Vista

[Will]

Well... I've done it. I've moved it from my testbed. And, well I'm up and running - no crashes so far (touches wood) and things seem to be working ok. Slowly installing apps as I need them - haven't tried burning a DVD or an ISO image yet, but it seems to be not bad. It's only the 32bit version as I have an old computer and it's not worth my while - unfortunately I only scored 4.9 on the performance thing as my 3D gfx aren't really up to muster (though it is a little overclocked (the gfc card that is)). I have to say having 2gb of ram seems to have made all the difference to speed. It boots in about 30s flat from inital power on which is nice. And program cache seems well utilised as things just open, quickly. It would have been nice to have been able to use the full 64-bit ability of my PC, I don't know if it would have made it that much quicker though - is my computer being pushed at all now it's only driving the 32bit side of things? I've come over from XP64 - which was brill.

It's taken me a bit of time to get used to it, it's all a bit "big" and cartoony, and some of the menus/systems are a little less intuitive than they were - but so far so good. It is very different.

Do I like it? Well, I think it looks nice, I don't like how it tries to do too much for you, but I think I've managed to break that and customised it enough for it to do what I want it to do (i.e. file locations etc...).

Overall verdict? I wanted to hate it, but as support for it is more common now it seems good. I wonder what older programs will be like on it - I'll no doubt update with my hair ripping experiences.

The laptop is on it too, though it's a bit slower with only 1gb of Ram and scored an average 3.2.

Now I just need a decent sized screen - ideally 2 I have no money so I'll just have to wait for that treat