Windows Vista, the mystical, delayed, new version of windows. At first glance, I dont like it one bit, ad second glance it just gets even worse, so far i've been able to chug to a halt, freeze up applications, lock up and blue screen at will. About Stability? only if i tip-toe around the OS. Although there are some pluses to the shiny new front end of your computer, Ive come across what seems to list all the processes running and exactally what service that process belongs to, this can be an invaluable research tool while troubleshooting someones computer, to bad I cant remember how to get to it as the directory structure on here makes no sense. Why they chose to make you click on a menu of words to open an indiviual applet with a single tab is beyond me but it just seems quite unorganized to me, just stick similar tabs on the same applet and all would be nice and accessable

 Also another nice addition is the "Tools" tab in the msconfig utility, it has a few helpful things which can be accessed by the click of a Launch button, this would be helpful if it wasnt a pain to get to as the run box is now no longer on the start menu by default.

you can forget about making good use of that extra gig stick of memory you bought last week, Vista wants it all! an entire 512 of memory being sucked down this tank for mundane tasks is completely ridiculous! i managed to get it push back down to about 280megs of usage but thats just with wmp streaming and IE7 open. To do that i went through the services list and turned all seemingly uneccessary ones off, such as the pretty black themes(which actually are quite nice) and desktop window manager session manager, topology mapper, replication services and media center services, and that still only brough me down to 280 of memory.

The new start menu scheme can use some more work in my opinion, they need to quit messing with it and let the newbs get used to something. i can imagine it now; "okay maam, click on all programs..." okay sometihing above it changed and now it says internet explorer and windows mail again..." "maam are you double clicking on it?..." people were just starting to get the hang of the xp one i think and now they throw this wrench into the cogs. i havent yet read much about this release on M$ website but if it says anything good i hope it is all behind the scenes advantages in thread handling or other such nonsence because i could have had my xp look like this using a shell program like windowblinds. luckily its just the beta...they better get this junk together quick