Windows Vista: Shiny and Slow

I just had a chance to get of the the house (after my long illness) and figured I better get reacquainted with the tech world.

So I went to Best Buy (yeah, I know, we don't have much choice here). I thought I would let you know my first impressions of Window's Vista.

Impression 1: Varied flavors.
What you have heard is true. There are at least four varieties of Visa on the market. I could easily tell them apart from the various computers for sale at Best Buy. The lower end edition seemed to be installed on all the older PC's in the store. I got the feeling that it was primarily just a "skin" over XP...aka not much difference. The higher end systems did seem to be able to take advantage of Vista nicely.

Impression 2: Overall look.
Ignoring the low end PC's, I focused on the higher end. I immediately saw the areo glass features (essentially windows you can see through). It was very nice from a design perspective, but didn't really do much more than that. When I had a few windows open, I really couldn't see through them very well for some reason. The "gadgets" on the side are a nicely skinned rip off of Goggles toolbar (if you had that on a PC). I had the impression that you could tile these gadgets all over your desktop, but it appears that you can only have them in a specified area of the desktop. I really enjoyed that fact that the "start" bar has been abandoned. That really is nice. The menu system still a bit complicated for my taste. The 3D "expose-like" feature is nice and should help people find their stuff in a more intuative way. I just wish you didn't have to hit the window button plus tab. No one will remember that at first.

Impression 3: The Apple Ads got it right.
Every time I clicked on anything potentially system changing (even if it was to change the opacity of the windows) the system kicked out a "are you sure" warning. I know you can turn this stuff off, but the average user will never know that. Poor average Windows user. I got to the point that I was trying to dig deeper into the system and the warning got so annoying that I just left. I couldn't take it.

Impression 4: Put this baby on Turtle speed.
I walked through and tried every PC and laptop on Best Buy's shelves. I would say that unless Visa was running on a high end desktop system or some laptops, it was running dog slow. It reminded me of what my old PC did when I installed Windows 95 onto my Windows 3.1 machine (going old school).

Summation.
If you are in the market for a new PC, Windows Vista is probably best for you (as well as your only choice). Get a high end system so you can use all the functionality you are going to pay for anyway. If you are upgrading, I would say just wait until you get a new PC in the future. I hate to say it, but I liked XP better. Windows Vista just seems much more shiny and glossy. I don't get a feel for anything new or exciting, but from the reports that I have been seeing it is much more secure. So that's my 2 cents for what it's worth.