This probably isn't the right place to ask this but are there a lot of Vista users here? I just installed Vista and I know it's supposedly a resource hog but I've actually grown quite fond of it. Maybe it's due to installing it on a new harddrive verses upgrading my old XP box but I've actually noticed it to be pretty fast. IE and Firefox seem to be twice as fast. I'm most likely in for a few unexpected surprises though.

I uninstalled off my lappy & went back to XP (only 1MB memory). My (limited) understanding is it preloads a load of stuff and uses anything between 600-800 kb of memory just purring along. Once you have an adequately specced machine then it runs beautifully. A colleague tried to get it to freeze up\ slow down and gave up after launching 800 firefox windows and god knows how many word documents.

I use it at work. It crashes randomly about every 3 weeks. I think its related to the screen saver.

I just like it because it looks nice, but no other reason really. The crashing is very annoying. It takes a long time to start up too.

Nothing but eye-candy. And annonying, distasteful eye-candy at that. Menus are difficult to navigate.
File Management strays even farther from the KISS principle.
New Windows Media Player interface is positively inscrutable.
Office 2007 applications are an embarrassment.

Between Windows Vista and Office 2007, Apple has a huge marketing opportunity.

I like the search bar at the bottom when you click on 'start' (the win icon) I get a lot of stuff I want that way. I forgot to mention that

Has anyone read: The Humane Interface

It really influenced how I think about UI design. its good

i am positively getting an iMac when my fairly new xp laptop gets a little more dated. Sorry MS, you pay the bills but I am not dealing with that at home.

The worst feature in Vista is that you cannot simply hit the windows key followed by, for example, "u" (for Shut down).

Picking up on one of Blindmans points - the new WMP is really good - as soon as you've worked out how to change from audio library to videa and vice-versa!

I bet you all had the exact same arguements when XP appeared on the scene. How many people are still using "classic view" in XP, eh?

EDIT:

Except the big sell to the corporates is security.

Agreed though for home use - there was barely any additional functionality immediately obvious when I had it installed. It was a bugger to wipe from the disk too.

That should be addressed in a patch. Not a release. What is the benefit for home users?

I think it is from-the-ground-up. The big sell of vista is that it is super secure and super configurable for network admins - more than just an upgrade on what there was. In fact, I read an article the other day that suggests that OS hacks are really on the wane now and hackers are targetting applications and social networking sites more as they are easier pickings.
Home users are not where MS makes its real dollars for OS sales - corporates are their driver.

my thing is that I am a bit nervous about MS long term because there have been some questionable releases lately and my whole skill base is MS based stuff more or less. god forbid there is a vista-like release of sql server and CIOs start turning away from it. I'll be painting houses and picking up shifts waiting tables again.

'twas the friday before Christmas,
and all through the company,
everyone appeared to be gone,
except for lil' ol' me.

when I gander at Lotus Notes,
I can see that they are dialed in,
surely asleep on their couch,
but "available over IM".

To be there myself,
is all that I wish.
The highlight of the day
was a lunch of fried fish.

Back to the query analyzer,
dutifully I shall go,
just thought I would post,
to wish you all a merry ho ho...

Somebody appears to have a bit of time on his hands today. That's a good thing, I'm in favor of it!...and two very happy ones to you too!

-PatP

naah that only took a moment, but it is deathly quiet around here.

...its called SQL Server Management Studio....