It's a resources pig and a lot of computers packaged with it (even currently) only contain 1gb RAM which isn't enough to run it. Also SP1 fixed a lot of the driver issues.

I've been pretty happy with it myself, a lot of older games that ran only okay on XP seem to run much better on Vista, plust screen flipping is fun.

I could not upgrade to SP1. Something to do with my HD controller. I then got a copy of Ultimate with SP1 in it (I have an MSDN License, so all MS software is free to me), and after install, it would hang on boot.

So, as of right now, it's impossible for me to get SP1 Vista running on my rig. I have quad core 2.5 AMD, 4 gig of ram, ATI 4850.

I threw XP back up and it boots like a champ. The issues I have had with Vista have never been with the user experience, I like it better then XP. Mostly because they ripped off OSX, but what do I care, I like OSX and I don't own Apple stock. If they make it a better GUI for me, I win. I don't care what Apple thinks, I don't work for them.

What I don't like, is in every category an OS should care about: Memory usage, IO performance, Video performance, Driver support, stability... it's worse then XP. Why go backwards with your core competencies? That's what bugs me.

Hopefully they will fix this with Windows 7. Let's hope it's not another Vista.

I have readyboost enabled and in use and honestly as far as general usage goes, I see zero impact upon the performance of the desktop (and the same for gaming), I think it's a waste of a good 8GB USB stick! MS are effectively saying 'Yeah, we've fucked up with Vista, so for you to even have any kind of efficiency from it, you gotta shell out for it, give us a USB drive now and see what we mean.' You've read the articles with the Readyboost / SuperFetch benchmarks right, and how minimal the performance increase is with 2GB of ram...

My point is - you just shouldn't have to.

With that said I may give vLite a go, when I do eventually go back to XP I have an nLite'd disc ready at the size of under 300 MB with pretty much the same full functionality as it should have. A fresh install takes you to a desktop using less than 70MB of RAM, an incredibly quick start up time even after months of using it and still low memory usage (around 200-250MB).

I'll be interested to see how this MinWin kernel turns out, IIRC it should end up with having the base OS at a size of something around 40MB, obviously before things such as even a GUI are thrown in there.

Again, my new rig is averagely sick. I'm running just 3gigs of ram though.

Vista hasn't had any problems whatsoever.

Is it really crashprone?

It seems that when running Vista on a badass computer, and just playing games/surfing porn, posting on VGChartz, it's actually better than XP.

If you have a sucky-great computer and want to run....CAD(sp?) or something like that, Vista is a system hog, with lockups.

Yeah, Vista is far more badass, for me and my type of computing, than XP was. I mean...the freakin' ribbons screensaver is worth the upgrade alone.

Anyway, bloatware? Click the start circle in Vista, and type "msconfig" in the search menu. Deselect all the crap using up ram.

I'm assuming Vista has and does have some issues, but so far, for me, it's just been a nice, userfriendly, perfect upgraded experience over XP, which feels a lot like Vista if Vista were a skeleton. XP is the bones of Vista. I can't blame new software for requiring more ram to run correctly. Afterall, Windows is software too, and it's about time they upgraded it a little to take advantage of badderassed computers.

I haven't restarted my Media PC for almost 4 months. (Vista 64) and my other PC (Vista 32) gets rebooted about once every 3 months as well.

Vista runs pretty good for me on my media PC but my main PC has a few niggles which I can't pin down. The Vista install was an upgrade then my HDD failed and I transferred it over to another HDD with Shadowcopy and it hasn't worked quite right ever since. It doesn't hang, but explorer comes up with wierd errors about once every day I really should reinstall it but im lazy, might just stick an HD 4670 into my Media PC and sell my graphics card.

It is true, I got in after that year, lol. Service pack 1 was on my Vista already when I installed.

Vista is incompatible with many of the old school and foreign games that I like to run. Touhou refuse to play with any music, some of my sidescroller doesn't work etc.

This is probably the only reason I am still using xp. Its impossible to find support for them anymore/in the right language and I do still play them regularly.

I think the Vista is doomed to collect dust until my next computer upgrade. By then maybe Win7 would be out :p.

No problems for me so far.

This is why i have quad-boot on my PC:

-Windows XP SP3
-Ubuntu
-Windows Vista 64 SP1
-Hackintosh (OSX hacked for PC)

My main OSs are XP and Ubuntu, i do almost everything in there, i'm re-testing Vista for some games, and Hackintosh is just for do some quick things in the multimedia department (all my robust multimedia stuff is handled in XP)...

I don't hate Vista, i hate M$ for making people believe that it is a great OS, when is far from it, almost everything that is done in Vista can be done on XP, even if you want the looks, you can put them on XP, and all of this with less consumed resources... It's not really an upgrade if it doesn't offer something new to the table besides new versions of Directx, they could do an OS without the old messed-up registry, they could do a really more efficient system, they could do a lot of things, and until now, they are not delivering...

Yes, bigjon, you are missing something. But I have learned that that's just the way you are. You don't get a lot of stuff, and that's ok, but please stop bothering everyone with it.