thenetavenger-
This is a 'technical' site, so why is it that even though you do an exhausting review of the OS, you fail to dig into or detail any of the technical aspects and changes in Vista?
Right! I found it amusing that THG makes a comment to the affect "other people have provided a few pages/pics of general features and we are going to do a proper review!" OMG! It's like someone regurgitated all those boring, pointless articles about crappy card games, threw in a few extra pictures and decided they earned a cookie and a gold star for sharing a nearly clairvoyant understanding how some menus work.
Also, it seems EVERYone doing a review of Vista has flowers and sunshine flying out their a$$... I mean mouth. Is there nothing of any importance that you can find wrong with the operating system? Anything? Sounds like Microsofts PR team had final approval of the reviews total content, and every other review out there. (How steep are the "content protection" features, have they actually made user accounts safe -- in xp you can get into any system using the 'password recovery' features... anything other then "this question is annoying" or "it crashes but it should because it's a beta.. + what thenetavenger mentioned.)
And there is really no need to complain about the ram used anyways. 1. it still has TONS of debug code which could easily run into the 100s of MB 2. it may actually be using the ram much more efficiently (which i think someone else said) 3. seriously if you have bought a computer in the last 3 years you should get nothing less than a gig and anything in the last year nothing less than 2 unless you ONLY use your computer to check email and look at you stocks.
As far as how aero works, god knows how many drivers are beta that are screwing with your rendering.
I'll admit it was nice to see some new pics of the system but when I come to THG I expect something with more substance. Time and time again you have extremely through and insightful reviews; you have set the bar pretty high. Sadly, this time you failed to meet your own standards.