I have been running Vista Home Premium on all of my computers for around three years now, and I have to say I am getting really tired of all the insults that go towards it. Windows 7 is a better operating system than Windows Vista. I'm not going to deny that. However, 7 is also much more expensive than Vista, and money is not something I have in abundance at the moment. And in my years of Vista, I have come to appreciate things about it, to the point where I would actually prefer to use Vista over XP. So as you read review, remember to keep in mind that I am speaking in terms of past OS. Obviously 7 is a better OS, but it also more new so that would be expected. Basically I am trying to make the point that if you can't afford W7 right now, Vista is a great alternative. Anyway, let's get on to why I like it so much.

.:Beautiful:.
Vista has, in my opinion, the nicest GUI (Graphic-User Interface) that I have ever seen from any other Windows product. W7 is nice, but I still believe that Vista has a much more sleek feel to it. The taskbar is smaller and has that traditional feel to it, but at the same time has that modern OS look. Overall, it may not be comparable to Mac OSX or Ubuntu 10 in terms of beauty, but Vista is still one of the nicest Windows products as far as looks go.

.:Fast:.
W7 is indeed faster than Vista. But it is also newer. Still, Vista in comparison to any previous OS (cough, XP) is like comparing Usain Bolt to a cheetah. Your old computer might be very fast.. but Vista is the cheetah, it's simply much faster. I guess you could say I'm okay with computers, and after messing around with a couple settings, I now have my bootup time to around 14-16 seconds on my laptop. XP seems to take twice that time. Seriously, the jump in speed from XP to Vista basically cuts the startup time in half. For Windows 7 is only takes 3-4 seconds off the time, making the difference in speed much more drastic from XP to Vista.

.:Simply Works:.
You've seen the Mac commercials all about Vista and its vast number of bugs. So why is it that in years of using it on multiple computers, the number of problems I have had with Vista being buggy could be counted on my hands? Many times I've talked to fellow tech-geek people I know who laugh at the fact that I'm using Vista and still have yet to upgrade to W7. They ask how the bugs are doing. My answer is almost always the same; what bugs did you personally have with Vista. Here's a news flash for you people; every OS has thousands of bugs. But with the amount of things you can do with a computer being so high, the odds of you ever actually coming across some of these problems is actually relatively low. Vista had the unfortunate reputation, for many problems with it were discovered early on. But so long as you're connecting to the internet, you simply update Vista with all of the patches Microsoft has figured out and you're good to go. Not buying an OS because there USED to be lots of problems with it is like never eating McDonalds because one time you ate there they gave you a medium coke rather than a large.

.:Overall:.
So what exactly is the point of this review you may ask. As I said before, Windows 7 is superior to its predecessor in most ways (wow, who would have guessed). But hey, we can't all afford to shell out £100 every time a new Windows OS comes out. I guess my overall point with this would be to simply say that if you don't have much money to spend on a new computer and you're given the opportunity to choose between XP and Vista, I think its worth it for you to come over to the Vista side of things and check it out. You won't find everything perfect. But you might find what I have; speed and reliability, and who really needs anything else from their computer anyway?