How's vista these days?

Vista, I see boxers here using it, something improved since the last time I tried it.
My story with trying vista.

System core 2 duo 3.0Ghz 4G duel-channel ram. 8800GTS
Installed it, gaming went from a wonderful experience to epic laggy video 30FPS on a good day. When trying to use Fraps it dropped to 2-6FPS ran for 30 seconds went to blue screen and died. Wrote Fraps, hey this is happening with Vista. Fraps we don’t support vista.
A few months ago I think maybe more, I tried it again. This time, can run games fine YAY, also could run Fraps YAY! But I couldn't listen to music AND game at the same time. It reminded me of using something like P1 75MHZ back around the time MP3's just came out and the CPU worked overtime trying keep up with it.

Today, what’s the status? Would you consider it still Beta quality? Still a resource hog?

I've used Vista since around beta...

Never had problems with Fraps or with music (WMP11 and/or Zune, which is just slimmed down WMP).

I find dual-booting two OS'es to be the best way to figure stuff like this out -- particularly since it sounds like you already have the license. Then, when I'm sure everything is working hte way I need it to, I just reformat the alternate OS's partition and have a dedicated partition for my music/movies/etc.

I've never had a problem with Vista. Of course, I only adopted it in November...

I made the jump to Vista Ultimate 32bit back in May sometime after Vista SP1 was released. I haven't had any problems running WoW or other new games on it and have been pleased with the performance. My specs are very close to yours. Intel 3.2 ghz dual core, 4 gb 800mhz DDR ram, 8800 GTX 756 DDR video card at 1280 x 1024 resolution.

I am able to run 5 clients off two copies of WoW with the main char at full detail settings and slaves on low details without any fps issues. At first I tried having a separate copy of WoW for each slave, but that caused the memory usage to sky rocket compared to just running off two directories for 5 chars.

Big key is to apply all the key updates, especially SP1 and make sure the graphics and sound drivers are up-to-date.

Good to know, thanks guys.

It's made a lot of strides with the combination of Service Pack 1 (fixed a shitload of USB and other subsystem issues) and the vendor device drivers maturing. I put a machine together for my parents a few weeks ago for mom to play WoW on and a few other games. They've had zero stability or other issues with it over the past month (guaranteed if there was a way to crash wow in Vista, mom would have found it). I was vehemently opposed to using it or supporting it until SP1 went live. I won't pick it up on my game machines until SP2 (standard for me) or might even wait until Win7 goes live.

I use Vista on my 5 PC's and XP on my laptop - no issues. They are all visible to each other and have no problem sharing files, printing to the shared printer, etc.

Recently I upgraded from Vista Ultimate 32 bit to 64 bit, and at the same time moved from individial HDD's to a raid 0 setup - the result was a significant improvement in performance. Very happy with the move so far.

Cheers,
S.

I have been using Vista 64 bit for well over a year now, initially I had problems with sli 8800's to a point where it was actually impossible to play wow with 2 cards in, but now everything is fine. I dont think I have ever had a compatability problem, which seemed to be a big thing for most people.
Vista has been more stable for me than xp ever was.

No problems with Vista, i would never turn back ;)

I love vista64

I just bought a new computer. Has Vista 64 installed on it. I'm finding it way more of a hassle than XP.

I like vista. Setting it up on 6 computers (3 for me, 3 for my GF) for file sharing and turning off UAC and all that was a royal pain... but it was worth it... being able to tab in and out with no delay, and drag windows over WoW without it buggin out and stuff is really nice, and overall I've enjoyed MOST of the graphic/UI changes.

On my 5 boxing machine, by far the biggest upgrade I got in performance was moving from 32 bit vista to 64 bit. I went ahead and jammed another 4 gigs of ram inside (8 total) but it was overkill i think.

I have Vista too on my laptop and I cant believe you get 30fps and complain its laggy? I suppose it depends what you are used to right.

Using Vista64 on both pc's. Works great.

Some minor annoyances with the UI but that's it.

It's a little annoying at 1st... but it's fine. If you really want a lot of control over your system go with ultimate, imo.

I'm using Vista64 with UAC turned off and its been flawless for 5-boxing.