See I cant say much about the 64 bit since I dont use it. However the 32 bit is absolutely stable, the search features are way faster, file transfers between two Vista machines are super fast. Microsoft actually did something smart, when it transfers files between two Vista machines (or between Vista/Longhorn server) it does this calculating transfer time, when it does that it probes your bandwidth and dynamically sends packets based on bandwidth. XP/03 and previous use a static set (4 byte packet size I think) in the Vista machine your packets can be as big as 1mb. A 1 gig transfer between and XP machine and a Vista machine might take 5 to 10 minutes, on an Vista to Vista transfer might only take a minute or two tops. If I had a gigbit connection across my network I could get ya better speed on it.
The gadgets feature with the bar on the side is pretty handy, I keep my clock there, CPU speed, temprature of where I live plus where my parents live, and people are making all kinds of gadgets. If you are into news or have a business you can do stocks or RSS feeds. There are ipod controls, calculators and other stuff. Pretty neat little toys. The Business Desktop Deployment to deploy Vista and Office 2007 so far sounds awesome. One image (instead of like 20 Ghost images I have for each type of machine) and you load all drivers for all your machines in one folder, you configure your Office 07 and Vista to your specs, connect the PC via PXE and push out the image in about 5 to 10 minutes.
Some things I don't like or wont use, but probably would be helpful to your average everyday user would be things like an actual firewall. It works with Defender and actually does packet detection and tears it apart before it passes the firewall, it just doesn't block incoming requests. As we all know a trojan horse on ones computer by passes the old Windows firewall since it is an actual request going out asking for incoming connections. No more. I hate that every time something installs and it asks you if you want to install, and my biggest pet peeve is, I don't like not being an actual admin on my machine even though I am in an admin group. I understand the logic of it, heck I am in IT and have seen the mindless things users can do. But as an admin I am not a fan. But I've figured work arounds and am generally quite the fan of Vista.
In the business world one thing I am running into even today, in XP if someone wants to install a printer or some basic plug in that is used for work, they need to be a local admin. Super user wont cut it. Well, in Vista they can be a regular ole user and still add printers, and add web plugins (that dont require a registry entry) but my registry is safe from prying eyes and my GPO's since they arent an admin.
Were these the type of things you were looking for jlockley? I don't really mean to sound like a Vista evangelist, honest! I am a Unix and Mac guy (well, I was at one time anyway) and for me to actually be excited about a Microsoft product, any Microsoft product says a lot. For all the things I do (music recording, ripping and mixing, video editing, picture editing) I haven't found anything that makes me say "Screw this I am going back to XP"
For the record, I'll keep my iPod and they can keep their Zune!
Cheers
Rob
