I don't see why people complain about it... I love it, I was sticking with XP because I kept hearing stories about Vista... The only problem I have had is I had to dowload something to play Civ 4...

Am I missing something here?

I am using the Home Premium 64 bit edition.

A year of bad to no driver support.

I seem to be missing something as well, I have had no problems with it whatsoever, I think people just like complaining about M$... and Apple propaganda

No problems at all, in fact it works better than my Windows XP

I don't like it. They've changed how everything works, for instance, the networking windows. They've changed it to where you have to say 'It's OK for me to go here!' for half of the system windows you try to get into..I've had 3 vista laptops crack out on me already to where I just decided to stay with my XP Vaio.

I think it's terrible...and honestly, I still think Windows 2000 Professional was the best OS they've made, and none of the others have even come close.

 From what I have heard, Service pack 1 fixed alot of the problems in Vista.  What you missed is what the early adopter had to go through.

It's called ''adaptation.''

Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that this is one year later, Vista SP1 and all computers now have 2Gb of RAM (not least because of Vista).

In the beginning driver support was atrocious (and yes part of this was Microsoft with their idiotic signed driver "feature") and a big part of Notebooks that were sold with Vista had either 1Gb of Ram or Intel integrated graphics both of which made using Vista about as fun as getting a tooth pulled out. (start menu -> loading swirl -> programs -> loading swirl -> folder -> loading swirl AAARGH)

On the other hand nobody could tell me an actual benefit the consumer has over XP

 I suppose.  I don't use PC's for much anymore besides the internet, for instance this site and a few NFL sites, every now and then myspace.  So fortunately for me, I won't need Vista anytime soon.  Theres only 1 game for PC I'll be buying, and that's going to be Diablo 3, and it's going to be a long time until I have to do that.  And hopefully, by then they've decided to release it on consoles, and I can skip the PC thing altogether.

I'm not saying Mac's are better - quite the contrary, I think Macs are worse.  But I can't stand Vista.

Hehe, it's alright. It was hard getting used to XP after going through Windows 95, 98, 2000 and Me.