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Yes, it's much better than XP... I'll buy Ultimate

5 (14.7%)

No, it sucks

12 (35.3%)

I only buy a cheap edition like Home Premium

5 (14.7%)

I wait, if it gets better support

12 (35.3%)

Total Members Voted: 33

[thenoob1]

tn1

[johnnyboy]

Vista is O.K.
No real gain over XP particularly except its prettier.
XP with window blinds at the moment is probably going to give you far better value, performance and less hassles.
With Vista the manufacturers are still on pretty new drivers that aren't that great, the OS hogs huge amounts of memory so you'll need to budget for more memory as well when you buy it and you might need a new graphics card if you want to enjoy Aero properly too.

I basically wouldn't bother buying Vista for an existing PC (unless its pretty much brand new high spec) and I'd just wait until you buy a new PC and get it free with that.

I have both on my PC and to be honest, I boot up into XP as much as I do into Vista and am just as happy when I'm in XP (and my machine feels alot lighter and more responsive). I have window blinds and so my XP looks pretty much as pretty as Vista if not more so already anyway!

[marko]

Which is interesting because I remember being amazed at how much better my PC was working from the moment XP replaced windows 98, and for the most part, that was using windows 2000 drivers for everything. My 667 Mhz pentium III and 512 megs of pc133 memory on a dodgy VIA chipset had never run that quickly or that reliably before!!

It would seem that for a lot of people, the eye candy novelty wears off rather quickly at which point, they go back to XP, and they are happy again...

Perhaps feedback will improve as the driver and software support improves. Myself, I'm in no rush to upgrade atm.

[hit_ny]

2009 is when i might consider going for vista.

2009, is the yr m$ pulls support for XP (just general not crtical updates), expect to see lots of offers around that time and a general move towards it.  Companies will be forced to migrate, and guess what, you see vista at work, you will want to have it at home too.

Unless m$ offers something else, like when w2k came out shortly after win Me...you have to pity the folks that could not wait at the time

[jmone]

It depends...I was a Beta Tester and as being a Launch Customer for MS got free licences.  Here is my summary:
1) Main Family PC (Intel 6300 Dual Core, 1GB RAM, 1TB of Storage) - Running Vista Ultimate & Office 07 & MC:  This is a winning combo especially due to the Parental Controls (we have a 10 & 8yo and this system is great...no it really is great!).  This is our main PC and I also use it to back all my HTPC media.  It is stable, quick and on a newish PC I had no problems with drivers etc....a big improvement on the RC's & Betas (note: I also had Vista on an older PC and it caused nothing but problems).  I don't use MSMC primarly as MC's flexible codec selection and support means I can play all of my media.

2) HTPC (Intel PentD, 1GB RAM, 1TB of Storage) - Running XPSP2, MC, Codecs etc:  A dedicated HTPC, I really don't care about the OS on this box as long as it is quick, stable and runs all the bits needed!  On this box I don't see any advantage to changing to Vista.

Nathan

[Mr ChriZ]

Running Home Premium here, on an AMD 5000 X2, 2GB memory, 320Gb hard drive.
So far I've been seriously dissapointed.
My friends bought a new Mac running they're older OS,
and it's far shinier. 

My X2 should be lightening fast, but it's not
it grinds quite often. 

Apart from anything else I find Vista Boring!
The only fun thing it does is the 3D Window rotation thing.
The glass effects nice for the 1st half an hour, then
you get bored of it.

The Vista Media Center system is shiny but not all that functional.
-No native support for Monkeys audio
-Very difficult to remove folders once you've added them
-Search is next to useless

I'm very tempted to install WinXP back on the machine.
Although I'm not sure I've got any spare licenses.
Licenses should be backwards compatible IMO!

[thenoob1]

I like Vista too but it has its problems.

At first the it's too expensive. Then there is a bad support for some software and hardware things and for that price.... no!

I´ll wait until it get's better support is my mind.

[johnnyboy]

Vista's problem summaried:

Your spending a fortune (to buy it) to cost you a fortune (to upgrade all your hardware to be able to run it properly and make it feel fast) to gain nothing.

3d windows to replace alt+tab - wow - incredible - use it at least twice a day - revolutionises my world - NOT.
I can see thumbnails of my apps in the taskbar - totally changes my life and helps me find those apps I couldn't find when labelled 'Adobe Photoshop' or a firefox icon saying: 'windows vista' <-- I used to have NO idea what that was (when I was 1yrs old maybe!).
UAC - you dont need any AV software any more - totally secure system - might as well just not use the computer and it'll be even more secure!! UAC got disabled so fast it wasn't even funny - first thing I researched how to do when I moved to Vista. It's nothing more than a HUGE pain in the ass.
Dreamscene - well lets face it, its nothing more than a resource hog that does nothing (if your desktop is blank ie you can actually see it) then your not using your PC so you might as well just have a screen saver that does the same except uses no resources when you are actually using your PC.
Sidebar - well lets face it, there are a million apps you can get that'll provide you with one of these.
Fancy graphics - slows down your whole machine alot and again can be done better by just using window blinds (which supposedly if you use on Vista is actually so much better it makes your machine use less power and with laptops can noticably improve battery life as a result).
Media Center - well $40 buys you MC and does a FAR better job when compared to the $400 for Vista.


