I'm in the process of getting Roxio but haven't installed it on Vista yet. My thoughts on Vista is mixed. I love the way it looks and the feel is so different, that it makes it good. It's a nice change from the usual "Windows" feel.
The only thing that's soooo frustrating is the support. I can't just install anything. I've tried and more than 50% of the software I wan to install aren't compatible. The only program I manage to run are Adobe 8 Pro...that's it so far. Nero rejected Vista, D-Link got rejected due to driver issues. I had to do some tweaks to get Internet going using my D-Link adapter, but now I'm getting error popups upon startup every single time!!! I'm waiting for D-Link to get Vista support. Then I'll reinstall. But as long as I can get online, I don't mind the error message for now. Everytime you get a system error, Vista Business makes a report and tries to "fix" it.
Vista has native HP printer support so that's good. No drivers from HP is necessary since HP and Microsoft are partners. My printer was automatically picked up and even got the model number right. I've got WinZip 10, WinISO 5.3, and WinRAR 3.62 that I have yet to install. I hope to install them this weekend to see how they run on my Vista system. I need those vital programs to unpack a lot of other additional software.
I haven't installed any games yet. I want to get the main application software installed first because I have school going on now. If I can use Vista for school work, then I've accomplished a lot. I can't even burn DVDs at the moment. I hope Roxio will work.
I've experienced my first glitch with Vista when it locked up on me. Then I got the usual report error to Microsoft deal. It was when the PC was still in the process of loading everything upon boot up. I tried to go online right away and play an MP3 at the same time. Well, I guess it was too much to handle so it froze. Task Manager is modified from Windows XP Task Manager. Lots of improvements and new features. IPv4 and IPv6 seem to be common words in Vista networking: I never saw that even on XP. Networking options have been greatly enhanced giving you much more info in regards to your network. You can actually see your whole private network in a nice layout and look at the options. You never get this feature in XP.
I haven't really done too much on VIsta just yet because of my limited time on it. I'm using my laptop with XP because of school work. Once I get my apps on Vista and start using it more and more, I can get a better feel for it. For now, it looks too damn good to pass up. Windows are all different, Window transitions look pretty cool, less clutter in the Start Button, the Preview files in a folder looks pretty neat. Even if they just let you preview two out of however many files you have in a folder. The overall layout appears to be different. Probably same features as XP, but moved around.
When you first boot up PC, the Welcome Center pops up. It's actually useful, but I end up disabling it upon startup now once all my personal settings set to the way I want it. Hmm, what else? There's no games with Vista Business even though there's a games folder (ie, Solitaire, Freecell, etc.). I can't seem to find it. Oh, it has a cool new "Lock" feature. When you're away, you can lock the PC--just like a cell phone so no one can access it. THat's pretty neat. Another way is just to configure your screensaver to do the same thing. Speaking of that, there are some pretty nice looking screensavers as well as cool looking background wallpaper. Way better than all the previous versions of Windows.
Oh, Nvidia drivers doesn't seem to work as it should. I got the Nvidia control panel and everything, just that when you go into display properties/advanced, you can't see the GPU temp, Antialiasing options, and all those other advanced settings you can adjust. Hmmm. Driver issue, but display is not affected. It looks pretty good, you just can't tweak it just yet--at least for me.
For laptop users, VIsta Business is excellent for it. Lots of energy saving featuers, tablet PC support, infrared, Bluetooth, etc. What I may do is have Vista Business loaded on my laptop and buy a copy of Vista Ultimate for my regular PC (since I got Vista Business for free). Windows Defender, I haven't used yet. I'm using Norton 360 right now and it works pretty good. I don't like the fact that there is no ad blocking feature. I can see all the banner ads on computerforums, hotmail, etc. Not use to that since I use Norton Internet Security before and it had the ad blocking feature.