Ok, It's around one month that I'm using windows Vista Home Premium as operating system on my laptop.
Since then,it has been the first question of some of my friends: "How do you like Windows Vista?"

Ok, here is the complete overall experience I had with Windows Vista:


First of all when you browse the Windows Vista homepage on microsoft.com, you see 4 advantages they mentioned:

1-Easier
2-Safer
3-More Entertaining
4-Better Connected

Attention: there is no "More reliable" or "Better performance" it's the first mistake people may think of.

Ok here is what I experienced:

The first days, it was an unbelievable experience
There are a lot of Mac similarities in it. From windows transparency to Gadgets section and Minimize/Maximize transitions and in some certain points even more beautiful than Mac.
Everything looks so nice and smooth; icons, thumbnails, open windows, ....
In the other hand, activating these nice options are highly process consuming and are not recommended for low speed machines.


Now first we discuss about the Microsoft mentioned points of Windows Vista:

1-Easier

* Windows Flip 3D, honestly, is one of the best features on Vista. It's so much easier and nicer to find the window you want to switch to, by moving through 3D cascade windows.
* You have full control of your icon/thumbnail sizes in a folder list! it's no longer limited to small, medium, large ,etc. you can resize it to whatever you want and obviously there is a min. and max.
* Find feature is brought to Start menu and it's improved a lot, and it is ready to get what you type immediately after you click on Start menu.
This has pros and cons! Good when you want to find something like and application but bad when you are used to use hotkeys on start menu.
For example I used to use Start Menu, U, U for Shut down or Start Menu, U, R for restart but now when I do that, it simply start to find a file starting with UU or UR
* In this Windows, a lot of sections are renamed ! "My Computer" has became "Computer", "My Documents" became "Documents", "Add/Remove Software" is changed to "Programs and Features", ... and it causes a lot of confusion at least for me!
* There is no icon beside the names in Start menu for Computer, Documents, Pictures, etc. so it's not as easy as XP to find them as soon as you open the Start Menu.
* The worst thing is that when you click on "All Programs" (that is the changed name for "Programs"), you will get the list of your programs in a small scrolling area and usually you have to scroll down by dragging the scroll bar to get to your target.(I couldn't get the scroller section of the touch panel of my laptop (a sort of mouse wheel) to work in that section, but I assume maybe it's my laptop's problem)


2-Safer
* It prompts you every time a program wants to be launched, yes it's safer but pretty annoying because you have to answer this question every single time you run this program and there is no check box to say "Don't ask me again"!
For example, everyday more than 10 times I want to browse some compressed file and each time I get this prompt confirming if I authorize "winRar.exe" or not!
* One of the things Microsoft is proud of is IE. 7! Besides the improvements they did comparing to version 6, there are a lot of bugs I experienced. Still it crashes easily with some JavaScript loop codes and closes with/without a simple error message while FireFox still seems a better choice for surfers.

3-More Entertaining
* This one is right
This Windows comes with 9 different games containing 4 new games, that you may enjoy in your break time.
* The Media Player and Media Center were not surprising for me since I had Windows XP Media Center Edition that looks the same.
* Your XBOX 360 controllers works with your PC.

4-Better Connected
I really didn't get anything about it!

As you see there is no improvement in performance, kernel or graphic/3D rendering comparing to XP.

Some of the other problems I faced are:

Comparing to Win2k and Even XP, the Task Manager and End Task function became even worse !
When a program is crashes and Not Responding, it will take forever for you to kill the process and close that program. Sometimes you can't even open the Task Manager using Ctrl+Alt+Delete or Ctrl+Shift+esc. It seems that it doesn't have enough priority to bypass the Queue when a program freezes.
One of the worst things about Vista is that, It is incompatible with some of softwares designed for Windows XP, so some of them can not be installed/launched and some of them can be, but with a lot of problems and incompatibilities.



In overall, in my idea, it's not old enough to be seriously used.
Yes I know Vista looks nice but just not reliable enough!

I have my reasons:

1- There are not much new softwares considered to be Vista Compatible.
2- There are not enough documents on the net for you to search when you get a problem or question.
3- It's not tested enough.

I will keep you updated with my Vista experience.
Also if you have a review about Vista feel free to reply to this post.

Cheers,
Soroush