Edited by author 05-05-2008 10:15 AM
All this stuff about Vista's disappointments is hooey. Stick with it through your teething period, and you won't want to go back. Vista is as normal an operating system as you can find. I have found it to be very stable on an x64 machine, but sluggish on an x86. And, believe me, it'll make your learning curve for NT7 a lot shallower if you move to Vista rather than eek out a few more years on XP.

Just get an MS TechNet Plus subscription for $250 before buying it retail, and you have yourself Vista, plus the latest Office 2007 too.

Couple of other pointers:

If you want a multiboot system, it's very easy to set up. Just use Mahmoud al-Qudsi's "EasyBCD" download. (What's BCD? BCD is the new boot sector info that is ready (like Apple's OS X is) for the new generation of post-BIOS pre-desktop OSes, called UEFI.) EasyBCD is a totally robust little program with a VERY user-friendly GUI that'll let you put XP, Windows Server 2008, 30 different Linux distro flavors and, yes, even OS X on your machine if you want. He's extremely helpful with troubleshooting or just planning out your multiboot setup.
http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

If you want to know how to fix anything in Vista, a guide I've found very helpful is Koroush Ghazi's "Vista Tweaking Companion" (free) here:
http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

And there's one simple reg file tweak that makes the whole experience of living with the "User Account Controls" totally carefree. It gives you a right-click context menu to allow you to take ownership over any file, folder or app, so that you can do what you want with it, without turning off the in-built file protection. It was written by Elvandil, a Microsoft MVP at the TechSupportGuy forum. The link is here, but I'll post it below:
http://forums.techguy.org/tech-tips-tricks...p-context-menu.html

Copy the text between the lines, paste in a Notepad window, save the file to your desktop as ownership.reg and then right-click the file and Merge it with your registry.

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Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\runas]
@="Take Ownership"
"NoWorkingDirectory"=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\runas\command]
@="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F"
"IsolatedCommand"="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\runas]
@="Take Ownership"
"NoWorkingDirectory"=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\runas\command]
@="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" /r /d y && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F /t"
"IsolatedCommand"="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" /r /d y && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F /t"

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Come on in! The water's fine!

m