1. Not really. I can't seem to figure out the point of the OS. The security is a joke in my opinion. The eye candy well is not necessary but I suppose it is nice.
2. Seems to run about the same speed as XP. I have seen benchmarks thought that show it is in fact slower. Makes sense that it would be as it has a lot more its doing.
3. P4 2.6, 1GB RAM, Nvidia 7800.
I am not sure if I would consider myself a power user or not, I do like to get into the corners and look around. The people who know me consider me a power user but what do they know.
Anyway, I HATE UAC. UAC is the most annoying feature Vista has and so it is the first thing I disable. For those who do not know, UAC is User Account Control. If you have seen the latest get a Mac ad with the security guy in the background saying "Allow or Deny?" then you have seen UAC. That ad is so spot on that it I find it hilarious. UAC basically grays out your desktop and gives you a dialog asking you to allow something to do something. In some ways it may be nice if you don't use a computer that much or don't understand how to use one securely because it will stop a program from hijacking your browser or from screwing up your system. I think it goes too far though. I tried to create a folder in my own user directory and it brought up that dialog asking me if I was sure I knew what I was doing. I then wanted to rename it and once again I get the UAC prompt. I then wanted to move it somewhere else...Yep I once again got that damn prompt.
The other thing that drives me nuts about Vista is that it appears to me that they completely screwed up the security. I needed to modify my host file. I was logged in as the administrator. I went to modify it but it would not allow me to. After doing some searches online I found out that I had to go find the editor exe file (in this case, notepad) and right click on it and tell Windows to run notepad as administrator. This just seems absolutely asinine to me. Now I admit I may not fully understand the reasoning behind this move, perhaps there is some great reason for it but it does not make any sense to me that I would have to do this.
Anyway, you may chose to disregard all of this, because Friday of next week I will be getting my first Mac. I ordered a MacPro after using my friends MacBook for a while. Loved it. I will still use Windows..have to as I am a programmer and my job requires me to. But for my main use, I am switching. Besides I have been wanting to play a little more with Linux/BSD (Mac OS X is built on BSD), so now I have to.
Other than the two issues above, Vista seems OK...possibly even nice I guess. But it does not seem like "That" big of a jump from XP unless you count the eye candy. Some things I do like about it are the improved Windows Explorer, I love the ability to see favorite links without having to click on anything....yeah its the little things. I also like the start up time, it boots fast. The jury is still out on the start button for me...Not sure I like the way it works now...you can revert it back to the old style though. It doe shave some nice things.
OK so this post has been way too long. Sorry for boring all of you. Just my 2 cents.
One last thing. I absolutely love Microsoft Office 2007. Microsoft did an incredible job on it. Just wish the same team could have done Vista.
Macade