The start menu is kinda like shoving everything in a junk drawer and leaving the most important stuff on top. I don’t say that as a bad thing, personally I like my junk drawers. I’ve used search on Vista in the past week more than I probably ever used it in Windows XP ever.

The Favorite Links in the folder view is probably my next favorite feature. I like keeping more than a few folders handy at all times and this does beat the left side menus that the previous version of the OS had.

While we are in my profile folder, the saved searches is nice too. As I said before, this is the first OS I’ve actually bothered to use search with all that much and I like it.

I thought that not having the menu bar would bug the heck out of me – but I can say that I was wrong. I don’t really miss it at all as far as the folder view and some of the default Vista applications go.

Haven’t had much time to play with it, but from what I’ve seen Windows Media Center is pretty cool too. Hard to believe that it is a Microsoft product from the look, feel, design and usability of it all.

I like Windows Photo Gallery. If I had to choose between it and Picasa (Google’s Photo App) I would probably choose it just because it is already here on the PC.

All in all, I might not upgrade to Vista just for the sake of upgrading to Vista – but I can’t say I am totally disappointed in the product either. The thing that will make Vista better is not the miles and miles of folks ready to bash it at a drop of a hat. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly a Microsoft fanboy.

I’d like to see people stop whinnying and get to work when it comes to making the Vista view look a little brighter.

…now go check out the negatives I’ve encountered with Vista!