Ok I have finally decided to try the final beta release of Windows Vista, mainly to decide if I want to upgrade to it or not, and also to see how it preforms on my older computer components. So far it has been pretty good other than a few niggles here and there, one of the hardest was finding an anivirus that works with it, and there was only one that Microsoft recomends at the moment not that thats much of a problem.The other one is an early problem with the screen going black at random times, which I thought was a graphics driver problem which I tried to update them and that caused a few problems first it wouldn't allow it since it didn't recognise my OS as Windows then when it did install I lost the new Aero interface completely, so I had to do a system restore to get that back. It hasn't happened too much lately so that's ok.

Let me tell you about the positives at the moment though, the interface is far nicer and more pleasant on the eye, and rather than windows just popping up out of no where they actually slowly appear on screen, i say slowly it's rather quick. The whole desktop has had a hi-res make over too, all the icons are hi-res ones now so they are no longer pixelated, when larger the inclusion of the desktop sidebar is a great idea, I have had a similar one on my Windows XP desktop and I find it to be a great addition, even highlighting the tabs at the bottom of the screen brings up thumb nails of that page even when it's hidden. As i expected all of Microsoft's latest programs are on there in full walking glory, Internet Explorer 7, Windows Media Player 11 and Direct X 10 all coming as standard, the first two working better on Vista than they did on XP. The only problem with windows media play I have at the moment is because everything on the desktop takes so much graphics memory up it affects the video playback on my system, which i was expecting due to the amount of stuff going on at once and that is just a basic program setup going nothing of my own.

The main problem I have noticed is compatibility with programs either just not working with Vista or not recognising it as Windows because it was designed for Windows XP, which I touched on before there is a program compatibility wizard though so most programs should be able to be run on that, if you have trouble, except anti-virus programs which they don't recommend.

Now onto the games well I have only tried one at the moment and that is Football Manager 2005 and the game loads fine and seems to be ok so far, except that is really runs a lot slower when it get to the in game matches even on the fastest speed settings, this is the same problem I had with videos on Windows Media Player since the graphics memory is being used on just about everything else too, I haven't tested a 3D game just yet so I haven't seen how Direct X 10 performs just yet, but I am expecting some slow down there too, at the moment though everything is running well if a little slower I may just need to upgrade my graphics card, to help things run smoother. I am going to try and keep mor regular updates on this since the more I use it I'm sure I will run into more problems.