All in all MS REALLY missed the boat with this one. I think everyone knows it yet people are still buying it - purely because its the latest and greatest and a shiny new toy so they must get it.

Mac knows they've missed the boat though and their adverts portray this perfectly and are spot on.
Vista was MS's chance to stay ahead of the game and they missed it big time, the others know this and so have a chance to shoot way ahead of MS at this point and over the next few years.
Only thing thats keeping MS doing so well is its monopoly.

[glynor]

I'm a "no" voter for sure.  However, I must say... Some of the audio back-end improvements in Vista look very interesting.  As do the changes in the Wireless and VPN configuration systems.  Not all of the new features are fancy UI things.  They just get the most press because they are what you notice first.

That said... It'll take more than that for you to get my volume license of XP Pro out of my cold, dead hands.

[prod]

I like it, the wife likes it, my mum likes it, my dad likes it. With MC and Office 2007 it looks fantastic. Sidebar is nice, and very popular with the family (weather & clock gadgets and so on).

The oldest computer I've installed it on is a 3 year old laptop with 512mb memory, and Vista Home Basic works great on it, none of the glassy Aero looks but it still looks a lot better than XP, and no discernible difference in speed.

I'm shallow, I like it mainly cos it looks a whole lot better than XP, and works (for me).

[BartMan01]

Now running Vista Ultimate as my main OS.  Support is still a bit spotty, and contrary to popular believe the AMD Dual Core Optimizer driver is NOT built in and the current one needs to be installed to keep (at least on my processor) the TSCs in sync.

Bottom line:
Right now, it is iffy.  Don't install if you don't want to have to deal with the limited driver/software support for a new OS.
Six months from now it will probably be required to get the most out of newer software.

[lepa]

Vista and DRM. No thanks.

[thenoob1]

I find the message from MS very interresting:

Although the time gap between XP and Vista’s release dates was more than five years, Microsoft is claiming it will be different this time around. At the RSA Conference in San Francisco, representatives said the software giant is planning for the next client operating system by the end of 2009. Vista shipped about two-and-a-half years after XP SP2, and Vista's follow-up is expected to take about the same amount of time, according to Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of development with Microsoft's Windows Core Operating System Division: "You can think roughly two, two-and-a-half years is a reasonable time frame that our partners can depend on and can work with. That's a good timeframe for refresh.”

Last year, Microsoft code named Vista’s successor as Vienna, but Fathi said he could not disclose the current name or what would be the major improvements in the release. "We've been told not to use it publicly. We're going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's a new user interface paradigm for consumers. It's too early for me to talk about it. But over the next few months I think you're going to start hearing more and more."

from here:

http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=38021

..... so why not spend my half computer for the new Windows XY in 2 years again..... are they crazy?

[hit_ny]

Ha! i guess that might be the one worth waiting for then

[stefansmith]

I've just got to the stage where I feel I can configure and use XP in a way is stable, secure and working for me and not the other way around. Various tweaks give me all the eye candy I need, and I really don;t feel at all tempted to change. When Vista SP1 comes out, I'll think about it -- guess that will be in late 2008/early 2009. For the time being though I can't see any added features that interest me and make it worth spending the equivalent of a 500GB hard drive, 1GB more RAM and a few more CDs. 

[InflatableMouse]

Ultimate user here, which i never expected to be myself because I never liked vista until I actually started to really use it and I decided to buy it.

The most important reasons are 1) the really incredibly dumb way XP swaps pages to disk. Example: 2gb machine with 500mb used. XP starts swapping pages to disk because I am on the phone and not clicking stuff in my task bar. XP decides they haven't been used for an hour or so and pages them out. I mean, why!?! 1,5gb left?!? Vista has got a much more intelligent way of dealing with this. 2) The better 32bit support under 64bit OS. 3) performance although you really have to tweak it to get it and disable the OS crippling security crap M$ stuffed in there, then create a regular user and use admin when you need it. Application responsiveness to the user is actually quite good and I haven't had any situation yet that completely hung my system. 4) Stability. Early to say but it looks like its better than 2003/XP in system hangups due to crappy applications and/or drivers. I'm still in the experimentation phase so I'm installing a lot of crap. I do 2 to 3 restrores per week because I've messed something up. The system actually works very good and stable, I restore because I need to go back to a baseline and not with installed/uninstalled drivers, codecs and other junk that leave "residue" on the system. I've seen so many blue screens on XP with codecs etc you wouldn't believe me. None on Vista so far.

So for me, yes definitely worth the money BUT I was able to get an OEM version. I wouldn't have paid for the full version.

[runemail]

Is home premium really cheap? I don't think so.

Vista is not worth the money, compared to free linux, or anything else.

Its a pretty good but very expensive os. Both in cash and system resources.

I would say the worst thing about Vista is the price.

The reason I still run windows is not the os but all the other apps. Like MC And the fact that drivers are usually easy to find.
I don't need DX10, but im waiting for gfx cards with h.264 hw acceleration and hdmi.

Not impressed by the eyecandy, where is the wow?

Running Vista Ultimate x64.