My 15 month old Acer laptop has Windows Vista on it and - overall - it has worked well. At least, it has since since I increased the system RAM from 512 megabytes to 1,536 megabytes.
I also own a Microsoft VX-3000 webcam. I bought that soon after I got the laptop as it was more or less the only mainstream webcam that has Vista support. The version I installed was v1.3. In the LifeCam software, there is a menu item that purports to check for software updates. It always says there aren't any. It lies. If I go to Microsoft's web site, I find that v1.4 is available and has been for a while.
Vista - by default - updates things. Sure, you can turn it off and orphan your system forever if you want. That makes no sense in the long run, though.
I found tonight one of the more recent Vista updates has broken the Flash video capture function in a web browser and it is now not possible to do live-video captures to YouTube. Ok, I can record a video via LifeCam, and render it via Windows Movie Maker. I have to, as LifeCam *.wmv files always have the sound out of sync unless you re-render them.
Updates to Vista have been my biggest problem. Things keep breaking.....then they may be fixed....then they break again. I have lost and regained the sound on my external headphone jack many times over the past 15 months in Vista-dom. Every time I boot Vista up, I can't be sure everything will work the way it did when I shut it down.
Ubuntu Linux, which I paid nothing for, has been far more reliable and runs much better on less hardware. But I want excellent video editing software....and that's what's driving my desire for an Apple iMac. Soon.
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