there's no reason not to get a Vista box. It's fairly stable, but not without it's bugs. In the 2 weeks I've been using it, I would say it runs into more problems than XP. But recovering from those pitfalls is smoother than XP. On the whole, it's a wash as an upgrade.

If you have a stable XP box that meets your needs, there's no compelling reason to make the switch. The software is on the pricey side, but the expense is not limited to that alone. To get the most from the new bells and whistles of the Premium edition, you'll probably need to upgrade some hardware for the new Aero graphic interface.

Some of Aero is nice. The sidebar gadgets are nifty, as is the flip between windows feature. OTOH, the transparent title bars get old after a few days and it locks you into a default lilac color scheme for the menubars and whatnot. You can revert to a classic window layout with complete control over the appearance, but it takes away Aero's nicer features when you do. I'd much prefer it if I could keep the sidebar and window flip, without being tied to Aero's window appearance. Maybe they'll fix this annoyance in a future upgrade, then again, maybe they won't.

By far, the biggest annoyance with this OS is the security 'feature' designed to protect your computer from - you. Sometimes it seems you click more warning and approval boxes than you do just using the computer. You can disable this completely - at a price. It can cause some software - such as Adobe Acrobat to not install. Like with the Aero feature, it's all or nothing. There are no in between settings. Switching back and forth between the settings also carries a price. After the required reboot, many personal settings, passwords, cookies, etc are gone. The thing to do is to set up a user account with each setting and switch back and forth as needed. Again, maybe they will fix this aggravation in a future upgrade.

Sooner or later, all PC users will be using this OS. It's inescapable and we all know it. That said, there is nothing about Vista Home Premium that should make you feel any need to rush into it.

vista home 32 premium OEM is OK.
Just be sure that your hardware is relatively new.
My Lexmark printer and Sound Blaster Live card are
not going to be supported in this OS. If your happy
with your system and arent buying a new computer for awhile
get the OEM its cheaper and is the same as the $100 more on.
I recommend waiting to buy Vistas till the first service pack
comes out, Vistas is still unstable. I am getting Blue Screens
of Death daily (yeah they brought it back, grrr). But it did fix
problems that I had with my video card and once more companies make
their product Vistas compatible I would give this product 4 stars.
No 5 stars since they released a product far far to early.

It's fast, cool looking, & more stable than XP BUT if you have a pc with any hardware thats more than a year old you take your chances.
The problem is DRIVERS !! while Vista has a pretty large
built-in driver base there are many video cards, soundcards
network cards, printers,digital cameras, usb devices etc that have no driver support and probably never will.
This is not all Vists'a fault, the oem manufacturers of these items
want you to buy their new models and don't want to spend the $$ to
re-write drivers for Vista. While some of the XP drivers will work
they can also make Vista unstable and prone to freeze (especially USB devices) which kinda defeats the purpose of getting Vista.

I'd been running vista beta releases since October 06, so I knew what I was getting into when I decided to purchase this. So I'll list the reasons I decided to buy the retail and hopefully that will help you with your decision.
1. Media. If you don't have issue with DRM, then Vista's Media Center and cohesiveness with Media Player 11 make this a great buy. You do not have to have an analog tuner to have a HD Tuner in Vista Media Center which is a great improvement over 2005.

2. Beautiful GUI. Microsoft does what it has always done and takes the best features from other OSs and incorporates it into its own. Here Microsoft has taken Linux and OSX graphics, multiple desktop features, and general ease of use and put them into this release.

Now for the not so great; downloading and installing applications from the net requires response to 4 dialog boxes to do so. Rather expensive to upgrade all of your systems to. New OS so expect bugs and security issues down the road.

I really like the look and feel of Vista, and enjoy having it on my set up. I currently use this for a dual boot system so I can switch between XP as needed, since compatibility is not 100%. Vista is a bit of a resource hog, so you need to exceed in all of the system requirements.

