Vista - Ultimate or no?

In keeping with 2007 tradition, I shall now proceed to post...

Over New Year's weekend, I decided to install Windows Vista Ultimate edition as my primary operating system at home. Ballsy, yes, but I had to do an OS dump/reinstall in any case so I figured I'd give Vista a go in order to get a look at it.

I won't bother posting all of the new features and changes from XP since they have been documented all over the place, but I will point out the things that stuck out most to me just diving in:

• They have dumped the "My". "My Documents" is now just "Documents". "My Computer" is now just "Computer".
• The power button icon formerly known as Shut Down is now the equivalent of Standby mode. In order to shut down or logoff, you now have to go one step deeper into menu structure.
• The Recycle Bin now defaults to the top left of the screen. Maybe it has always done that and I have habitually moved it to the bottom right. I can't really remember at the moment.
• There is a gadget bar on the right side of the screen that is blatantly the Widget bar from Mac OS X.
• Internet Explorer 7 installs with the OS - woohoo tabbed browsing. Welcome to Firefox's world.
• The start button is a round blue icon rather than the ovalish green one from XP.
• There is no longer an Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel. Its somewhat equivalent is now called Programs and Features.
• The Event Viewer in Computer Management is a little prettier. No more pop-up windows to view details.
• There is a cool new Reliability Monitor feature that I like.

Off the top, those are the only key ones that come to mind. I was pleasantly surprised that pretty much all of my hardware was recognized and picked up during installation with the exception of my SoundBlaster Audigy 2 sound card. There were no Vista drivers on Creative's website, so I guess that one will have to wait awhile. However, the onboard Realtek is working just fine, so iTunes is still cruising along. No problems with software compatibility yet either, with the exception of Symantec Antivirus. I had to download a beta version from their website which will expire in 30 days. I'm assuming that they'll have a retail release by then.

I do have one outstanding Vista issue, however. It won't boot without the DVD in the drive. I've read some online feedback on this and it appears to be a known issue where it will load the boot info to an incorrect drive on occasion. No simple way to fix it, so I'll live with it for now.

OK, off to bed. I head to Virginia tomorrow night for work, so I may not get around to another posting until I return on Saturday night or Sunday. I will try to post from there however.