Vista: I was wrong

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My Vista doesn't have viruses- it's secure. Though I have learned that it's a bad idea to simultaneously run two spyware scanners... Spybot S&D and Ad-Aware got in a fight when I did that. Spybot S&D won, by the way- when the two conficted, Spybot S&D summarily crippled Ad-Aware.

I run both of them, but never at the same time and have never had any clashes. Both processes seem to be high on I/O activity as does the AVG Virus scan so it makes sense to let them run when no other programs are running.

Yes, I also run both. I've always read that it is better to have more than one anti-spyware tool as nothing will catch all of it. The single-solution approach only applies to firewalls and virus-scanners, as far as I know, since those do tend to clash with each other.

They each thought the other was spyware. After a bit of thrashing about, Spybot S&D deleted Ad-Aware's definitions. Now I know to run them separately.

Vista = Slow

Go into Services and disable the crap you don't use. Then it gets faster. Aero doesn't seem to make any difference, so leave that if you like the eye candy. Or you might just be running hardware that isn't quite Vista-capable. It has a nifty little rating function where it will give different hardware components numerical ratings based on how well they can handle Vista- all of mine are around 5 except for my graphics, which are at 3.5. If your computer isn't able to run Vista well at all, then XP or Linux is the way to go. Ubuntu may have the reputation of being n00b-friendly, but I think Vector Linux may actually be better because it bundles much of the proprietary stuff (like Flash) into the default install, and it has more stuff out of the box as well as being a faster install. Plus it's light. Really, really light.

I got a 5.5 on everything but my CPU. It got a 5.0, if I remember correctly (not at home right now). The rating system is odd, though. 5.5 is the highest. :/

It goes up to about 6 now. As hardware gets more powerful, it gets higher ratings.

Oh really? I should recalculate mine when I get home then!

The same hardware will still get the same rating... just newer, more powerful hardware gets rated higher.

I disabled Vista

That's another option. It certainly cuts down on the bloat!

Oops... I checked when I got home and I had it kind of backwards. I got 5.5 on my CPU and 5.9 on everything else.
I actually think this is a good feature for a lot of casual PC users since people are always asking me what kind of games they can run. Although I don't know how accurate it is...
Still, it's much simpler for those that don't want to mess with the beefier benchmarking suites.

Vista wasn't as bad as I heard it was, but that also kinda goes back to the updates that fix it. When it comes down to it, get me on the internet and get my home work done are all that I really need... Oh, and Spore.

Like any Microsoft operating system, Vista was horrible right out of the box. But now with service pack 1 out and service pack 2 to be released within the year it's really not that bad.

So far my biggest problems have been mere annoyances, such as the OS thinking a program crashed when it was properly shut down.

I suppose the main issue with Vista is that it's simply a victim of it's own success (or rather, Microsoft's success). Because so many people use it more bugs come out of the woodwork and more malware is written for it.

I also think the reason they're so many viruses that Windows can get is because people who make them target the most used OS. That's also why more Viruses sneak though Norton then Avast.