I took Vista for a test run...

[Keebler]

seen it...looks better than xp, but i'm proud to say i don't ever plan to use it.

i plan to use my peecee with xp as it does the trick in doing what i need it to do as i make my way fully over to my macs. currently, they are used for work so i need to build the funds to buy a new mac pro so my g4 mdd 1.25 will become my 'play' machine

 

[stealthman1]

I played with it for about an hour tonight at BB. It was running on a fairly high end Gateway with 2gigs of RAM. It was not slow with only a couple programs open, it is more attractive than XP, the Spotlight rip-off is well done, works very well, and was sorely needed. Office '07 looks very nice, I'd like to play with it some more as they have completely gone away from drop downs to a tabbed menu bar. With that said, Excel for Mac '04 still looks better than Excel '07 Windows...As I use Office extensively at work, I'd love to get it, but we're just migrating now to Office '03 and you all know why! Fonts still look better in TextEdit than Word '07. Still lacks the elegance Mac users are familiar with.
Aero. Eesh, this looks aweful. Jerky transitions and no substitute for Expose by any stretch. 2d looks terrible at an angle...please don't tell me that's supposed to be 3d.
Can I break it? I opened Excel, Word, PP, Movie Maker, and 20 windows of IE7...I didn't have any content (photos, videos) to run unfortunately. There were 84 processes running , all the RAM was in use and it got very, very sluggish, but didn't lock up. I wouldn't call it usable though. In the spirit of fairness I came home and headed to my MBP. I opened 23 instances of Firefox, iCal, GarageBand, Aperture (with a 1k photo RAW album open), iPhoto, iTunes, Address Book, Safari, Corel Paint, PS Elements3, Final Cut ExpressHD, iMovie (with a movie file running), Soundtrack, Sound Soap, Audio Hijack, iChat, and QuickTime with 3 videos running...no noticeable performance hit.
It's better than XP, that's for sure, but most of the benefit is in the visuals, the OS still has a lot to be desired.

 

[Sesshi]

One of the things that casual users don't realise about XP is the ability to tune Cleartype, which makes text as - if not better - visible as OS X. Marks off for M$ for not making this clearer. Although having said that, most current PC's with XP preinstalled arrive with Cleartype enabled.

Reading through the comments here, it's rather like the 'MP3 player wars' where the iRiver user plays with an iPod at a Best Buy for 30 seconds with a made up mind and pronounces it as crap. The same foolishness applies here but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that it does.

I note for one that Vista Business - which I use on a proper current PC - not Boot Camp or Parallels - is significantly more stable than Intel Mac OS X. Still, I'm holding off moving wholesale to it for quite a long while yet.

 

[Project]

Technically, Vista is a very accomplished OS.

What makes Windows frustrating to use for me, is the UI and design processes that make it very 'inhuman'. Its hard to explain, but I draw an interesting comparison in how Nintendo makes games (Apple) vs how your typical Western developer makes games. OSX might not have the best graphics or most cutting edge technology, but it is infinitely more usable. Take a look at the minefield that is the Control Panel in Vista to see exactly what I mean, then compare it to System Preferences.

 

[Project]

One of the things that casual users don't realise about XP is the ability to tune Cleartype, which makes text as - if not better - visible as OS X. Marks off for M$ for not making this clearer. Although having said that, most current PC's with XP preinstalled arrive with Cleartype enabled.

Reading through the comments here, it's rather like the 'MP3 player wars' where the iRiver user plays with an iPod at a Best Buy for 30 seconds with a made up mind and pronounces it as crap. The same foolishness applies here but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that it does.

I note for one that Vista Business - which I use on a proper current PC - not Boot Camp or Parallels - is significantly more stable than Intel Mac OS X. Still, I'm holding off moving wholesale to it for quite a long while yet.

I have to disagree from what I have seen. Our whole office is running Vista Enterprise and everybody is having stability problems.

As a disclaimer, I work for the company who make the OS we are talking about.

 

[gkarris]

Aero on some, not on others?

I didn't vote. My vote would've been, "I've tried it, and don't really care..." If I get a PC and it's on it, it's on it.

Some of the PC's in the store had Aero, and some didn't. Is it because of memory, or is it because of Home Basic vs. Home Premium?

I just got a catalog from HP and their comparison stated that Aero is not available on Home Basic...

 

[risc]

Vista Home Basic doesn't support Aero at all. Also without the correct graphics hardware you wont get Aero on Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate.