been following this tread for sometime with interest to get vista home premium oem. i install vista to test out before buying but concluded that xp is still the best for now. i have a c2d with 3gig ram and after running vista for 1 week i move back to xp. main reason:

1 creative audigy/x-fi can be used but it's missing alot of function ..... ie it's only partially using it's full features
2 the interface is so-so, cluttered and messy. i like the bread crumb and the animated icons but the removal of toolbar to an adaptive one in explorer is irritating. i like my icons/shortcut where i want them to be and do not need ms to think for me (this is also same for office 2007 ribbon crap)
3 some software do not work properly
4 cannot sync with my sony ericsson phone - driver etc not out yet
5 cannot use quick install on palm desktop
6 dreamscene was awesome for about 5minutes ....... after that i revert back to norm wallpaper
7 don't like the new start button - the xp much easier to use, just hover and the sub menu on prog will pop out. the new menu need to click-click-click
8 search function pretty good and useful
9 some of the stuff not very logically organise - in xp you have menu call out and from there you can move around the tab etc. vista will call out a page and from there click here, click there, click the back button etc. this is apparent in simple stuff like change theme/wallpaper/resolution/color depth etc. - xp all this can be done from one option screen but is vista it's all over the place. same with performance tuning.
10 on driver side it will depend on your luck - so far all my devices are supported except for partial creative audigy/palm and non-existence of sony ericssion sync
11 uca damn irritating ..... but lucky can be switched off
12 there's lack of antivirus and firewall for vista. i use freeware avast and pctool firewall - both ok. still no zone alarm free version


if you intend to buy the vista - suggest you get hold a copy and test it for 1-2weeks before committing. i do quite vista in some way but to me it's just a modified xp with minor upgrade here and there and of cos some major improvement in security. but to me security is only as good as the user - as long as you use a capable av (even some of the freeware) and update daily, use a good software firewall, get a firewall router and DON'T open suspicious emails attachment etc and scan everything you you downloaded you'll be fine hehe

oh forgot to mention - apparently vista us drm infested but during my 1week+ testing all my vid is playing ok. but from what i googled on the net (dunno if true or not) one of the reason vista use so much resources is becos it's check left right and center to ensure drm compliance.
also if you're running the 32bit version just get 3gb ram instead of 4gb. 32bit vista/xp will not see the complete 4bg becos the bios set aside the upper band of the 4bg (max can support by 32bit os) for your graphic cards and whatever cards etc you have. so a 256mb graphic cards will zap out the top 256mb leaving windows with less ram

This post has been edited by kitman: Apr 16 2007, 10:12 AM

yup no problem with klite from 1.67 onwards