Further to my post last week, I am pleased to announce I have now received my shiny new laptop running Vista Business. As promised I am going to share the experiences, both positive and negative, of the long awaited Vista OS (formerly know as Longhorn).

First of all we should take a look at the all new look and feel of Vista. Gone are the solid heavy window boxes of Windows XP and in comes ‘glass’. The borders of all windows now have an opaque glass effect, allowing you to see items in the background, and in doing so it gives the whole desktop a sense of depth and lightness.

Also new to Vista is Flip 3D, which is a very cool way of switching between different windows. If you're anything like myself running lots of different applications each with a number of different windows open, then Flip 3D looks like it might make life easier. However after the wow factor has worn off I think I will probably revert to using the “Alt” & “Tab” combination which provides a 2D version.

No major alterations have been made to the start menu, except for the addition of a search box (which I will review in a later post).

On the desktop there is the option to add gadgets, in a very similar manner to the Google Desktop functionality. At present I have a calendar, clock and of course my RSS news reader picking up all the latest snippets.

So, on the look and feel ratings, I give it a 4 out 5. Vista has taken a good step towards that of the Mac OS, however after all the years of development and missed release dates, I must admit I was expecting something more.

On the stability side I have decided to keep a ‘Blue Screen’ tally - which is currently sitting at 1 in 4 days.