Windows Vista compared to All other Windows OS?

[NorrisCell]

I still maintain that Vista got a bad rap. I run it on my X60 and have no performance issues. I think a lot of people has a distaste for Vista because with MS pulling the plug on XP, Vista got loaded onto computers that had no business running it, and it ran like garbage. I think it was also an annoyance to a lot of people since the UAC interface was new to them. Win7 is smoother on lower powered machines, but if you have the hardware to back it up, it really isn't that much different than Vista, IMO.

j-dawg, I went through the same thing as you a while back. I loaded XP onto a different partition to run a piece of software for a project, and I got a chance to see just how old it truly is in comparison. The last surviving XP-only program I use FINALLY updated to support Vista/W7, so I can ditch it altogether. If I really need it, I can run it in a Virtual Machine.

[Norway Pad]

Happy to see I am not weird for enjoying Vista, I have had a feeling Vista was considered to be the black sheep among Microsoft OS. I was also scared by all the initial criticism that Vista got, and I once decided I would never try it. I just planned to keep my XP machines running and upgrade the capable ones to W7 or an even newer OS.

But last year I found a free Vista Ultimate promotional key that my wife once got, and I installed that on my P4 3.0GHz desktop, after upgrading to a 7200K drive and 2GB RAM. And I have to admit that I like it more and more. It runs smooth and startup time isn't bad, even though some tasks "feel" slower than in XP. UAC is disabled, though. The best thing however, at the same time as doing this, I am studying for an A+ certification, and the text book is mainly targeted for Vista, with XP and to some extent W2K also covered. And after working with it and seeing some of the tools and possibilities that are built in to Vista, I am getting really impressed with it. I installed it off of a DVD with SP1, and I upgraded directly to SP2, so I didn't experience the flaws that maybe was there in the non-SP version.

I have to admit I have seen pretty sluggish Vista installs on friends' computers, but those were sold with Vista and 512KB RAM.. Seems like the Vista OS was sent on a suicide mission there.

So I am also considering swapping a W7 Home Premium retail kit I have for a Vista Ultimate COA, to be able to run Vista Ultimate on one of my laptops as well. Preferably the T60.