Despite all the horror stories I've read, and everyone's boo hoo attitude about Windows Vista. Hanselman talked me into it.

I'm kind of going about this backwards, I should explain I have a new laptop, and should have reviewed that, and then told you about Vista, but instead, I'm kind of backing into things. The primary reason for choosing Vista 64 bit was that this system has 4GB of RAM installed, GeForce 256MB graphics card, 7200 RPM drive, and a T7500 Core Two Duo processor. I wanted to take advantage of all this great hardware, without having to run XP.

I'm using a DELL XPS M1530 Black Laptop, and although DELL won't even support Vista 64 I'm running it. Kind of scary, but I've got it all working except for one feature, bluetooth, and I haven't even bothered trying to get bluetooth up because I frankly don't even care about it. I have to admit that Vista did most of the work, it located all the correct 64 bit drivers for all my hardware. I had to go and find a few applications, but as I type this I'm a happy camper.

Here's a snapshot of my Windows Experience Index.

And here's the details of how I got this score.