Vista is not as bad as I feared. It's not getting in the way too much, and I'm not even finding the UAC too bad (yet). I did struggle to set the Wireless networking up. First time I ran it, I set it up with WPA-PSK using my existing setup and it worked. It downloaded a bunch of updates and rebooted, then didn't work again. I had to downgrade the router to WEP before I could get wireless working. I'll look into that further when I've got more time.

I'm currently running an image of my old laptop in a VMWare session. That's progress for you!

There is a reason for that though. The VPN software we use at work doesn't run on Vista, so I'm having to run it in a VM. It's really quite nippy. The VMWare'd laptop image doesn't seem to run much more slowly than the old laptop. So, that's all good.

I was up and running (updates installed, Firefox, Thunderbird and VMWare installed and running) in less than an hour. Quite impressive.

Built in webcam! (I'm not sure that's a good thing)

Initial impressions.

1. It's big. I would go so far as to say, very big.
2. It's a bit plasticy. The keyboard doesn't feel as solid as I expected.
3. I'm having trouble with the trackpad. It's no where near as sensitive as the old machine, so I'm struggling on the fine selection.
4. I had to burn my own recovery DVD's. Not unexpected, but the program was difficult to find, and the instructions for how to do it weren't prominent. They were hidden away in the PDF manual on the machine, not in the printed manual anywhere.
5. I keep hitting the trackpad with the heal of my thumb, sending focus off god knows where.

Overall, pretty happy.