Review by Clifford H. Campen

I installed this over a copy of Vista Home edition not long after upgrading the motherboard and processor. Vista Ultimate does not like to be installed if a lot of peripheral USB devices; camera, memory readers, memory sticks, camera bases etc. are plugged in during the installation. I just pulled them out and it installed very cleanly for me. Then I reinstalled these devices one at a time and Vista is very graceful about going out on the web and getting the right device driver. I am still not really sure what Aero does for me (except give me an occasional bunch of diagonal windows to choose from). The CD/DVD burner support works adequately. The thing is pretty stable after it screws around with drivers and updates for a couple of days. It’s nice getting the 64 bit disk with the 32 bit version but it requires a clean install, it is not an upgrade. If it ain’t broke…

It’s not a priority upgrade over XP but it’s got some nice features and it’s attractive. It has been pretty easy to live with - MS has got most of the pain removed.