I’ve been using Vista RC1 on two machines - in two different roles.

Shiika - My main desktop PC.

Kumi - My old desktop, now a Media Centre box.

Specs etc have already been covered in a previous post.

As a Media Center box, Vista was a little tricky to get up and working entirely - some things worked well (Live TV in Standard Defintion, shared media, DVDs) - others not so well (Auto login, EPG Guide information, and High Definition).

The Media Center box has to be very easy to use — and Vista provides that. It’s certainly a big step up from Media Center 2005.
It’s very stable, and usually responds quite well. I don’t have any issues with pausing/rewinding Live TV, whilst it’s also being recorded for later watching. I havn’t got a coax cable splitter yet, so I don’t have the second tuner working, thus I can’t test performance with two tuners in use simultaniously.

There are occasional glitches, such as video corruption, or the video pausing. This can usually be fixed by fast forwarding, or rewinding a short bit. This could be a video driver issue, but I get the feeling (using those psychic debugging skills) that it’s a problem with Vista itself.

There are, however a few issues that Microsoft DO need to fix in the Vista Media Centre.
- If there are multiple tuners, and there is a scheduled recording - use the other tuner(s) to start the recording, don’t switch the current channel. If the other tuner is busy, or has no signal - then perhaps display a question with a 30 second timer. “No other tuners are available to start the scheduled recording. Do you wish to switch to that channel to begin the recording? [Yes] [No]” - with the default being yes.

Several times I’ve had the current channel switched out in the middle of an “important” piece of the program, and I’ve had to madly dash for the remote, stop the scheduled recording, and switch back… only to find that they’ve delivered the punchline to the joke/solved the case/etc

- There needs to be an auto-login feature for Vista. Nothing I do will let it automaticly log in. Sure, all I have to do is press “OK” on the remote - but this is still annoying, since scheduled recordings don’t start until MCE has been launched. (I believe)

- Vista needs better support for 3rd party Electronic Programming Guides.
Currently the Free to Air TV networks in Australia don’t allow Microsoft to carry the EPG guide information. If they did, this would be a non-issue (for the FTA stuff, anyway).
So, I’ve got an IceTV subscription - except that if I reboot the machine, I need to screw around and force Vista to accept the new EPG guide settings (it ignores the built in “OverrideDiscService” key, and instead keeps resetting the “DiscService” key to the MS Server). Not an ideal solution by any means, and certainly not something that is easily taught to people who have little or no computer skills.

All in all, as a Media Centre box, it works well… as long as you don’t reboot it, and/or want to have an EPG (if you live in Australia).

Now, as a Desktop machine… well… Vista is less than stable, you could say.
I’m used to having uptimes measuring in the weeks, rather than hours.
I believe most of this is due to poor or non-existent Vista driver support (most of the drivers are XP, and not optimised for Vista).

At the moment however, I can’t actually boot into Vista - not even in Safe mode, it locks up and reboots. Fantastic.

Other than that - there are a number of smaller issues - some apps don’t work correctly (JuiceReceiver, for example).

So, like Paul, I’m back in XP for my desktop - partly by choice, mostly by necessity.

I am eagerly awaiting the next version of Vista (RC2, perhaps?) - I miss my Sidebar already.

It’s also a wakeup call for hardware manufacturers: You need to get your backsides into gear, and get stable (and fast) drivers into the Vista build. This includes all your newest hardware too.