So, I've been a lifelong user of windows and linux as a secondary OS. I've never been much of an early adopter, however once SP1 was available and I received a free copy of Vista Ultimate at an MS event, I said what the heck. Time for an upgrade. I could not have been more disappointed. Aside from running slower then XP, I suffered from occasional app crashes and for some reason my MS wireless keyboard likes to stop working. And of course, before you say its a hardware issue, I'm running a Wolfdale 8500 with 4G of DDR2 and a 9600GT, which never has any issues when I boot to Ubuntu. So as much as I tried to polish it, after 6 months of usage I'm declaring Vista a turd.

Any one else have similar experiences? I know some people love it, some people hate it. I'm starting to think the vista sunshine pumpers are only trying to justify the cash they paid for it. I for one am downgrading to XP, the only loss IMO is losing DX10 support and the improved photo gallery.

oleDB, I'm with you too. I tried Vista out for about 3 or 4 months and had similar experiences... system slow, strange errors and other odd problems it seemed. I switched over to Kubuntu primarily on my laptop for a while but eventually switched back over to an XP/Linux dual-boot.

I've had no worse problems with it than I had with XP when that first came out. If I remember correctly, XP couldn't even burn a CD when it was first released and had a multitude of compatibility issues and bugs. Since then software and drivers have been written specifically for XP and things have improved. It's matured into a very useable system.

Vista does have its problems, but I've been using it for about a year now with no problems severe enough to make me scrub it. I neither love it nor hate it, it's just there, and we need to get used to it because it is Microsofts main desktop OS at the mo and XP is eventually going to disappear - it's already starting to be fazed out.

Vista will improve and mature, and people are going to have to get used to it. I think the main issue most people have is that the interface and layout is dramatically different to the last few versions of Windows, but once you get your head around this it's ok.

I'm not a Vista fanboy by any means, just trying to offer a flip side to the arguments thus far...

I run Vista 32 and 64bit version, and the main issues as ever with any OS is drivers. I tried to go 100% Linux a couple of years ago and always had issues with wifi drivers. So I use Linux for security related tasks, and Windows for day to day, reports etc, and an XP build on a laptop from time to time.

As already stated people said XP was pants when it first came out, and I remember seeing an interview with Bill Gates, and he freely admitted what a better way to user test an OS than to sell it with the flaws, lol.

Sure there will be posts saying bring back Vista when Midori is released. 

Vista is butt ugly and slow as a snail compared to ubuntu 8.04 hardy heron.

Will the unethical, naughty, Vista-hating individual who has hi-jacked iSmith's account please stand up and hand back control of the account to it's rightful owner?....

Official notice. iSmith is no longer a Vista fanboy, he is an Ubuntu fanboy.(The argument has been made that ubuntu take the best elements of all the popular OS'es)