I work as a computer consultant and have to support a wide array of software products so trying out Vista is in my job description.
So I formatted the drive on one of my testbed machines that had the appropriate specs (2.6Ghz 64bit processor, 2GB RAM, 160GB SATA hard drive, Recent DX9 gamer's Video card, ect).
The install: In short was a nice but dissapointing in the end. The install process from a user experince standpoint was very smooth and elegant. Looked like everything was perfect...that is untill I booted into the OS for the first time. Stuff just didn't work! Drivers were missing or just didn't work. The networking components didn't work right so I could access the internet but not access some of the files on my network. Was able to download drivers for a couple things, but other things just aren't supported on Vista.
User experience: In a word, dissapointing. You purchase the latest hardware, spend a boatload of money on the latest Ultimate operating system, and what do you get? It's slower then XP for most things comparing apples to apples. So far I haven't found that it can do anything special that XP can't do. There is alot of things XP works fine with that Vista doesn't work with...especially games. Games either won't install on Vista, are unplayable, or have in-game glitches. Only found one out of my collection that I tried that actually offered the same experience as on XP. The much talked about "Areo glass" desktop doesn't seem to be much more then marketing hype. It did nothing to enhance my user experience. I just looked at it and then couldn't help but say "now what???".
Overall: I uninstalled it and put XP 64bit edition on. XP 64bit edition is able to take full advantage of my hardware to run fast as a banshee and has excellent driver support now. Things just work. The only application I could see Vista being an equivalent expirience would be a user that uses it for surfing the net and checking email. And it doesn't make any sense in that role because you are paying twice as much for hardware and software then if you bought a simple Mac, Linux, or XP system that does the exact same thing. The only software package upgrade I saw in the ultimate edition was a DVD authoring tool...but it looked cheap and of limited functionality. Boot times were improved, but that in itself is not much of a reason to pay hundreds more for hardware and software.
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