My .02? I work for CSC, at a division of UTC (our biggest customer), as the 'virus focal' and user account security. Also do field tech work, mostly virus related. Yea, I bought a vista laptop 'bout 1 1/2 years ago, home premium. Couldn't use it because it can't join my home domain network (yea I'm a geek with 3 servers at home) but I played with it for a bit. Yes, very different from XP. Took a little time to get familiar, but did not like it. Very slow. Why? The manufacturer loaded it up with craplets- lots of programs running in the systray. Took all the memory and hit the CPU. Most people just assume it's Vista that's slow. Vista itself needs more computer muscle, and more memory and drive space. It doesn't belong on a low end machine but lots of people get it on basic computers filled with craplets and blame Vista.
I ended up doubling the memory to 4 gigs, and as it's a gaming laptop with muscle, I bought Vista Ultimate 64 bit and am using that. No craplets, lots of memory, and setup the way I want. It is more stable than XP, has drivers that 64 bit XP lacks (yea I have that too), and can address more than 3.2 gigs of ram that 32bit XP can't. Also put it on my main quad core SLI gaming rig, and again 64bit. It blows away XP. I'm talking Ultimate 64, not the basic home stuff setup wrong by a manufacturer that loads it up with junk.
To sum it up, I hated Vista till I installed the 64 bit version and set it up properly.
Tzvia- rollin' slow...
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