Well I do agree that there is way to many wasted resources with all the eye candy, I went and killed off half of the visual effects that it started with, IE the transparent taskbar. I have not run into any hardware problems as of yet, getting ready to install my BIOS update to run a little smoother. Windows Defender and UAC drove me insane for the first 5 mins minutes, untill I went and killed that crap off (Reminds me of the PC/MAC comercial, completely true) Im interested in trying out ReadyBoost, see if that lives up to the reviews, but unfortunelty my USB Key did not meet the performance req'ts, so gotta get a new one.
A bit dissapointed that Alcohol 120% wouldn't work with Vista though, I like that program, and had a hell of a time finding an AV and Firewall that would would, ended up for the time being just using Windows Firewall with Symantic AntiVirus Corporate.
I knocked off Superfetch for the time being seeing as in the system I installed too I only have the 1Gig RAM and superfetch fills it up to fast and slows me down a bit. Hrmmm well I think thats all I gotta say for it right now, If I see any improvement after my BIOS update, I'll hit back.