Alright, time to finally put down my Vista impressions; this is as good a place as any.
First lets talk about the eye candy. I'm not quite sure why people are so hostile about it... (Many were mad with XP too...) Sure, it doesn't make anything better, but it doesn't make it worse; it's like better graphics in a game. I won't play a bad game just because it has good graphics or ignore a good one because it does not, but if a good game has good graphics, I reckon I'll take it. The transparency is surprisingly useful when working with many small windows like MSN. More of a psycological thing, I can have a little bit more of a window covered up and still see what it is. The previews on the taskbar are genuinely useful; while the first does have a delay, after that every single window comes up instantly for you to scroll though. The new Alt-Tab ("Flip") is nice but it has a delay that is a tad annoying.
Contrary to the opinions of some others, Flip 3D is genuinely useful, at least to me. It has even changed the way I work on Windows, I keep a ton more stuff open now, easily grabbing something I need later. It could use AA though, it is considerably jaggy. Display drivers, are you listening?
Ah, drivers. The main problem with Vista as it is now. Display drivers are impressively developed but have a ways yet to go. I'm waiting on better chipset drivers, though there are some. The same cannot be said of a certain sound card titan... At any rate I eagerly await better drivers that will round out Vista.
Other than drivers, Vista has two problems. It is clearly bloated with debug code, taking up RAM and CPU cycles at awkward times, and UAC... yeeeeaaaaah... The code will obviously get better, and Microosft will simply have to make UAC more intelligent or no one will use Vista, simple as that.
However, Vista will be my primary operating system from now on because it is actually more stable than XP! Although my limited experience with a fresh install may not be the most scientific analysis out there, the fact is that I simply have had less or more minor problems with Vista thus far than XP. For example, once in Vista, when I stupidly tried to change my background while display drivers were installing, explorer crashed. Explorer crashed and... nothing happened. The background box clsoed, yes, but everything else ran without skipping a beat, even the display driver installation. Also, my games are much more stable. I can alt-tab out of Oblivion left and right; on XP that crashs it about one in three times. Battlefield 2 has not crashed once, an amazing change for that buggy mess. My only gripe is that my Steam games will not start, but I get the impression it is an issue with Steam on the x64 code and that it will be fixed by a platform update. (The same thing happened with XP64 unless I am mistaken...) Others have reported no issues on x86 Vista, so it fits.
Speaking of games, I like the new file organization. Besides Windows and Program Files, you have Users, replacing the vile "Documents and Settings". Under your user folder is a wonderful organization of folders, "Pictures", "Videos", "Music", "Documents", "Desktop", "Saved Games", and the like. The Start Menu I am really beginning to warm up to, seeing it as what XP's should have been. You have Frequent programs, Internet and Email, and a simple selection on the right to your User folder, Documents, Pictures, Music, and Games. The Control Panel seems well laid out, again, an expansion upon what XP tried to do with marginal success. I like the idea of a benchmark tool built in, but it seems awkward; system requirements are not about gobs of HDD space or RAM bandwidth... I like the native Windows Update that isn't in IE.
Windows Defender seems nice. However, DO NOT INSTALL TREND MICRO'S PC-CILLIN ON VISTA x64! It doesn't work, and I can't uninstall it. Arg... Media Player 11 seems nice, but I don't like that it wanted me to load up some MTV store thing. Sidebar seems like a total waste, it accomplishes nothing but to make we wish I had Google Desktop again.
I feel obligated to address with detail with main function of the operating system. Indeed, it seems special attention and detail was invested in the Window's version of Solitaire. The background options are nicely done, especially the default green's texture, but I'm not quite as sure about the selection of deck looks. The "normal" deck has been given rather odd looking face cards, and the best deck is the "seasons" deck which I would say is only average looking. Nice however is the animation and "thump" when laying out three more cards. The sound for putting cards "up" is nice too, especially the effect when many go up at once. Worth mentioning the most, of course, is the difficulty. Every deal was difficult yet possible, a clear and deliberate change. The AI for knowing when you have no moves left is good but not perfect. The only real downfall was that the cards did not bounce after jumping out when you win! They shattered like glass, and here I was expecting some grade-A Vista-powered card-bouncing physics. *sigh* I would give Vista solitaire an 8.6 out of 10.0.
And just to cover my bases, that last paragraph was humor. I think.
Had already decided it was a bit too much of a beta for me....so I proceeded to go over the edge a bit. Got my Canon scanner to work even though there are no Vista drivers available for it. Got away with that one. Then I went a little wacky installing software, most of which seemed to install "okay" and even work, but the OS didn't acknowledge their presence. Ended my torture test by locking up on, of all things, changing the screensaver. 
Facebook
Twitter