My Windows Vista Business Edition upgrade DVD arrived with my latest Action Pack shipment.  I've been looking forward to Vista primarily for its user interface improvements (love the new Start menu), promises of performance gains (e.g., boot-time speed-ups), and updated tablet PC support (better handwriting recognition, performance fixes, etc).  I tried it out on a Dell Latitude D410, because I had too much stuff sitting on my tablet that needed to be backed up.  Of course, the laptop's video card precluded the new Aero interface, but I don't care a lot about Mac-like eye candy.

On Wednesday, I re-installed Windows XP on the laptop.  Several of the applications on which I depend for work either malfunctioned (VCON vPoint HD could send audio/video but not receive) or crashed (the Cisco VPN Client would stop responding, then blue-screen Vista upon shutdown/reboot).  I spent an excessive amount of time searching for updated Bluetooth drivers, DVD playing software, and so forth, and I was unable to find compatible drivers for my old IBM webcam (which I replaced) and my PC5740 EVDO wireless card (though Smith Micro says that updated drivers should be available some time in the next few months).  (I also had to upgrade several older applications and utilities, including anti-virus software, but that's to be expected.)

I'm also not as impressed with the user interface.  The new Start menu is about the only thing that I like.  The rest of the navigation and UI changes make me feel like I'm in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.  For example, the Control Panel offers a lot of different functionality, but it feels very cluttered to me.  Folder views were also unnecessarily complicated.  I like the basic "list" and "details/sort by name/arrange in groups" views in Windows 2000, XP, and 2003, but re-creating them in Vista took a little too much fiddling (and even then, the "arrange in groups" views didn't quite do what I wanted).  I can tell that I've been using Plone for too long, because I have been thinking about a file system browser where a savvy user could code up various custom views as page templates in DTML or TAL.  :)

If I didn't depend on this laptop for work, I probably would have stuck with it - UI bloat included.  As it is, I think that I'll wait at least until the summer before revisiting Vista.  I didn't expect so many significant compatibility problems, given my generally positive experience during the Windows 2000-to-XP transition.  I might give Vista another try sooner, assuming I can find time to image my tablet.  I am really, REALLY interested in the new Tablet PC features, but my tablet has even more arcane hardware than the Dell Lattitude (e.g., a fingerprint sensor, the digitizer).  I'm not looking forward to the inevitable device driver hunt.  :(