So it has been a little over two months since the release of Windows Vista and there's certainly been a lot of buzz about it among the tech community. There's been all kinds of message boards popping up all about Vista, especially dealing with customization. I've been using Vista Home Premium since the beginning of February when I bought a new Pavilion Media Center PC from HP, so I've certainly got my feet wet when it comes to learning the new features and using the new interface.

Some will tell you that they don't like the new interface, but I believe the vast majority of consumers do appreciate the new "refreshed" user interface and all of the glitz that comes with it. I, personally, really enjoy Aero and think that it really adds to the overall user experience of the operating system. I mean, who doesn't love all the little transparent windows and eye candy? The new start menu is really handy and I have to admit that my favorite feature in Vista is the integrated search box in every part of the operating system. No longer do I sift through the start menu program folders to find programs (although in Vista, that is very easy as well), but rather I simply type in the first few letters of the program that I want to open and it will appear in the search area in the start menu. Prior to Vista, I didn't really buy into all that desktop search with free programs such as Google's Desktop Search, but now I really value the search tools. 

The networking side of things in Vista is also very much more easier to use in Vista than in XP. In Vista, it generates a nice little network map that shows how all of the devices on your network are attached. This was useful for me when I was setting up network shares on all of my home's computers and printers. When I did this in XP and even 2000, it wasn't as straightforward and automatic as in Vista. You had to worry about network addresses and little picky settings, but now you basically just need to enable file/printer sharing and make sure all the computers are on the same workgroup and it will set it all up for you.

We've all heard people saying that Vista has serious driver and program compatibility issues with hardware and software. However, I have not had much of an issue with this at all. Keep in mind that I did buy a new computer with Vista pre-installed, so that probably eliminated much of the issues that people are running into with upgrading an older computer to Vista. I did have to install many things such as a graphics tablet, a printer, a scanner, and many software programs that I use. My tablet worked right out of the box with the included Vista driver and my HP Photosmart 8250 printer and HP Scanjet 4890 scanner worked using the basic functionality drivers included with Vista. However, with my printer and scanner, I couldn't use many of the advanced features of them, such as the two-sided duplexer on my printer. HP did eventually release a full feature driver for my printer about 2 weeks ago and I installed it and it worked perfectly, except my duplexer still didn't work properly. I looked online and found people had the same issue and that if you emailed this one person at Microsoft's driver development department, he would email you a working driver for the duplexer. So I emailed him and the next day he emailed me back a driver that fixed the issue completely. I'm still waiting on HP to issue a new driver for my scanner, but I've been fine with using the basic features of it.

In regards to software, I did have an issue with Macromedia Dreamweaver 8, which I use to write articles and reviews for this site. It would open fine, but then spontaneously close suddenly. Macromedia (or Adobe I guess now) says that they do not plan on issuing an update to fix it. Shame on them. Anyways, I moved to using Adobe GoLive CS2 and that works pretty well for what I need. My Adobe Photoshop CS2 and CS3 beta both work fine without any issues. People have experienced issues with iTunes and their iPod corrupting, but I had no problem from the start and still don't. Norton Internet Security 2007 worked fine with just a Vista compatibility update that I downloaded for free from Symantec's Web site. I also use Microsoft Office 2007 and I haven't had any issues with that, but that's because it was built to run on XP and Vista natively.

Many people complain about the user account control (UAC) warnings in Vista. These are little dialogs that appear when you try to do something in the system that requires advanced administrator authorization. They don't really bother me, even though I see them frequently since I'm a "power user" and change system settings a lot. You can disable UAC, but doing so will make your computer more vulnerable.  

I've concluded that Vista works really well if you have newer peripherals, such as a new printer or scanner, and a new computer that Vista was pre-loaded with. If you currently have like a 1 year old computer with XP installed, you might want to think twice about upgrading it to Vista. If you do decide to do so, I strongly recommend that you backup your important data and format your hard drive and then do a clean Vista install instead of an upgrade over XP. If you're in the market for a new computer, I think now is the time to buy one. I strongly recommend getting Vista Home Premium if you can afford it because it includes a ton of features compared to the cheaper Vista Home Basic.

I invite you to use the comment box at the bottom of this page to leave your opinions on Vista if you've been using it for a while and would like to share your experiences with it.

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