…I don’t think upgrade price is worth it for casual users.

Yes, AeroGlass is neat, and the search works well, and the interface has definitely been spruced up. I have the hardware–Athlon 64 X2 4200+ processor, 2GB of RAM and a GeForce 8800 GTX, so Vista is a nice experience for me. I don’t know how well it will work for someone running with less computing power.

I also don’t really see how it makes sense that the operating system can wind up costing more than the processor. There’s just some kind of crazy economics at work there.

Apps like Windows Mail, Windows Calendar and Windows Contacts seem to scream out that Microsoft is afraid of what Google is doing. Again though, why would I switch from using an online application that I can access anywhere to one that limits me to my home PC. Maybe there is some online component coming down the line that will make it compelling to switch, but right now these apps could easily have been left out and I wouldn’t miss them at all.

The new start menu kind of sucks. There’s an appreciable delay when clicking on a folder to when it drops down to open up. I do like it better, but unless I can find some performance tweak I might have to switch back to the XP-style start menu.

I have experienced one nice surprise so far. Many websites have run benchmarks showing that gaming is slightly slower in Vista (perhaps because video card graphics drivers are not up to snuff yet). However I’m getting much higher FPS playing Flight Simulator X in Vista than I was under XP. I’m not sure what to attribute that to, but FSX is definitely running much more smoothly.

Vista offers some welcome improvements over XP, however I don’t know if it will revolutionize the way people use their computers.