Was it worth it? Answer.... no
First let me say I'm not joking when I say I'd love to reply to your posts, but I am seemingly unable to reply only edit the original post, does anybody have any suggestions, I'm using Vista lol and firefox. Is my brower missing the reply functionality?
I purchased an OEM copy of Vista, when I was given the dilemma by Microsoft of either purchasing a OEM XP License for about $10 less than getting an OEM copy of Vista via newegg.
What I can tell you is that I have been a computer user since the 80's and have a history of OS usage, dating back to whatever they called the OS on the Apple IIGS, DOS 5.0, Windows 3.1, Win 95/98/98SE/2000/XP and of course OEM VISTA ULTIMATE 64 bit.
I have finally settled down with Vista, but I am left looking for the new and improved features which really give me the feeling that they are all that (sorta) without the bag of chips.
I don't understand why Vista wasn't packaged as saleable service pack to XP because Vista truly offers an almost immeasurable benefit per dollar over XP.
One of the major downsides of Vista, is the necessity to upgrade hardware on older rigs to achieve performance standards easily obtainable with 2 or 3 or 4 year old hardware on XP. Also, with only 2GB of ram in the sytem, it is smooth, but it would be equally smooth with XP, so while there is intelligent (supposedly) buffering of the RAM by Vista, perhaps reducing the load time on programs you use consistently at certain times of the day, in Vista over XP I don't see that it is a major advantage over XP. I use XP at work daily, Windows 2000 weekly, and Vista at home.
At this point I am pretty comfy with Vista, I have totally disabled the UAC, and I am left to wonder if I am really safer with Vista vs XP. I did have a virus or nasty bit of malware at one time, with Vista, which I was able to safely dispose of using System Restore. On my old single core rig, System Restore no longer works for unknown reasoning, also I cannot reformat the drive, and install a clean OS, because I no longer have the activation code which I'll have to call up Dell TSupport and spend more hours of my life than it is worth to deal with that, while having a protected computer readily available should there be a problem.
However, with Vista Ultimate, no update to the speech recognition system, no word processor which interfaces with the speech recognition, and no real surviving feature that I get excited by.
At this point I would have preferred to get OEM XP and a cheap or bootleg copy of Office, just for the fact that I have spell check and compatibility with work computers, Excel files.
There are a few visual things but nothing to justify 5 years of development, nothing to justify the price, and certainly nothing to want me to invest any money in upcoming Windows 7 or go Microsoft in the future. Unfortunately they have damaged their company image, going from the evil almost monopoly to the exploiter of that power to release drab OS software that lacks completeness and robustness.
There is nothing that truly bothers me about Vista Ultimate, if you forget about, No MS WORD, No OS integrated Microsoft Virus Protection, and lack of incompatibility of the Vista Speech Recognition Engine with Open Office.
I believe that Vista, really does deserve the half assed product award. At this point.