This previous weekend I took the plunge and upgraded to Vista Business!
A few weeks back I purchased a Western Digital 120 GB Passport Portable drive. This made backing up all my data quite easy (much better than burning CD's like I have done previously).
I run a LENOVO Thinkpad T60p, 2.16GHz Intel Centrino Duo Core processor, 2GB RAM, ATI Mobility FireGL V5200 512MB and about an 80GB hard drive. For my apartment I also recently purchased a SAMSUNG 225BW Black 22" 5 ms (GTG) DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor with Height Adjustments from Newegg with my tax returns. I had some driver issues with Windows XP running the monitor as Analog (that's all my laptop supports), though Vista picked it up just fine right out of the box. I tested the monitor with DVI on my desktop running Vista RC1 and that also ran with no issues. I'm hoping to pick up another soon!
When you run Vista for the first time you are presented with this welcome screen:
A new feature of Vista is the "Windows Experience Index". From what I understand there is no "max" number, just the higher you get the better. As the picture bellow shows you it states your base score is determined by your lowest subscore.
Most of my normal programs (Visual Studio 2005 Professional, Code Rush, SQL Server 2005 Express, Office 2007, Windows Live Writer, Notepad2, PdaNet, WebDrive, Paint.NET) appear to be functioning normally. Though I seem to be having some problems with Download Accelerator Plus (DAP) and ObjectDock. DAP seems to freeze IE7 when trying to intercept downloads periodically, though has successfully worked quite often. According to their site 8.5 IS supported on Vista. ObjectDock is currently not supported on Vista however nearly everything works. I've used ObjectDock in auto-hide mode at the bottom of my screen. This does work, however only when some windows are not maximized, namely IE7. It also currently does not recognize the Recycle Bin being fully / empty (it always has stayed in the empty state).
Probably the biggest issue I ran into was copying my files back to my laptop. Vista just would not copy one folder. I ended up having to use robocopy on the command line running as an Administrator. There is a GUI application available for robocopy, though that was not working on Vista (running as an Administrator and as not). Though after using robocopy I think that will be my copy tool of choice from now on! Aaron Skonnard had some issues copying large files on Vista using robocopy though apparently mine weren't large enough.
I also like the the new Windows Mobile Device Center and Sync Center.
I have been running Vista RC1 on my Desktop for months though I don't use it terribly often. I live on my laptop. So far I'm loving Vista!
P.S. All screenshots were taken with Window Clippings 1.5 developed by Kenny Kerr. Check it out!