Glad to - however, be prepared because the optimizations in themselves take up a lot of time!

- http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/sgp-tweaks.ars

- http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html

- http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1786122,00.asp

... and many more. These are the main ones I refer to when I install a new OS. 

You might like to know that these optimizations are for general usage, not just for games.

However, there are game-specific optimizations you can carry out with your system - you might, however, realize you are giving up too much of your OS's functionality (e.g. I don't have help services at all running on my OS, which saves some processing cycles, but at the same time if you run into a problem on your computer you get - literally - zero help!) but if speed is what you are after, give this a try:

- http://www.tweakguides.com

It's also got massive (as in ginormous) sections on how to optimize your OS in general, and not just for games. What's good about this site is there are tweaks detailed for a whole bunch of games; this is where I found out and tried (and was gobsmacked at the visual difference, btw) HDR on Far Cry - it just looks heads and shoulders above non-HDR (with the tradeoff that if you use an ATI card you can kiss antialiasing goodbye). 

You may want to try XPLite. It's not free, and can mess up your OS or remove dependent files but you can always restore things to its original state. Having said that, if you run these "optimizations" you should not need to rely on this type of software much at all.

Finally, if your computer starts slowing down you can always invest in a good imaging package. I use Acronis TrueImage, and having it is a godsend. I can do whatever I want to my OS and if the manure hits the proverbial fan it takes all of 10 minutes to get back to where I started off from! Using this when you have everything configured just the way you want will keep your operating system in check - guaranteed. 

Good luck!

So... nothing. That's why I'm not using it.

What's your excuse?

What do you mean by "my excuse"? I use Vista because it works well with my hardware... In fact I didn't have to search for any drivers, it worked right out of the box. Other people may have different experiences. It's just a personal choice, but it can't be denied that the drivers issue is a matter of time (at least for the well known graphics cards), which is all I said...

 One thing is for sure, noone can seriously claim that Windows Vista is about to become a reincarnation of Windows ME...

I'm glad it works well with your hardware, but it has been discovered on various websites that gaming on Vista is not ready for prime time - yet.

I alluded to this as well, and in fact love Windows simply because it allows me to game!

However, if it doesn't run my favorite games, and in fact provides for little, if any, benefits over XP for the software I use on a daily basis (as they are not optimized yet for 64-bit code) I see little reason at all to upgrade to XP yet.

However, that's just me, and I thought I made this perfectly clear (with smiley-faces and all).

You seemed offended that I even brought this up in the first place! But I did bring up the point about wanting things to work now, because you yourself stated:

"Vista is not bug-riddled, it's just a new operating system which needs a bit of time to mature and for the other companies in the industry to adapt to."

In this sense you and I actually agree so I just found your comment a bit... strange... That's all.

Well, the mess comes from the fact that I was replying to you and to the general topic of this thread at the same time, so let's leave it at that. We all know how hard it is to get one's point across in a forum sometimes ;)

I'm posting on this forum using a copy of Vista for my new(er) laptop I got a few weeks ago. Vista is good, but obviously sucky vs. a veteran XP with all the service packs. As others have said, Vista hasn't forced a reset ONCE in a MONTH. No MS OS I've used has ever been that reliable. It's reset itself a few times on certain things. Also, it seems to be rather fast on certain things (like loading the dang OS). The main issues, as said, are drivers and its compatability with old(er) games sucks right now. Oh well.

What graphic cards would that be?  ATI has great Vista drivers.  No problems.  Nvidia had some problems when Vista first launched but the newest version of the drivers are running smooth. 

Resource hog?  Once again I can tell you do not run Vista and are just repeating what you have heard from the MS haters.  Core1 is at 0% usage and Core2 is at 4% as I type this.  Using 800 MB out of 2GBs.  Look up SuperFetch for Vista before you complain about RAM usage and you will see it is a better way to handle system RAM.  Many people tend to think of RAM as some sort of resource, and when it starts getting used up, they believe that they have a problem.  In reality however, RAM is more like a cache.  If your system is only using a small percentage of your cache is a huge waste.

Vista SuperFetch is positive not a negative but the MS haters are too stupid to know better.

Ok fine, I lose. But it's expensive and not in the cards right now.

Vista will be a much better OS after SP1 is released and software is catered towards it. I don't think PC gaming can be compared all that much to Console gaming. A PC is used for so much more, and requires user know-how to get games up and running smoothly. A console can be turned on, pop a disc in, and you're good to go. The only affect I see is Vista getting more games ported from the 360, so perhaps it's better for PC enthusiasts?