This all came about from a fellow at the computer store having an OEM copy of Vista Home Premium that came with his new HP laptop. Vista was presinstalled but he hated it. He formated and installed XP Pro. The Vista disc was not a restore disc but a full OEM version. He had never activated the OS and offered me the Vista for $20.00. I took him up on the offer. I had my old skt 939 3800 X2 at home in a corner since I retired it for my current Intel system. I installed Vista with all the bells and whistles with 2 GB PC3200 on an 80 GB IDE. Graphics are from a PCIe MSI NX7100GS 128 MB with the lastest Vista drivers. To sweeten the mix, I installed Office Professional 2007, my digital voice recorder software, my cell phone software (some would not install because of Vista). I installed my Creative Audigy 4 with the latest Vista drivers and software. To really stir things up I installed my MSI TV @nywhere Plus tuner card, again with the latest Vista drivers and software.
At this point in time, as bad as I hate to say it, Vista has really surprised me. The bootup takes less than a minute. The Audigy and the tuner card work flawlessly. I put the system on my network, again, without any hitch. I then tried a to install my HP 4600 color laser printer as a network printer and can now print from Vista across the network. The network install was faster than on any previous system. This is really disgusting. I was really ready for this all to be a flop and reaffirm my thoughts about Vista. My Performance rating is a 3.0 with that coming from the graphics card. The CPU scored 4.8 while the 2GB DDR scored 5.6. The IDE scored 5.2. So you see, if it were not for the weak GPU the score would have been better. I am using my Logitec Mx Laser mouse and it works well with Vista.
I will continue to put it through some torture but if things continue, I will be steadily surprised...talker.