Man, I love OS X.
And I love Ubuntu Linux! Group hug!
I think I might be the second person to not hate vista. I have it running on my HP nx9420 (2GB RAM, Core Duo 1.86, Radeon X1600Mobility) and it just flies. I have even noticed substantial IMPROVEMENT in game speeds over XP.
Can’t wait for the first DX10 games, Vista will be running on my home machine (admittedly 4GB, Radeon X1800XTX, Athlon x2 4800) by then.
Perhaps it has something to do with a stock install from hardware manufacturer vs. a clean install from media? (I did the latter, the laptop came with XP preloaded and it was a total dog.)
ETA: the laptop dual-boots into CentOS 5, too. Just to establish that I do in fact have some tech chops. =P I originally installed vista to support my support team who are dealing with customers using our software on vista (I’m the Director of IT for a tiny tiny company so I’m generally the test bitch)
I saw Microsoft themselves demoing it at a conference, and it looked real good on 2 Gigs. But the demo wasn’t running anything like Photoshop on top of Vista, so 4 Gigs might be wanted for serious work.
The .5 Gig minimum and 1Gig recommended is crap. You need at least 2 Gigs of RAM for any sort of performance.
Wonderful. I will now get into my time machine and keep that in mind before ordering my laptop. 
Sigh.
I had to use my old PowerBook for a couple of days (due to a screwed up cord on my newer PB’s power supply). It’s over 7 years old, has a 400 MHz G3 processor, 512 MB of RAM, and 8 MB VRAM. And I’m running the latest version of OS X. That’s like being able to run a slightly graphically downgraded form of Vista on a machine built for Windows 98.
It’s still perfectly usable, even though it was made before OS X existed. In fact, I’m typing this on that machine. It feels just slightly sluggish compared to my newer computer, which is no surprise considering that the other PowerBook has triple the specs, at least, in every category. It runs everything just fine, with the exception of a couple of the graphical bells and whistles, like doing the cube effect when you switch users.
Man, Longhorn was so promising, and MS was planning on offering some interesting new technology that would have pushed the industry a bit. But instead Longhorn turned into Vista, which has none of the promise and twice the potential crapitude of their original vision. I actually would have liked it if Vista had been good. Would have pushed Apple in different directions and everybody would have won. There’s really no reason for even a cutting-edge OS to have such massive requirements and to push even mid- to high-spec hardware to the point of unresponsiveness.
I will install a kind of Linux on my wife’s XP machine in lieu of Vista if XP starts to not cut it anymore. No way would I actually pay Microsoft a couple of hundred bucks for software that seems almost designed to cause inconvenience and annoyance.
Could well be - most of the laptops I’ve bought for friends and clients come preloaded with all sorts of resource-hogging shite (Symantec/Norton stuff being the worst). It usually takes a day’s work to get them running tolerably well - a clean reinstall would probably be simpler and quicker.
When I was looking into getting a laptop to back up my desktop PC recently I called around to Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples, etc., and every store told me they had no machines with XP loaded – only Vista. The computer tech I use for stuff like installing a new hard drive despises Vista. If you think you might need to replace your computer any time soon, I’d recommend getting XP on disk now, before it’s off the shelves, and keeping it on hand, ready for a wipe and install.
Microsoft is leaning heavily on the vendors to withdraw XP - much more heavily than it has done before. I understand Dell is resisting though.
1.73 gHz Dual core.
Still a little light on the CPU speed for Vista IMHO.
I am running Vista Ultimate on an athlon 3000+ with 2GB RAM, runs like a champ although its pretty obvious Vista needs more horespower to run. I have been shopping around for a bigger CPU lately so some of my recent game purchases will be a little happier.
It’s funny how I take this approach for granted and I’m not sure why more people don’t do this, particularly in light of the imposed Vista upgrade fiasco.
Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to like Vista, I simply couldn’t put up with one major issue. Oddly enough, it isn’t even an issue that’s being harped on by most of Vista’s critics. I could put up with those no problem, but my computer’s tendency to randomly and spontaneously reboot without warning (something which never happened on XP) was what sent me over the edge. As such, I have regressed back to my old ways as of just last night, having formatted my drive and reinstalled a fresh copy of XP after trying to get along with Vista for almost four months. Of particular note is the degree to which I seem to have forgotten just how fast my computer was pre-Vista. 
i just bought a dell latitude d630 and praise the lord it comes with the option to have xp. thats what i chose. and after reading this post im glad i did!
I bought a Mac.
Me too, but my Mac is running Vista
And I’m running my old Windows software via Codeweavers Crossover!
Guess I’m the only one with Vista who isn’t having any problems then.
Not so fast! I’ve got a bastard '03 laptop running Vista Biz. 2.4GHz, 1GB RAM, 32MB Nvidia 420go video. Definitely low-spec but I went for Vista because my hard drive conked out and I couldn’t see screwing around with XP anymore. Vista works very well.
As I said in another thread, Vista is much of what I’ve wanted in a PC environment. My last Mac was an SE (circa 1990) and Vista is at about its standards.
Vista users: pump up the RAM and get a flash drive (and if you can, get a hybrid drive) and use it as ReadyBoost.