My home computer isn’t exactly a smoking machine. For those interested, it’s a 2500+ w/ 2GB of Ram. After running Vista Business for about 13 months I finally conceded that my machine was just not up to snuff when it came to running Vista smoothly. I was forced to downgrade to XP Pro and I haven’t been happier with that decision.

All things considered, I do like some of the things that Vista brought to the table. More specifically, I loved the way the new Explorer worked. I just liked the way it handled the address bar. Luckily, the fine folks that maintain Directory Opus have copied this feature. Directory Opus will set you back about $74US if the exchange rates hold steady, but honestly after using DO for a while I can say that it’s totally worth the price.

The other feature that end users may notice in Vista that I liked was the Start Menu. Fortunately, this is really not a deal breaker as I had shortcuts setup for most of my often used applications via the Quick Launch toolbar.

There are a lot of other technical features that Vista brings to the table such as ReadyBoost, improved security, etc. The problem is that none of those features make Vista a must have product worth enduring a slow and clunky OS for.

My big mistake was jumping into Vista with 1GB of Ram, realizing Vista sucked with that little Ram and then upgrading the Ram. I was unhappy with performance under XP with only a single GB so I went about it all backwards by moving to Vista and then upgrading the Ram. At some point I am definitely going to move back to Vista, but it won’t be until I’m running a dual core proc with at least 2 GB of ram. For now, I am joining the legions of users that maintain that XP is where it’s at.