[Stuart Wright]

I didn't bother. Too many nightmare stories. Staying with XP and have no intention of changing for the moment.
It came pre installed in the wife's laptop and I don't like it at all. It keeps asking me before it runs applications and occasionally refuses other computers access to shared folders.
I have been using Microsoft operating systems for over 20 years and I tend not to use the latest products until they have been out a few months. Let other people bug test Microsoft's rubbish software.

[SeanT]

I actually had to run it as an upgrade too, as vista wouldn't let me use the F6 method for my RAID drivers, so I put Win XP (MCE) on and upgraded from that. It gave me a few problems, but mostly ones with workarounds - it has actually improved quite a bit, but there doesn't seem any point going any further with it now that 7 is around the corner - I'm running 7 on quite a few machines now, they go smooth enough apart from the driver issues - it's what vista should have been imho.

[Haggler]

Nope, i'm still running xp too, most of the proggies i used to use frequently were not compatible with vista and therefore i never made the change, now even though i no longer use all those proggies (due mainly to a lack of leisure time) xp is still fine for me and i still see no benefit (in my case at least) for running vista.

[kingfats]

Not as such,my old laptop has XP (still use) my new laptop which i just bought has Vista which seems ok i guess.

[Shanksy7]

My computer came with Vista and it took a while to get used to it but I think its fine. Plus you can turn UAC off so you don't get it asking you every 5 secs if you really want to do something

[Greg]

Had Vista on my latest PC and it has worked great.

Just turn off User Account Control and that will be the end of your troubles.

[Rasczak]

Installed Vista Home Premium 32bit when I built my last PC. Despite all the doom and gloom I've actually had no snags with it at all. New games, which are really the only ones I play on my desktop, all seem to work fine.

Vista also came pre-installed on my laptop - again it has been fine - although for compatibility purposes with some older games I have a dual boot arrangement with Windows XP.

[Miyazaki]

Had Vista x64 since launch and absolutely no issues at all, every thing I have had a driver for it.

I don't know if I was lucky, if the vista problems are only on 32bit or if they are simply overstated.

[mjcairney]

Vista Home Premium 32 bit came with my new machine and I reckon it's okay, certainly not the disaster some people have described it as.

Cheers,

Martin.

[fraggle]

Have XP on all my main machines. I do have Vista Home Pro on a test machine because I need it, also have Windows 7 RC1 on a couple of machines.

I think I will upgrade to Win 7 when it comes out as it seems so much quicker and better than Vista.

Only problem with doing that is Sony don't have drivers for Vista or Win 7 for my old laptop, so I can't change screen brightness, can't eject the CD/DVD (I can use the Windows right click "Eject" command). You don't realise how much you use those custom buttons until you can't!

[ukbootlegs]

I bought the Ultimate edition the day it came out and regretted installing it every day since

[KhalJimbo]

Yes and no, my desktop came pre installed with Vista, and my Netbook came pre installed with XP. I'm quite happy with both, I didnt like vista at first but as soon as I sorted out the teething problems like, access controll and crap like that and its not such a bad OS. I really like the way it looks.

I have heard good things about Windows 7 though

[Singh400]

I got my copies for free. So, naturally I've switched from XP to Vista. Without incident.

Originally Posted by Stuart Wright

I didn't bother. Too many nightmare stories.

Again, the Vista hate bandwagon. Vista is a perfectly fine OS.

Originally Posted by Stuart Wright

Staying with XP and have no intention of changing for the moment.

That's your choice. But it's a bad one. Are you going to have the same attitude to Windows 7?

Originally Posted by Stuart Wright

It keeps asking me before it runs applications and occasionally refuses other computers access to shared folders.

That would be UAC. It's a perfect good feature. Just wasn't executed very well in Vista. It's been further tweaked in Windows 7.

Originally Posted by Stuart Wright

I have been using Microsoft operating systems for over 20 years and I tend not to use the latest products until they have been out a few months. Let other people bug test Microsoft's rubbish software.

Again, Vista is far from rubbish. It was just the Vista hating crowd spreading crap.

[Keith Hurst]

Vista Home Premium came pre-installed on my laptop, initially it was a pain trying to find stuff... a bit like walking into Tescos and they've moved the shelves around.

It's great really, better than XP and it's more than fast enough on the AMD Turion x64 1.9GHz, 2GB RAM.

All I tend to use it for is simple text based stuff with PHP, general web stuff, some GIMP work and the reviews I write for AVForums in OpenOffice.

Happy all round really.

KH

[Keith Hurst]

Originally Posted by Stuart Wright

It keeps asking me before it runs applications

As has been mentioned this is the UAC, it can be disabled.

