So the hard drive died on my desktop tonight. It started making strange noises back in March, so I bought an external drive and backed it up. So while I am not concerned about data loss, I do need to get a new drive. I just ordered a new one and figure since I am going to rebuild I might as well take the opportunity to put Vista on the machine and give it a try. This is the longest I have ever waited before putting on a new OS, but I just saw no need to upgrade from XP. 98 to 2000 and 2000 to XP both made sense. The Vista upgrade is mostly just to get a chance to play with it, and a dead drive being a good excuse. I've heard more bad than good, but it's time to see for myself.

For others that are using it here, what does everyone think of it.

I have turned off most of the "Vista features" in an effort to reduce CPU and memory consumption. I find no difference from XP. I do really like Office 2007 though although I am sure that would also run on XP.

Not sure why, but I really like the translucent window frames. Tabbed browser windows are nice, but there are lots of ways to get them.

In most other ways I find the UI changes annoying, eg. for a dial-up user it now takes a lot more clicks to get to the "status" display to find out how the ol' dial-up connection is working. That would be fine if other common functions took *less* clicks but I'm not seeing that (other than being relentlessly herded towards other Microsoft net resources).

The disk partitioning tools seem to be more capable than XPs -- or maybe I just didn't know how to use XP. Shrinking a huge C: drive to make room for dual-booting Linux is now much easier

I upgraded because I had an XP license, was buying a new PC, and figured it made more sense to get a Vista license than another XP license. I also figure there have to be some good things hidden in there -- I just have to find 'em.

I do really like the translucent window frames. Did I mention that ?

I've been running Vista for a while now and really like it. Although, I did build a new PC for it, so it has plenty of power and allows me to run with all the fancy bells and whistles turned on, so that helps. Check out the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor before you begin. It will tell you what sort of experience you can expect, plus will let you know if any components of your PC aren't compatible.

Visa Upgrade Advisor

I think that's the trick with Vista--lots of horsepower. I'm running it on a new laptop with a C2D and an nVidia Quadro FX590M.

I just built myself a new PC after my old was having overheating problems on the motherboard. I bought a new NForce 680i Motherboard, and a Core II Duo MCP and a new case with more room for additional cooling. I used my existing 2 GB of RAM, NVidia 7900 GTS graphics card, hard drive and other parts.

In short, I'm well equipped for Vista but have zero desire to upgrade. It simply doesn't have any features that make it worth the while to spend money and sacrifice processing cycles.

Trust me, I wouldn't be running it if my boss hadn't made getting the laptop conditional on getting Vista.

I think you could either upgrade to Vista or ask your Neighbor to kick you in the JUNK. Same feeling really ( one is free though)
Jake

LOL! ... so true