I admit that I have even made reference once to the mean and terribly exaggerated but oh so funny "Hi I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC" ads when I was presenting at a conference. I was having a weird problem with my computer and Vista was the low hanging target to blame.

But I have been using Vista on two machines for about 3 weeks now and I really am happy with it.

Charles Petzold blogged about the Apple ads recently and it made me realize that I had bought into the ads (just like when I absolutely had to have a Nano the first time I ever saw a Nano ad) and wasn't thinking for myself about my actual Vista experience when I made that Vista jab.

There are two things that are easy to pick on (and Apple has done so)... hardware requirements and the User Account Control. At first, they do seem like big pains in the rear, but truly, you get over it quickly.

Hardware/Resources
On an upgraded machine, I had to install a new hard drive. But I had needed to do that for a long time so I can't really blame that on Vista. I just needed impetus and Vista finally gave me that. Granted, the graphic card in this machine doesn't support Aero, but Aero is a bonus because it takes huge advantage of new innovations that are found in the newer graphics cards. The lack of Aero does not impact my basic Vista experience by any means.

My other Vista box is a new Lenovo X60 Tablet, which was Vista ready and supports aero. So I get to experience shiny there, instead.

UAC
The UAC was a huge annoyance at the start. But once I figured out which oft-used programs (VS2005, VPC 2007, SQL Server 2005) needed to always be run as an admin (and then marked them as such), the worst of the problems was gone. (See this post for more info and another Vista admin lesson here.)

I have not found any tool that I use to not work on Vista. A few needed updates, which were all provided by the vendors. (See this tools post and this WS-FTP post for more info)

Frankly, I have gotten used to UAC popping up and clicking on it as just part of the process now and it doesn't bother me.

I was also happy to see it do it's REAL job. Not protecting me from myself ("yes yes I clicked that shortcut") but one day when it asked about another program that was trying to launch that I hadn't initiated. I like knowing about what's going on on my computer.

I also love the thought of a LOT less family/neighbor support calls because of UAC. Now they will have to just call to say "hi".

The Myriad Little Stuff
One other important thing for me is the many many "small" things in Vista that make every day use better. Little things like having "open containing folder" as an option on the context menu for recently used files. The whole Windows Explorer UI. The networking connectivity UI. Sure, a lot of these things might make you say "These aren't benefits. These are my expectations". But anything that makes my life easier and doesn't get in the way of the task at hand are all bonuses to me.

Memory management
When I was trying to figure out how much memory I could devote to my VPC, I was shocked to see what looked like evidence that Vista was eating up gobs of memory. Like many, I just attributed this to Vista being a hog. A few days later, I had cause to go see what the heck ReadyBoost was and this led me to a great post explaining how Vista leverages available memory rather than letting it sit idle, but then lets go of it readily to let your applications run. I had forgotten about the significance of this lesson until this post of Kate's reminded me (she has a link to the enlightening post).

My sister is buying a new computer and is adamant about getting Windows XP on it. She is not a geek and doesn't have the time to deal with any issues raised by the various software apps she uses to run her business - should any of them fail to transition smoothly to Vista. This is really understandable and I have not attempted to dissuade her. I also have a computer that I am leaving on XP for the same reasons. I've also heard plenty of people I know and respect talking about various problems they are having with Vista. So it's not for everyone and not for every scenario.

But still, I just wanted to stand up and say that I am using Vista and am really happy with it without even drooling over all the new shiny stuff!