I installed Vista Ultimate about 3 months ago, so I thought I'd give a quick rundown on what I think of the new OS and its features.

System Specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ - overclocked to 2.2GHz

1.5GB RAM

800GB Hard Disk Space - 500GB for the DVR functionality of Media Center Edition

256MB NVidia 6200LE Video Card, outputting 720p (1280x720) to my Sanyo PLV-Z2 projector (110" screen)

Hauppauge 1600 ATSC (HD OTA)/QAM/Cable tuner

Lets start off with the bad:

- The NVidia Vista driver sucks, plain and simple. I could not get it to give me the option to run more than 1024x768 resolution. I tried creating special monitor drivers, tried going to all modes whether the monitor could display them or not, etc., with no luck. I finally uninstalled the NVidia driver and tried the Microsoft driver for the card. Amazingly that works perfectly. I have about 8 different resolutions supported by the driver, and that includes both 720p and 1080i.

- Requirements for the video card are high if you want to run Windows Aero (the cool new interface). I had to buy the 6200LE card because my old card did not support the Aero interface, but I only paid around $60 so it wasn't too expensive of an upgrade. The Aero interface is a nice addition to Windows.

- Less than 1GB of memory causes the Ultimate Edition to chug along, especially when using Media Center. Luckily RAM is fairly cheap these days as well.

The mediocre:

- I wanted to run my Xbox 360 as a "Media Center Extender" for the Media Center functionality of the Ultimate Edition of the OS. Any MP3's ripped above 256Kb doesn't play on the Xbox 360. If I play the same MP3's through the Media Player in the Xbox 360 Dashboard they play fine, as well as through the Media Center software directly at the PC itself. All other functionality works well, from what I've seen. I took the Xbox 360 out of the loop and dedicated my PC to be a HTPC (Home Theater PC) in the end.

The good:

- Reliability has been great. I haven't had any blue screens (now they are black supposedly). The only issue I've had at all was due to a grounding issue with the motherboard (I fixed by remounting it to my case).

- Media Center on the PC itself is great. The over the air ATSC tuner is better than my Dish Network 622 DVR's ATSC tuner. The interface is good, very easy to navigate. I'm a big fan of MCE and hope they continue to improve on the software.

- The new bells and whistles are neat as well. The 3D stuff they have built in are very cool, and because Vista passes off the 3D processing to the GPU (video card) you see no significant system slow downs when viewing the 3D.

- Security is definitely better. I know a lot of people are annoyed by the pop-up messages that come up when trying to do something that is restricted to an administrator (i.e. installing new software), but it doesn't bother me. I really think this will help cut down on the malware that spreads through Windows PCs as people will know when something is attempting to install itself.

Things I haven't tested personally:

Readyboost: I know people who claim this is no help at all, but after recently attending a Microsoft seminar I am a believer. I saw it with my own eyes, involving multiple Virtual PC 2007 windows open (running Vista in 2 windows, Longhorn server in the 3rd, Vista as the host OS). The switching between the windows were significantly faster with the Readyboost drive functioning. Make sure your USB key is Vista compatible to see the benefits, the memory has to be fast enough to properly read and write to see any advantage from it.

SuperFetch: This is supposed to look at the habits of the user and cache info from frequently used programs (allowing for faster loading of that software). I haven't noticed it, but I've read reviews from 3rd party sources saying it does work. If it works as advertised, I think it is a good idea.

I'll add screenshots in the next few days.