I've recently mustered up the courage to try out Vista on a machine here. What a nightmare. In its attempts to catch up terrain on the 'security aspects' of Operating Systems, Microsoft has delivered us an OS that is so locked down out of the box that I spent days trying to figure out where and how the most basic functionality was being stopped. Try opening and saving a text file somewhere ... boom ... error saying 'you're not allowed to ...' etc. What?!? It's MY PC!! You OK with that Bill? I'll do whatever I the heck I want to!!
Anyways ... I got quite a bit working and now I'm struggling with performance. I realize that MS will increase the weight of software so we keep on buying newer and better PCs (I'm sure there is some industry agreement on this). But with Vista they have outdone themselves. It takes my brand new Core 2 Duo/2Gb RAM laptop minutes to start up! And then during normal operation, i.e. running really 'heavy' software like Firefox or Notepad, my hard disk light is almost continuously lit and the fan is running all out at 100%. Again, no idea why. I have found the following post with some hints and tips: http://www.gottabemobile.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2663. I'll try some of the suggestions put forward there. Meanwhile I'm fast turning grey (the few hairs I have left) ...