purchased Windows Vista because after upgrading to a new computer last week, my copy of the very first release of XP Home was giving me issues. I got fed up, and decided to take the big leap upward. I've had Vista for four days, and here is my review. I will begin with some general observations.

CHANGES AND ENHANCEMENTS

The Aero interface is an enhancement to the visual displays that only a select number of Vista-certified graphics cards can handle. Thankfully, hard-core Vista users don't require a Phys-X card.

The Control Panel has been categorized. This made it a bit more difficult to find certain things.

There is a convenient AutoPlay menu available, where you can define a select AutoPlay function for various devices and file formats.

Desktop Gadgets have been included for those of you who are used to playing with Macs.

More common data folders have been added to the My Documents folder, referenced in Pros.

Outlook Express is now Windows Mail, and Address Book is now Contacts.

Internet Explorer has been revamped for version 7...but we have noticed this already as Microsoft's way of saying, "Watch out, this is what we're gonna do to you."

EYE CANDY

The Aero interface is very pleasant, and the transparent window borders are a very nice effect for those of you who enjoy computer displays like the ones you see in Sci-Fi movies. But eventually, I found the Aero fade animations too "soft" - how you might say - and they began to make me dizzy. I disabled them without a problem, but retained the Aero interface.

The Switch Between Windows craze that Microsoft is boasting is nothing but an icon you must keep beside your Start button that you can click to show your friends why you bought Vista. It could've been implemented as ALT+TAB, but it wasn't.

PROS

I immediately noticed Vista's elegant presentation, and I was definitely impressed by how quickly it installed. It didn't ask for Serial ATA drivers on startup and it initialized my onboard audio instantly!

My computer (specs at the end of this post) runs this OS very well under Vista's Aero interface. It is very fast and seems stable for me for the most part. They've conveniently placed Contacts (formerly Address Book) into My Documents along with Favorites and Desktop, for easy all-in-one-folder data storage.

Windows bootup is very quick. Thanks to my first foray into RAID 0, reads and writes are fast as well. This operating system is all about fast! If you don't agree, I can understand. My PC has very little need for intensive operations.

The Windows Sidebar and the Desktop Gadgets...those are kind of a Pro and a Con. The gadgets are nice and quite entertaining. But when they would sometimes disappear at random and shuffle around my desktop, I got fed up and disabled them altogether.

As far as bugs, glitches, and incompatibilities...I haven't noticed much of that. The system runs very smoothly for me except for when it has to ask me questions all the time.

CONS

Now for the cons. Everything has been moved around. I have to dig a little deeper to find Disk Cleanup and Appearance Settings. The Disk Defragmenter has lost its graphic display, and Windows Explorer has become too busy.

Matter of fact, the general folder view has become too busy. I sometimes find the task of viewing a folder overwhelming, and there are limits to what I can do to tame it down. For example, the My Documents folder (which is now named your Name), contains what I call the "Organize/Views/Burn" bar which cannot be removed. This is something I will never use.

I also feel overwhelmed by the way folder contents are displayed, and how icons are presented. I don't know if it's ADD, but I need to keep things simple. This interface can be really, really busy.

Vista has a User Account Control feature which keeps your system secure by not authorizing certain changes to the OS. It will annoy you fast, because it will warn you and ask permission for EVERYTHING. I couldn't even delete a simple folder because although I am "Administrator", I didn't have "permission". You can disable UAC, but it will still subliminally nag you from your taskbar.

CONCLUSION

Although this rating is not at all scientific, I give Windows Vista Home Premium a 3.5 out of 5 (*edit). I guess it's mainly because the interface is too drastic a change for me all at once. If I'm not comfortable with my work area (so to speak), I'm not motivated to use it.

I'm aware that eventually, this is where people will be going. But there's a 20% chance I may force myself to purchase a copy of XP SP2, just because it's what I'm familiar with and still comfortable with. But for now, I consider it a fair decision to make myself comfortable with Vista and see if I can get used to the drastic changes they've made...

that's what I did, and i also disabled all the gay warnings including the one about uac being off.

If your 'work area' is primarily focused on manipulating your Vista environment (regedit, mmc,...), then I guess it is fair to mark it at 3.5. If on the other hand, you actually use your PC to do work and pay bills (read email, edit documents, develop spreadsheets, develop software...) then maybe you are possibly overreacting to the minor changes in the work-flow paradigm. It has always been MS' intent to remove the 'file/directory' approach and move to a more work oriented environment, and they have moved a long ways in that direction.

I think they have actually done a fantastic job in making it easier to do day-to-day task (and I'm a software developer). I have two user-ids, one is for screwing around with Vista and the other one is for paying the bills. I really spend most of my time in the bill-paying account and actually never run into UAC. Also, I rarely open explorer anymore, most of my development apps allow me to set up 'projects' and they handle all of the mundane, low-level file manipulations (and I work with a LOT of files on a daily basis). It's all very clean and much more sterile than anything from the past. When it is time to add a new printer or install a new program, I put on my 'root' cap, log into the other account, and change my attitude (I do a lot of unix work so I'm used to two types of users and that probably helps with my relaxed demeanor regarding UAC).

I do agree with a couple of your comments but I think you are looking at Vista as THE application, where as I view it as just another tool to get a job done (much like having more memory). I give it a '9' as it moves all of us further away from pc administation and enables a lot of newer technologies that we are quickly running up against. Your review was an interesting read, but to me (a simple coder kinda guy) it was just another game-player level preach... to each his own.

I would like to state a correction on that rating I gave Vista, as that was a typo. What I meant was

3.5 out of 5

And by the way, I am not a game player. I actually don't have any "serious" tasks I do on my operating system, but the appearance and comfort of the OS itself means a lot to me. I guess I am far too comfortable with XP right now, and the drastic changes Vista brings are possibly too much for me to adapt with...I don't know.

And there you go folks...

When actually confronted with logic and facts, %100 of the naysayers change their minds. They totally acknowledge Vista's better attributes and absolutely double their opinions regarding its general usability. And as we have just witnessed, some immediately become totally dumbfounded and almost at lost for words by it magnificence!

Who the heck do you think you are???? I'm merely stating my opinions on Windows Vista! Are you in an awfully bad mood, or do you just have some sudden desire to flame someone?

Ok, one more post for the arrogant one...

I never flamed anyone, everything I said was basically nice and appropriate. If I ever had 'the desire', there wouldn't be a doubt.

--later

p.s. I won't reply anymore so take your best shot...

Oh -- okay!

lol. Look at his userid (i.e. joke). I think that explains everything.

I have to agree on the fact that the new layout of windows vista is something you have to get used to.
Not that it suprises me, because we've all used XP for many years.

I have used Vista to, (and going to install it again this weekend because then i receive my 8600gt) and the problem i had with it that it wasn't really "Me-proof". I experiment on my pc pretty often, and i had many BSOD's with vista . But i will give it a go again this weekend and try to be more gentle with it this time.

The very nice thing about vista is that it works nice and smooth, also because of it's aero interface. And it responds really nicely.

In short i agree with your review, i expirienced vista almost the same as you. Good luck with getting to known with vista