A year after Vista's launch, it's time for a poll

[HEXUS]

It has been a year since Microsoft's much talked about operating system, Windows Vista, launched amid much fanfare and HEXUS are now running a poll asking if you would be willing to pay to go back to Windows XP. Place your vote and let us know if you believe the "WOW" started back when Microsoft said it would.

Read more.

[nichomach]

After initially running Vista for a while and being driven mad by a combination of half-arsed "security" measures, instability and wonky drivers I shelled out for a new hard disk so that I could revert to XP without reformatting and trashing data. That being the case, I already shelled out over £70 to revert to XP, and all the machines that I'm rolling out here are using the Vista Business > XP Pro free downgrade rights. BTW, props to Hewlett Packard; they shipped the downgrade media for our latest acquisitions, a quartet of 6910p's, free. Can't fault that.

[Mike Fishcake]

I use Vista at work, mainly because we support students, with many new ones having new laptops with Vista installed on them. Seeing as I'd become savvy with most things XP, I thought i may as well start using it, so that I have more of an idea how to help people out if they need advice.

Still use XP at home though, and not planning on changing that yet.

[Blademrk]

I'm running a dual boot set-up XP MCE and Vista Ultimate(x64).
Lately I've found myself booting into Vista rather than XP (unless there's something I need which is only running on my XP setup).
So I guess that puts me in the Vista rocks category (although, it would rock even more if I upgraded too 2Gb+ RAM).

[roadie]

For me it's not worth "upgrading" to get lower FPS in DirectX 9 games.

[capt sensible]

My first VISTA experience began a week ago when my Sony VAIO VGN-G11XN_B ultraportable arrived pre-loaded with Vista Business. It takes 8 minutes to boot. How can anyone think that this is anywhere near acceptable? I don't want to look any further for potential benefits; Vista falls at fence #1. Back to XP I think. Now how to do this with not a single driver suppled?

[DR]

Something is odd if it takes 8 minutes to boot - that is a ridiculously long time and would never had got through Vista certification

[0iD]

I put Vista Ultimate x64 on when I built my current rig quite some months ago. Apart from the bizzarre 4gb ram/64bit x-fi problem it's been flawless. No crashes, no freezes, it just works for me.

[Parm]

I'm in the same boat as 0iD, Vista has always been good to me. *touch wood*

I'm running Vista Home Premium x64 on my desktop PC and Vista Home Premium x86 on my Dell laptop.

[directhex]

i'm not going back to xp!

[DratUK]

I have run Vista 32 Ultimate for the past 5 months, gotts say whilst I dont think it "Rocks" it has been far more stable than XP. Mostly its been the X-Fi nigle that naffs me off.

[mycarsavw]

Ditto the above comments by OiD and Parm - virtually trouble free thus far.

[Elessar_VPR]

Bar not being to find drivers for an old cheapo webcam, I haven't had any real issues with Vista, just works.

[joshwa]

I'm planning on wiping my Vista machine and re-installing XP. It's the same in the office, a number of the people I work with have already gone back, and another is planning to go back.

[d3fiant]

Been using 32bit HP for a year with no major problems, recently moved to 64bit Ultimate due to 4GB memory, had a few app problems that were rectified by upgrading to the latest versions, again nothing major. I much prefer the look and feel of Aero, XP looks rather dated

My only big gripe.........no music in Battlefield Vietnam due to Microsoft dropping the audio layer it used, not even Creative Alchemy can sort that one

I dont really see the point of going back to XP now since more and more developers will switch their focus to Vista

[Ciber]

As I see it there is no compelling reason to use vista until I've got 8gb ram in my PC and need vista 64. 3 friends I've had to help with their new PCs had vista and they didnt seem to find it easy to use. I didnt find it particularly intuitive, things seem to need 4 or 5 more clicks to do than xp. The extra animations, gadgets, gizmos and visual effects I'm not fusssed about and just serve to make even a powerful Q6600 based system feel slow. I hope it's not too time consuming to turn all that rubbish off when I do eventually get vista on my own PC.