Windows Vista

[John Dibble]

I've been using it, and for the most part it's fine - basically XP with some fancy doodads. It's certainly not perfect.

Pros:
1. Doesn't crash nearly as much as XP does. I've had it crash maybe twice, and both times it happened was when I was coming out of sleep mode so it wasn't like I was in the middle of something. Most of the little quirks my copy of XP had don't exist in Vista.
2. A few neat new features in the interface. Whether you use them or not depends on what type of user you are.

Cons:
1. The damn thing doesn't remember my custom folder settings. This is my biggest gripe about Vista. Supposedly this is going to be fixed in the first service pack.
2. I don't like the start menu as much, especially in "My Programs".
3. You're forced to use IE7. IE6 was alright with me, but I made a permanent switch to Firefox for all my browsing once I got a Vista machine. IE7 has a crappy user interface.
4. Minor gripe - if you use foreign language programs there can be difficulty unless you've got the Office or Ultimate versions because many of the language packs aren't available. There is a workaround that uses a program meant for XP though.

My advice is don't upgrade unless you're doing so with a new computer. There really is no point in upgrading just the OS to get what's on Vista, and Vista requires a good machine to run smoothly anyways.