Its bloated, and more resource hungry than XP, but some of the negative press out there is just not supported :
Some benchmarks showing Vista SP1 to be
faster.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... 031,00.asphttp://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... 500,00.asphttp://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... 527,00.aspThis next set of results is pre Service Pack 1, and even then its a matter of a few percent (with the exception of one game).
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp- ... 531-4.htmlThe Tom's Hardware article makes interesting reading in full, some results are actually better in Vista, though some are far worse.
The hardware sound issue is a pain, no doubt, and forced me to ditch my Audigy, but there are reasons for it. Once developers get (properly) onboard with software audio, the difference will be non-existant. Current processors would possibly use 1-2% delivering the sound. Again this article makes interesting reading :
http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/759/759538p1.htmlNow these benchmarks could be selective, maybe older games will run better... maybe those showing Vista in a bad light were not shown... they could even be sponsored by MS. I'm sure similar benchmarks could be found showing XP to be far faster, in my real life experience, I have not regretted moving to Vista from XP.
I did a fair bit of reading up on this before going for Vista. I also tweaked it once installed, much like I did XP, it ran fine for me!! I didn't like it when I first got it, but I didn't like XP either!!
Saying all of that, lets hope W7 puts both previous iterations of Windows to shame!!
Edit: I kind of agree with
ket on the retarded point, but would alter it slightly.... Vista treats its users like they are retarded!! You really need to turn off a lot of the hand-holding to get a smooth experience. Vista UAC was the first thing I turned off.