Originally Posted by cedric

To follow up from my previous post, I have completed the upgrade and like ScottC am very happy with Vista so far. The interface is much more efficient in locating the files I need to work on as well as launching programs from the start menu. I am also quite happy with the performance of the system. Boot up time seems quicker.

A couple of notes regarding some minor issues if anyone faces these scenarios:

-if you purchase an upgrade DVD, MS expects you to run it from within your previous version of Windows. If is not setup to allow you, as in previous versions, to boot directly from the DVD and install it from there. That means if you want to format your drive and do a full clean install like I did, you need to use a workaround. And here's that workaround:
1. Boot to the Windows Vista DVD
2. Start the setup routine by clicking on Install Now
3. When prompted for the product key, do not enter a product key and click next.
4. You will be prompted to confirm that you wish to continue with the install without entering a product key. Click on No, to continue.
5. When prompted for the edition of Windows Vista, select the edition corresponding to your Windows Vista upgrade product key.
6. Continue with a clean installation.
7. Once the installation has been completed successfully, restart the setup routine within the Windows Vista.
8. When prompted for the product key, enter your Windows Vista upgrade product key.
Yes, that means you'll have to install Vista twice, but installing Vista is not like installing XP. It completed in about 25 minutes on my system.

-I also had a hardware issue that initially prevented Vista from booting properly on my system. It seems to be a bug with the way that the setup runs if you have a very specific hard drive configuration. I have an old IDE drive which I use as a backup drive, and a SATA drive that is my primary. However, Vista put it's boot information on the IDE drive rather than the SATA drive. A temporary workaround was to change the boot order of my drives in the BIOS - so that it booked from the IDE drive rather than the SATA drive. However, since I imagine that drive will be replaced before the other, I contacted technical support who helped me manually have the boot information installed on the SATA drive. That procedure is as follows:
1. Open computer and disconnect data cable from IDE drive.
2. Start computer and boot from Windows DVD
3. Continue through the language screen and click on "Repair my computer".
4. The setup will say that it has encountered a problem attempt to repair it.
5. You will have to restart the computer, and again boot from the Windows DVD.
6. This time, when you click "Repair my computer" it will allow you to select your Windows installation and continue to a menu of options. What you're looking for is the first one. This will copy the boot files to your SATA drive.
7. Shut down your computer, plug in your IDE drive and restart. It will now work correctly.

I imagine that MS will eventually release a patch for this so that it works correctly the first time.

I have not had any problems with my software. My antivirus (Panda) has released a free Vista version for registered clients of the old version. Wordperfect Office X3 and Wordperfect Mail work great, and according to Corel a patch is forthcoming very soon that will let them use some of Vista's new features. Although I used to use Firefox, IE7 has the features of Firefox that I found useful so I'll stick with that for now.

I'm typically an "early adopter" so I anticipated having a few issues and am glad that I went for it. My advise to anyone considering upgrading now is to run the Upgrade Advisor and see if any of your software or hardware is not expected to work immediately under Vista, and make your upgrade decision from there.