Vista runs fine for me. There *are* issues with the 64 bit version and some software and some hardware. For the most part, I've tolerated them until I installed iTunes yesterday and I find out the fuckin burner part of iTunes will not work on Vista64. That was the last straw. I'm going to switch to Vista Ultimate 32.
Here's Vista in a summary:
Security: much better than XP. Not that big of a deal for me but for the average user, that will give them far better security
Speed: It *is* slower than XP, assuming equal hardware. I have 2GB ram and I'm constantly using 60% with your average apps open. Add Photoshop to the mix or similiar and it will drive memory usage up to 90% or more.
Searching: Don't be fooled by this fucking catastrophe feature. I disabled the Vista search function (searchindexer.exe) on the third day after I discovered it was grinding away on my raid array for 10 hours (indexing I assume) constantly spiking I/O usage.
Visual Stuff: It's cool, I'll give them that.
The only real benefit for the *average* user is the security. Considering how many computers on the net are zombies, I guess that isn't such a bad thing
Anyhoo, if anyone has the installation media for Vista Ultimate 32 I'd appreciate it if you can rip an ISO for me.