First impressions...

First thing, turn off UAC (User Access Control?). I find it almost impossible to get anything done when every program I launch is preceded by an obnoxious panicky confirmation box. That Apple commercial with the PC guy and his security guard/lawyer who interrupts him every time he tries to say anything is spot-on - it's impossible to maintain any kind of 'flow' when you have to keep chatting with the OS. I have a task I want to accomplish, I know I'll need to use Program X to help, I launch program X, Vista panics and makes me think about Vista, instead of the task I was trying to accomplish. So, off that goes.

I don't like the new file Explorer. I'm a fan of the old-style (Win95) Explorer, but this new one, with it's auto-scrolling folder/drive pane and hidden menus just confuses me. As usual, I have to turn off 'hide file extensions for known types'.

The Aero UI is shiny and pretty. For XP and Win2K, I turned everything back to Win95-style. I think I'll leave this one as-is, though. The translucent windows are pretty, but being able to see through a window frame doesn't increase productivity or make anything easier - it's just eye-candy.

The sidebar is nice. I've never been a fan of gadgets and junk on my desktop - I usually skip that because I tend to run certain apps full-screen, and so I never even see the desktop. But I'm going with dual monitors this time so I'll have room for them; and the Vista gadgets are so pretty, I just can't say no: the clocks, especially, are awesome. I don't think the headline ticker will stay - it looks like a little RSS reader, but I don't think you can set it to read arbitrary feeds - MS's only.

The new icons are pretty. The way windows shrink when minimized is clever.

The constant compatibility warnings are horrible. Seems like 2/3s of the stuff I've tried to install has generated a warning - but it can never tell me what exactly is incompatible, so I guess I'll just have to take my chances... MS should've worked harder to make things backwards compatible.

The lack of WinHelp is simply absurd.

It boots incredibly quickly. You expect that on a brand-new system, because there aren't any start-up programs installed. But even with iTunes, Office and AVG, it's still very quick. It's even faster since I re-installed Vista and got rid of a lot of the crap that Dell had installed for me. No more Norton AV!