I have heard from several friends that Vista is being called MEII, referring to windows ME when it was released, and how 98 was more stable. Is this true in your opinion. Would some people share their experiences with Vista here. Is it worth the upgrade, are there any performance or stability gains.

I'm not a HUGE fan of vista...

vista looks pretty cool, but in my opinion, not a whole lot of old systems can handle vista. I upgraded my 1.7 ghz, 1.5 gb ram to vista and found it running slower than xp.

I downgraded back to xp, but will be purchasing a 2.2 ghz core duo with a 3 gb ram with vista.

Correction: XP is probably an upgrade to Vista. After all, it's it's best competition.
Aparently if you want a fast VISTA machine, you need to run it on Macintosh Hardware. You can buy it pre-installed on MAC hardware.

I'm running Vista right now. I'm happy with it. Tweaked it to my liking: turned of User Account Control, no widgets, customized the Start menu and Taskbar. It certainly is NOT MEII as I went through that debacle rather quickly. Looking forward to DX10 gaming as well.

I used a friend's computer who had switched from XP to Vista. I hated it. I'd take XP anyday, but thinking I'm going to need to upgrade for my husband's college computer class. If so, I'll switch back after the semester is over.

The really ME 2 thing is absurd, it's a completely different code base and represents unbelievable person years of effort. That said, it's not an automatic win over XP by any means; XP is a very mature code base now which translates to less horsepower required and broad support by vendors. Vista requires much more power to run well so I would think hard before upgrading anything but fast hardware; there is a Vista upgrade analysis tool available on the Microsoft site.

I use both 64 bit Vista and 32 bit XP at home and Windows 2003 server at work. There are a few things, though not many, that simply don't work in my Vista install (but 64 bit complicates that more than just Vista). To a power user the don't run in administrator mode is annoying and I frankly disable it immediately, but it makes sense for the casual user who might expose themselves to something dangerous.

I love the auto-defragmentation feature and the new performance and diagnostics tools built in. The networking configuration features are significantly improved as well.

For laptops the handwriting recognition improvement in Vista is very noticeable and definitely worth a look.

To sum up: few people rave about it as a huge improvement and it needs speed so I would in most cases not upgrade but wait until your next computer comes with it (or like me you build your next.) Also worth noting: the first service pack is almost out and that will likely smooth out some of the bumps.

Seattle area geek.

Vista is the new kid on the block --- it takes lots of resources -- is not compatible

With all software -- most try to adjust to work with M$ -- just takes time

They shuffled the deck and things are not where they used to be...

When XP first came out there were many who hated it -- hotfixed to work

I personally refused to use xp until sp 2 came out. I used windows 2000 until about 2003

Just got a new dell. Came with vista. I can install xp on it... but it's such a hassle. Also, I have a feeling that in about 5 years, people are going to be like YOU STILL USING XP? Like how I ask my grandparents YOU STILL USE WINDOWS 95? I can see it happening. It's innovative... it's purty. I'll learn to like it.

I have a fast computer with lots of memory and Windows Vista 32 bit. I am VERY happy with it, and have been for 5 months now. My previous computer came with Windows Me, and I loved it, too! Hahaha! I have used systems that upgraded to these programs, and I just think they are more trouble that they are worth. In my opinion, if it's factory installed into a computer capable of handling it, it's a great OS and I personally would recommend it.

Hugs, Didi