Review by GregV

I installed the 64 bit Premium. Since I was testing the Beta RC1 for a month so I expected what to see in the released version. After doing a clean install, I didn’t have any problems with Vista recognizing my hardware except for my Epson photo printer which I expected since it wasn’t compatitable in the Beta version.

I ran into a couple of software compatitabilty issues.

Since I have 2 hard drives, I kept XP on the other drive in case I have to play old games.

I knew that Vista wasn’t that much better than XP function wise but it did offer a different look with the Aero feature which meant I had to upgrade to higher end video card but it was worth it.

I was very disappointed when I discovered that the defrag program didn’t provide choice in what drive to defrag(I have 8 partitions) or any kind of status bar to view to actually see if the program is running.

Get a third party defrag program.

Setting up my network was a little tricky since the default workgroup name was changed to Workgroup from MSHOME in XP and I wasn’t aware of that.

I couldn’t setup a new printer on my network XP laptop since it couldn’t use the printer driver from my Vista computer. After going to the Vista Community forum, I discovered how to setup a new printer port on both computers.

The Sidebar is a nice feature. The control panel is more in depthnnOverall I’m disappointed that there wasn’t a major change in Vista after 5 years of XP but it does have a lot of bells and whistles.

People are saying that the $159.00 price tag is overpriced but you get a lot more than the Basic such as the Media Center program and Aero feature.

If you don’t need the extras then buy the Basic. At least you have a choice in features.

But I do recommend keeping XP on a separate drive as a backup OS