I just moved up to Vista from XP, and I was wondering, what do you guys think the best feature of vista is?

I personally don't find the 2 OS's very different, is there anything that's a really big improvement from XP?

it depends, did u get vista home basic or vista home premium? cuz ur right, xp and vista home basic r virtually the same with a few minor changes. but premium has a lot more noticable features

The search, no doubt about it. I never navigate the start menu anymore. A tip: If you store data elsewhere than in your user folders, other partitions for example, you might want to add those folders to the indexing function (found Control Panel>System and Maintenance>Indexing Options).

There's (IMO) several "best" features.

First is User Access Control (UAC) - but it's also the most frustrating part. I'm looking for a utility that will let you permanently elevate trusted apps - but that wasn't in the cards for Vista development (because of what happened with XP).

Next is the ease of use and flexibility of the Networking - it's amazingly easy to use and very reliable. BUT, IPv6 has caused some is issues.

Finally, I particularly enjoy the increased features for error reporting and viewing - it makes my job a whole lot easier.

USAMA here is the way to turn off user account control:

On any version of Vista, except Home Basic and Home Premium, you can disable UAC for administrator accounts by following these steps:

1. Click the Start button and launch the Local Security Policy editor by entering secpol.msc in the Search box.

2. Select the Local Policies item in the left panel to expand the tree, then expand Security Options under Local Policies.

3. Scroll down the list in the right panel to locate User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode. Right-click that item and choose Properties.

4. Select Elevate without prompting and close the dialog.

If you use Vista Home Basic or Home Premium, the Local Security Policy editor, unfortunately, isn't included. To disable UAC for administrator accounts, you'll need to edit the Registry. Follow these steps to do that — and be extremely careful, since mistakes could render your system unusable

1. Click Start and enter regedit in the Search box to launch the Registry Editor.

2. Navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ System

3. Double-click the ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin item.

4. Change the value to 00000000.

5. Close the dialog and exit the Registry Editor.

I copied this from a windows secrets newsletter that I used to receive.

Thanks oldf@rt! What I'd like to see is an app that will allow me to leave UAC on - yet allow certain apps to bypass it. That way, when I run an XP app in Vista (such as Thunderbird) I don't constantly get the elevation prompt every time that I open it (and it won't autostart because of this.

FYI - you can bypass the behavior when on a network by adding the UNC network path to the Trusted Zone in IE. But I haven't been able to make it work for local files.

I have not run across an application that will allow UAC elevation yet, but I will post if I find one.

There are many things I like about Vista. I'm running the 64-bit version and I can finally use all 4GB of my RAM. I also have a TV tuner in my computer and the inclusion of Windows Media Center is nice. The multimedia apps., such as Media Player, Movie Maker, and Photo Gallery seem far more robust in Vista than XP.

I like the security and stability of Vista. Its very secure.... for a microsoft OS.

I've only got BSOD's with Vista due to drivers, mainly nVidia's 8800. From what I have seen, the 64-bit version seems to be a little more stable and secure than the 32-bit edition of Vista.