KH

[ODP]

use XP and Ubuntu 9.04, never got on with Vista so never really bothered to get to grips with it

[mikim]

I use the Mac for almost everything now, but for compatibility with some music software I've stuck to XP. Vista is pretty, but also pretty annoying from what I can tell... W7 is looking promising... might move to that soon

[lloydsmart]

I love Macs but can't afford one at the moment, plus I like to build my PCs. I can't stand vista and wasn't really that keen on XP in the first place. I mostly use linux but I've been trying out Windows 7 and have to say that it's actually pretty good. I'm considering a move to Windows 7 permenantly, but I couldn't live without some form of linux as a backup-OS.

[Badger0-0]

I upgraded and it's proved disastrous.
Reversing partitions so I can go back to XP is impossible without formatting the HDD.
General computing is horrendously slow too.
Turning Aero off has improved things.
Oh and regardless of what people might say, Windows 7 is exactly the same.

And it's not just the Vista hate Bandwagon, it's fact on my computers, which while not state of the art, aren't exactly decrepit.

Stuart, you chose wisely mate, imo.

[Banksie]

I have vista on my desktop and xp on my laptop, I think that the problem people have with vista is it uses to much memory just to run itself.
If you haven't got at least a dual core processor and min 2gb ram don't bother. I've got a quad core and 4gb of ram and it runs without any issues.

[ukbootlegs]

i have dual core cpu and 2gb of ram and sometimes you can literally wait a minute for it to even change folders in explorer

[mjcairney]

Originally Posted by Banksie

I've got a quad core and 4gb of ram and it runs without any issues.

Ditto.

Cheers,

Martin.

[mengez]

Originally Posted by Badger0-0

Oh and regardless of what people might say, Windows 7 is exactly the same.

Please can you expand on this?

With regard to Vista I don't think it was great at launch but with the updates is fine, I personally only upgraded because I was building a new PC and it coincided with Vista coming out.

[Bruceorange]

XP is the best! Although XP obviously visually looks better I think the features on XP are far better, there's more freedom although I haven't checked out windows 7 yet, I'm probably gunna stick with xp for at least another year, because it's perfect in my opinion.

10/10

[Badger0-0]

Originally Posted by mengez

Please can you expand on this?

With regard to Vista I don't think it was great at launch but with the updates is fine, I personally only upgraded because I was building a new PC and it coincided with Vista coming out.

There has been much talk about Windows 7 being much less resource hungry, but in my experience, it's pretty much identical. It seems Aero is what was causing the problem in my case, as it really did bring the computers (one runs Vista, the other 7, with almost identical spec) to a crawl. Everything was murderously slow.
But in fairness, things are much better now Aero is turned off.
I personally think the graphics card is the most important factor for people to consider if your computer is getting on a bit, as a Radeon 300 just doesn't cut it.

I guess what I'm saying is, if your computer runs Vista fine, it'll run 7 fine.

I have to agree with the previous comment though about XP, I find it almost perfect and visual improvements apart, I don't think there is really much benefit with Vista or 7. I can live with Vista and 7, no problem, but for me XP is still the best.
If you're perfectly happy with XP, I don't see the point in upgrading and it seems certainly many businesses agree with me, seeing as Microsoft have extended their support for it.

But that's just my opinion

[namuk]

Waited for Sp1 then i upgraded , Best operating system to date and had less issues with vista than all other Operating systems i have owned .. going to win7 for me can not see this being an upgrade due to it is vista based.. If DX11 comes's out for vista even lesser chance ..

[Razor]

Vista running on 5 pc's and I like it. I couldn't go back, nor have I had any issues.

[Sniper Ash6]

I was given Vista Ultimate (friends and family pack) by a friend who works for microsoft - he has also given me a lot of other microsoft software for free (totalling a couple of grand)

otherwise i had no plans on upgrading from XP

[steveo 79]

i dont really see the point in paying to upgrad the OS on a home pc thats a few years old and will only slow it down without giving many extra benefits. I wait till i get a new comp that its designed to run on i think

[steve.r]

Had a play with Vista for a while. No real performance issues but got sooooo bored with having to set permissions every time I wanted to change, move or delete a file that I gave up. Yes I did turn off the UAC and spent many hours trawling the web looking for a solution but nothing seemed to give me total unrestricted access.

Also found the icons in windows explorer to be far to busy. Seemed to take much longer to find the right files and folders. And whilst on the subject of windows explorer, what’s the deal with all those useless links on the left. Can’t remember what they were now but it seemed impossible to just get a tree view of the drives on your computer and nothing else like in XP.

Minor niggles perhaps but I’m sticking with XP until Vista / Win 7 lets me use my computer the way I want and not how Microsoft thinks I should.