Windows Vista so far ....

My Toshiba M30 crashed. It lies dishevelled on the floor holding Windows XP SP1 in a death grip. Forceded me to buy a new HP Pavilion that came with Windows Vista SP1, 32 bit. I tried to find out what the big deal about Vista was before, and all anyone could tell me was the aero screen was great. Well it is. It's all the other stuff that's giving me trouble. So many problems that I doubt Bill Gates could handle this frustration!
It recognized my HP 960c printer right away. Wow. Then my Trekstor External Hard Drive. Great. My HP 3500c scanner. Nice. Then I started reloading software. Mostly it went right in. I was thrilled!
Then I started trying to recover files from my Trekstor Hard Drive with Nero BackItUp. I can see there is a back up there, made just 4 days before my crash. Windows Vista can't read it. And I can't just put two drives together and drag files between them like I did in XP. Someone changed that ability in Vista. My scanner won't work from the computer either, only the buttons.
But wait, I worked a photo on an Adobe drawing/photo program that I always use. Went to save it. Program disappeared completely. Yes, it does it every time. Another program just freezes everything. Can't even shut the puter down with Ctrl+Alt+Del! Have to pull the plug! Yet another just loops between start and open and start.
My printer prints way too dark now. Used to be perfect with XP. I've wasted a whole tree already trying to make it better. Vista has a wonderful screen look.
I had Media Player 9 in the XP system, it loaded and started to play a video in about 10 seconds. Vista just loads and loads ... and loads. It has Media Player 11.
Same video. I had 512 Mbs of RAM in the Toshiba, 3 Gbs are in the HP. Shouldn't it be way better?
I would say if you are considering a new computer with Vista installed, you add at least $500. to your budget to replace your existing software. Have some pills or liquor nearby too in case of frustration - which will start in the first 10 minutes.
So far I love the screen look, but it seems like that age old corporate problem, that these high paid technicians NEEDED to change things to show they were working, no matter how well things worked before.
I think I'll fiddle with the old Toshiba and see if I can get it going, just for the pleasure of killing it all over again, it caused me all this. Didn't it?
That screen is marvellous, especially with all these pills and liquor in me, I think I'll just stare at it a while longer, transfixed by these vistas.
Wake me when the new operating system comes out.