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Well, having been using Vista for about a month (it was OEM’d on a machine I got – I didn’t really choose it) I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t go out and buy it per se.

Service Pack 1 is on its way and by all account this boosts the speed quite a bit – original announcement here and current SP1 Release Candidate ‘refresh’ available for download here. Don’t expect to ‘see’ anything much new in SP1 – it’s what it says, a service pack, which is largely under-the-hood ‘fixes’.

So, Vista generally, OK, the desktop is pretty, the sidebar has its uses, task switching graphics are more useful (the groovy version by windows key-tab rather than alt-tab)…

Most users, its true, are going to get all they need for multimedia ‘out-of-the-box’ with Vista – finally. Personally I’m a bit of a dinosaur and prefer the applications I’ve chosen for picture management, music management and syncing, playing video and the like. So, even though it’s a nicety that I can now plug a camera SD card in and tell Vista to ‘import and erase’ the pictures I’m not sure this is anything staggeringly new…

The thing I am pretty sure of is that Windows is looking and feeling more like Mac OS-X, or various late model Un*x desktops and features, everyday. But really, if you pop, say, Window Blinds and half a dozen other little utilities on top of XP it’s going to look pretty much like Vista (or a Mac or anything else you’d like it to look like really…).

I do know:

• that ‘User Account Control’ is a complete pain in the butt and is now permanently disabled…
• that I’m tired of exactly the same features (no better or worse as features) being shifted three more levels deep in dialogs or shifted entirely to a new place – frankly Microsoft should take a ‘leaf out of’ the web book rule which says more that ‘three clicks away’ is too many..

Vista is just a natural upgrade for XP – hardly a new product… and therefore I think the world will simply ‘morph’ to Vista, as the upgrade sucessor to XP, over time… as opposed to rushing out to buy it…

For me, Ive just re-loaded WindowsBlinds and ObjectDock, as I actually prefer things the way I set them up with my software…

Maybe you can’t teach an old dinosaur new tricks :P

[Update: 16Jan] my sidebar widget picks are:

• Presto’s Clock (low screen real estate for world clocks).
• System Info (Date/Time, wireless, power/battery, CPU/Mem, Drives, Shutdown etc).
• System Control a close second in the System Info/Control category.
• DU Meter (this is a pay for – but I’ve been using DUMeter for years and upgraded).

And BTW the Windows sidebar site pretty well sucks…