Yes Vista is pretty, but I cannot find the justification unless you are a serious gamer that needs slightly better looking graphics or a tech and you need to support it. Switching to Vista can be a costly mistake for you and your company. If you go with Vista, plan on spending a considerable amount of time learning the new interfaces. They are as foreign as Office 2007 is from all previous versions.
Oh! Ya! Security is a bit tighter on Vista. It is almost on par with Linux now. But there is this annoying pop-up in Vista that asks you to confirm operations that update programs and modify the system configuration.
The truth is there are tools and best practices available for XP to make your security XP just as tight if not tighter than Vista. The best thing for you can do is set yourself up as a Limited User and operate your XP computer that way, if you can. When you go with the defaults, you are setup as an Administrator. That is like handing the keys to your computer to every site you visit. Problem is that some programs like QuickBooks don't give you a the option of using their software as a Limited User, because they want to read and write hidden licensing information back to the program's directory.
The other day I was watching my system and discovered that Quicken, which came installed with the a bunch of other freeware (spyware) that came with my laptop, was using 50% of my CPU talking to the mothership, when I did not even have it launched; so I uninstalled the it.
Oh! yes and Vista features DirectX 10 with shading and some nifty looking stuff, which is not available on XP, but do you really need your desktop to look that pretty so you can do your work. No!
I've been wrestling with it for almost a year now on my new super computer, an Intel Quad 4 with an Intel Motherboard and 4GB of memory.
The first failing I found was this annoying hiccup. Every once and a while, Vista stops working you will get a message indicating that "Explorer Needs to Restart". Something not found XP. It so interest that system performs exactly like this PC/Mac Commercial.
PC will tell you that it has a solution for the problem. When I go to the web site to download and install the fix. Once I do this, the installation program tells me that the performance enhancement doesn't apply to my system.
Its next unresolved problem has to do with its inability to support the same graphical resolutions. My 22 inch Dell flats creen monitor support the highest analog resolutions available, 2048 x 1536. It works fine on XP, which I have setup on this super computer in dual boot. I have tried the built in Intel, a top of line NVidia 512MB, and ATI 5121MB and none of them will push beyond 1800x1440. Of course tech support for these companies will not admit to the problem. Even my laptop with NVidia 64MB and XP passes this test. So don't let anyone tell you its a memory issue. They are so full of BS.
No Vista doesn't support more memory than XP. You need to go 64 bit to do that and XP has a 64 bit version. Actually, you have less available memory on Vista, because the operating kernel uses up almost a 1GB. At idle my XP side uses up only a couple hundred MB.
If you really want to explore the beauty of Vista, install the dynamic desktop background, which will give you a movie as a background on your desktop instead of a static photo. I like the waterfall scene and the babbling brook. But, beware there is a strong likely hood that this program will make your system completely unresponsive and unstable, forcing you to do a three finger salute to bring it back to normal. Well that took me back almost a decade. I haven't found a need to do that since Windows 98. Microsoft recently updated this tool, but in my mind it is barely suitable for demonstration.
All this information came from a fresh install. If you really like nightmares, start installing all your vendor software. Eventually you will run into one conflict after another until you system is corrupted, forcing you to recover from a previous system image, which can be expensive.
If you are committed to Vista, and planning to keep from being committed to an institution anytime soon, you better plan on shelling out the extra money for additional hard drive or two, just to backup your system. Vista comes with a full system backup and recovery mechanism that has been long over due in Windows. Now you don't have to recover your system from the manufactures system disk, you can create your own. Unfortunately, it is too big for existing media. My base system with Office 2007 uses up over 20GB, which would span 3 dual layer DVDs, and I am not prepared to shell out the extra cash for a Blue Ray DVD burner.
If you need to support Vista and are smart like me you will setup dual boot to XP, but be sure you install XP first. You will need a special utility you can find on the net, if you decide to put in XP later, after you get fed up with Vista. Once installed, the Microsoft Full Backup utility will want to back up both Windows installations on your computer, which could be even more expensive. On my base system with all my programming tools installed on XP, amounts to 30GB. That is 50GB total.
Now why it wants to backup both sides is beyond me. It doesn't give you a choice, and it only allows you to backup to a Basic Disk Volume. So if you go with Dynamic, you are screwed. FYI, there is no going back, without backing up that volume first and restoring it to a freshly formatted Basic Volume.
If that is not bad enough, things get worse when you go to restore a dual boot system. It will overlay your XP side, and you may not be read that because its on a different timeline, and growing. I worked around this problem by poping the case open and pull the plug on the XP drive before doing the backup. Not so user friendly, huh?
It just goes to show that with more you get less. Microsoft's focus should be on quality not quantity, but that is how they spend their investment capital. In their plans for global conquest, they have been stealing and buying up stuff from everyone else because their inability to invent stuff they can call their own. Problem is the inventors take the money and run, leaving Microsoft with no one knowledgable to support their new wares. Makes me wonder if the Geeks at Microsoft will ever get around to fixing all these problems now that Bill retired.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. I have so much more to report, and so little time. Most of it concerns tools used by IT professionals like myself who use their development tools and support their server software. 