Comment Vista SP1 fixes many major annoyances (Score 1) 286
I am currently using Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 on my laptop, which was upgraded from XP Pro. Currently, I have been using the system for 10 months without any BSOD problems, and only 1 cold boot due to a Quicktime installation error of all things (although that was a problem with Quicktime conflicting with the Intel RAID Matrix Manager and throwing my RAID configuration in a loop).
I have been using SP1 for close to a month now, due to a release via Windows Update for some x64 clients. I have to say that it is a major improvement. The total time from download to complete install was about 90 minutes. There were zero problems that I encountered. A lot of quirks that annoyed the crap out of me, such as network transfers and extracting zip files with many files/folders, have been fixed. Not only has it been fixed, but in my benchmark, speeds for both exceed those of even XP by ~20%.
Overall, I am pleased with the performance of Vista and have only very minor complaints since SP1. Most of those are really due to vendors that do not properly publish working drivers, but that is not really a MS problem as it is a vendor problem.