Vista is more optimized for fast user interactability and design, that's why it's not as performant as XP. Vista is nice for the extra security for those who need it, the shiny layout that can also be put in xp with 3rd party tools, and it reacts and boots faster than xp (well at least on my laptop it did). The big con for me is however that it constantly uses more than it should letting my cpu get hotter, meaning my fan rotates faster meaning more noise, and i hate noise on a computer (especially on a laptop). An other reason i stepped down was because i didn't need the extra security in any way, vista is good for novice users on that aspect. Also some games still refuse to run on vista because they are protected with memory encryption like gameguard etc, and if that's not compatible with vista then you're screwed, but that was a year ago. It might have changed already. I've been thinking to switch back to vista, to give it another shot but i'll have to wait until there's a new activation patch as the previous (the bios emulation exploit) has been patched