On my Windows box I am running 64bit Vista and mostly like it. Quad core machine with 8GB RAM. I do some video editing and find the extra memory handy, and it's nice for audio editing too. The thing I don't like about Vista is the weird layout and behavior in Windows Explorer - like when there are WAV files in a directory it gives me Genre and Artists columns, etc., rather than the regular Type and Size, etc. I'm guessing I can customize it, just haven't bothered yet
I did some web searches and found that despite the much publicized Vista hating, most power users really like it, which makes sense. Software developers, serious digital music enthusiasts, we tend to invest in machines that can really handle Vista, and everyday I am becoming more and more appreciative of how stable it is for my development tools than XP was.
But yes, Explorer seems to be the most common sticking point on adapting to Vista, and it is really the only aspect I have found moderately annoying.
It is easy to change the format to show you the more meaningful information you want like file sizes, dates and types. Just go to Properties and click the Customize Tab. Then change the folder type template to "Documents". This will give you the key view parameters - size, type, date. That is all you get with the standard Documents template, but for me at least it is all I really need. That is enough info for me to dump a couple of days of masters off my 722, and be able to sort them into show folders based on the timestamp, delete wav tracks after encoding etc.
It is kind of irritating that you have to do it each time, but once you set up a main folder for a show, just go ahead and create all the subfolders even if you are not ready for them yet. (I create a top level folder per show, then put masters, edits, and the final tracks in their own subfolders). The top level folder will give you the option to apply the same style to all subfolders so at least you only do it once.
I would like to just turn off that whole "Media" template at the machine level once and for all, I consider it useless. I know there is no option to just do it for the root drive but have not yet had the time to research if/how it can be done.