Shoutbox

Remember that Vista comes in many flavors.

Those who compare speeds should clearly state their 'flavor' (bussiness, home, basic, ultimate, etc) and clear state their specs.

Especially video drivers and video hardware as Vista makes extensive use and speed greatly depends on what video hardware you got. It also depends on what stuff you have enabled in Vista (eg Aero etc).

Also, startup and shutdown speeds greatly depend on how partionated your PC is and what you've got installed and running and even what kind of 'shut down' you use.

In a nutshell: don't compare speeds unlesss you include a decent and detailed benchmark chart.

As for UAC, for 'power' users it is indeed annoying, but don't forget that the security out-of-the-box in Vista is 1000 times better than in Windows XP, especially with such things as UAC.

Of course, Vista is a brand new OS. Of course there are still compatibility issues with some programs and of course there are going to be hotfixes and patches (heck even XP is still patched up every month)...

Don't forget that many hardware stuff is designed and produced years ago. It speaks for its own that not every (old) piece of hardware is going to be Vista-ready. And it is nearly impossible to expect that all manufactures are going to dish all their products and start developping new stuff especially for Vista. If so, expect new hardware products for Vista to be released in 5 years time (as it often takes that long to go from concept to retail). As for the other hardware, many stuff is already Vista-ready, even if it does not have a Vista-ready sticker on it.

tbh, there is nothing wrong with Vista, and if anything it is a big milestone for Microsoft and the computing industry as it finally breaks with many things which were carried along since the DOS age.

And since it is new, with a totally new GUI, many 'power' user will feel it is shit because they are not used to the interface and that counts for many complaints too.

As for those who complain that Vista uses a hell of a lot more memory: of course it is going to use more memory since the GUI is way more resource extensive. If you don't like that, I suggest to run Unix or DOS. This is the evolution in computing and since memory and processors get cheaper and more powerfull it is only logic that futur OS's will use that power. In fact, be glad that Vista uses your 2gb of memory instead of ignoring it. Otherwise what is the point in having 2gb if it isn't going to be used in the first place.

As for the question of needing it: I'd say no... There is actually no reason to buy Vista, unless you have games which only use DirectX10, unless you want to have some nifty GUI, unless you want to be secured as much as possible out-of-the-box.
XP is still good and almost all programs of today run on XP. In general, it is still too soon to buy Vista and thus the normal user doesn't have much reason to switch from XP to Vista. Unless he wants to be 'hip'.