I bought the OEM version for my Mac Mini. I installed it under Boot Camp 1.2 and it works fine. Aero looks great and it runs very good. No issues yet. I use the OS for compatibility and I'm still a Flight Simulator fan so I use it for that. However I still use OS X for my mission critical programs. For an Intel Mac - I highly recommend.

well, i ordered this system builder ver. of vista home premium, but changed my mind & went w/ the FULL VERSION vista home premium, in case my hard drive bombs, or 1 guy even said that if u swap out your motherboard, the single system vista won't recognize or work w/ what it considers the 'new' system. i recommend to buy the fullv version vista as a releif to your mind.

The negative reports you read about Vista are most probably two things: 1. The computer being installed into is rather legacy and needs to be upgraded or improved with more memory. 2. The upgrader, whether clean install or update, should get some help. Vista is *miles* and a significant improvement over XP. It is more stable than XP because the video hardware is not directly linked to the OS kernal (and audio) Vista rocks in my Macbook Pro 2.2 even with the stock ram and I have not gotten one crash or error since I put it in (weeks). Too much to list that has been improved. How many years can a person stare at Windows XP? This is refreshing. It is a beautiful operating system with many add-on features. Organized more sensibly and has impressive video effects. Do not listen to the sheik negative reports on the OS - Vista is an amazing upgrade and in my computer, runs as well as OSX 10.4. Macbook Pro runs it amazingly well, though I will say that Apple configured the drivers for Vista for the Macbook Pro by burning on a CD from Bootcamp. Amazingly impressed and quited me down somewhat of the far superiority of OSX, being, I really like both. I DO use VMware Fusion beside clean boot into Vista allowing me to run Windows in the OSX desktop or just Windows apps. Parallels bogged the system downed and I overwrote the Bootcamp partition (Vista) with a backup and installed VMware that works perfectly and fast. (interestingly enough, VMware Fusion is 160+ megs and Parallels around 80, so much more coding and it shows though one cannot judge alone with size of product, with Parallels taking almost a half-hour to load drivers was quite annoying and was shaky in my view) "Wait for the SP1 before buying" is nonsense because any material tweak or fix of the system would be available by using Windows update before a service pack if needed by unique users that have reported a specific problem with a specific system and Microsoft-verified.

Having used the beta since last year, I kind of new what I was getting. I enjoy it very much, though I still have some reasonably small complaints.

I wouldn't really recommend for the masses though as I think XP is still a very good system. The difference between Windows 98 and XP was huge and made it worth installing a new OS. I really can't say the same for Vista. Bells & Whistles and security are improved no doubt, but the average consumer really doesn't need them or the upgrade it'll take in hardware to do so.

Having said the above, If you got XP keep it and maybe get a "Vista Transformation Pack" to give you the look.

I was afraid to jump to Vista after hearing about bugs and the 'new' cumbersome interface. After finding Vista Home Premium OEM on Amazon for $100 I decided to give it a shot. I purchased a video card, so I was complying with the bundled hardware clause for OEM software! All I can say is, if you have trouble with XP, and can run Vista on your machine, do it. I was running XP Pro on an AMD-3500 with 2gigs of ram, 2x GeForce 6800's in SLI, and a 4x80G SATA RAID 0+1 array. I was constantly losing my RAID array, and ruled out everything but drivers and OS. I would have weekly RAID rebuilds. And don't even mention BSOD's, XP has them in spades. Well i can safely say, Vista is not plagued by these woes. IT picked up my RAID setup right away, and i've only crashed it 2x in 3 months, each time due to hard shut downs before the drives sync'd so it just had to rebuild upon reboot. And no more BSOD's, Vista seems to be able to isolate corrupt threads and just kill them. It just kills the offending app and goes back to the desktop. With XP i was used to a BSOD or lock up several times a week. With Vista, i've only had a couple of hard resets needed, and any software crashes, are limted to the application. Vista stays up stable, and ready to just restart the app that crashed. My only vista problem has been static in my sound. Since i'm running an unsupported Mobo, i can only blame myself! I'm investigating my DX10 install, to make sure i have not hosed a driver. Just Do IT!

I bought this in order to be able to use it on my iMac using the paralells virtuall machine. The aero interface and hardware acceleration isn't available yet. Obviously part of this is due to the virtual machine software but even standing on its own Vista isn't ready for prime time yet.