I’ve been using Vista for a couple of months now on my home PC. I ran into a fatal flaw however which prevented me from really getting much out of it. There’s a known (by a lot of random net geeks anyway) problem with certain Nvidia Nforce-based AGP mobos where they prevent 3D cards from functioning properly. It’s known as the Code 43 error and the general consensus is that Nvidia needs to release a new AGP driver for the my Nforce3 motherboard. So far it doesn’t look like they plan on doing so, and I’m not gonna be in a situation where I can use my OS for everything but 3D gaming.
My only alternative would be an expensive one. I’d have to purchase a new motherboard, and nobody is making AGP anymore so that means I’ll need a new PCI-E video card. My RAM was slow when I got it and newer boards might require a faster speed and I’ve needed an upgrade to 2gig from 1 anyway so add RAM to the list. Now it’s looking like a $350 upgrade minimum which I really don’t want to spend right now.
Some of the reasons I like Vista are incremental upgrades over XP functionality. Take the task manager for example. It shows services in it, as well as diagnostic info about running tasks which can help to identify a suspicious-looking task. Another thing I’m starting to like despite my past abhorrence is Windows Media Player 11. Now that I’m getting used to it, I also like the changes made in Explorer, but again, they are incremental, such as changing the directory structure of the home folder and dropping the “My” prefix on all of the subfolders in a profile. The Aero eye candy is nice, but I’ve got to disable one of my CPU cores in order for my 3D card to function (siide-effect of the code 43 thing), and that’s an unacceptable compromise.
So…I wiped my Vista partition last night and reinstalled XP. I thought for a few seconds about going Kubuntu or something along those lines but then I’d be back in the “have to reboot to play games” situation and that’s something I don’t care to bother with. Besides, I can get my Linux urges out at work now. 
Long live old technology…
[Update a few minutes later…]
Oh, I forgot to mention that every time I tried to print in Vista there was a 30 second pause while the OS tried to communicate with my network shared printer. Never happened under XP.
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