Vista

I'm certainly not on the cutting edge on this one, but I finally moved my main computer to Vista. I'm on day 4 now, and I don't have a ton to say about it. Just a few observations...

For the most part, it just seems like a shinier version of XP. I don't really care for the fancy GUI enhancements, but I haven't bothered to turn them off either.

The Users directory with the new structure is much more rational than the old version. A good evolution.

I LOVE the start menu search feature. I've always spent effort organizing my start menu into a structure that enabled easy access to all commonly used programs. For example, I would put Excel into a folder called applications, so to launch excel I'd just type , A, E, Enter. Firefox went into 'Communcations', etc. This worked well, except when there were multiple apps that started with the same letter. With Vista, just as I've embraced the non-folder Gmail, I really like the search mechansim. To launch excel now, I just type , Excel, Enter. I don't even wait for it to render. I'm also impressed so far with the accuracy. With the old system it was faster when it worked, but I had to look more often. Now, even for less commonly used programs, they are easy to find and launch.

Other than that, my response is 'meh'. It works, its windows, it mostly stays out of my way. I wouldn't council staying away from Vista neccessarily, but there is very little that really justifies the effort either.