Windows Vista, Worth My Time?

I recently purchased Windows Vista Ultimate for a planned installation. At this time, there are three-(3) machines that are physically available for this install -- none of these I own, but they I personally use for work primarily.

Knowledge of the ins and outs of Windows has been, for me, more of an on-the-job-training (OJT). At the moment I do not hold any MCP or MCSE. Not saying I have not tried to do so, but like so many things that could ultimately lead to self and professional advance ... work gets in the way. I digress. Let me say that since 1998 I have at least re-installed Windows (from '95 to XP) at least twice a year.

Why the reinstall? Thats easy enough. So many software companies, so many lacking features, so many new things to try. At that point years ago the use of VMware or Virtual PC was yet unheard of or costly. My initial foray into emulation was with BOCHS, by the way. :-)

Thankfully the company I work for is a Gold Partner. That said, as a researcher/analyst operating under limited resources it will happen sometimes that your only test machine is on production -- so be it. And if it crashes, thank goodness for the Volume License.

After almost a decade, here we are. I've purchased my own copy for my own use. Still procrastinating on installing it finally as I may want to test the performance on either of the machines I have -- Intel Mobile, Dual Xeon, or Core 2 Duo. Thats when I saw this problem.

Its unbelievable and it actually has pushed my conviction to make space for the learning curve of using Ubuntu. I also swear my next laptop is going to be a Macbook Pro with at least 4GB of RAM -- regardless of the OS. And shall I say, learning *BSD is not such a bad idea, anyhow.

Returning from a conference at Redmond last week, I'm still thinking. This new link shows promise. Perhaps I may install Windows Vista Ultimate after all. Why not?

But mind you, if at some point it doesn't allow me to reinstall when I really need to (ie. upgrade for mobo, chip, other hardware) then its "bye, bye, Blue Screens" and "hello Orange startup window!"