I have a top box. The video card alone is a BFG GF7900GTO
.... and I can tell that Vista is using every resource it possibly
can. The install is going fairly well, but F-secure antivirus
bluescreened it, and I had to roll back and uninstall it. Even
then I could tell that some damage to the OS had occurred.
The side bar was darker for one ?? Right now, I'm installing
a bunch of apps that run well under XP:
MS Office Pro
Adobe 7
EZ Antivirus .. which is corrupting, and I'm in que to the tech.
Several engineering apps .. EES, TK Solver, AutoCAD.
EES is an oldie .. and will only run as a W2k - 256 color app.

Vista would not ID my modem, so I'm going to force XP driver.
The nForce4 sound driver worked fine. Network is fine.

Also, like Mike saw .. Vista can't partition or format a drive
correctly to save its ass. I partitioned the 160 gig SATA drive
to install Vista on a 60 gig partition .. .leaving 100 gigs not
partitioned. Vista promptly installed itself on the 100 gig
partition, and ignored the 60 gig. ????????

Later .. if AutoCAD works .. I'm going to install a few games,
and run game benchmarks to compare against same in XP Pro

johns