Vista NO MORE!!!!!!

Glad you like XP I personally enjoy Vista plenty, just like the way it looks to be honest but they also make some networking jobs much easier as well which is handy.

I have set up a Dual boot now, so I can play with 64 Bit Vista and see how it goes.

But really I am willing to wait for the next OS and hope MS gets it right this time

when is the next OS supposed to debut?

late 2009 or early 2010

Errm...

I have no problems with Vista and Acronis True Image, or iTunes, or really anything else for that matter.

Were you using the stock (original) Dell install of Vista?

Errm...

You do realize that your problems stemmed not from Vista, but from the craptastic Dell install of Windows, right?

Never had an issue with a fresh Vista install (5 times now).

Vista is fine, never had any issues on my notebook running Vista. If you do a restore using the restore partition that is installed from the factory, then run the decrapifier program that is available on the web, that takes care of a lot of the junk. Then use add and remove programs to eliminate the rest you don't need. Do a registry search and remove the junk, run services.msc from the command prompt and get rid of un-needed services and you are good to go. If you don't like UAC, turn it off. Other than that, there are numerous web sites that can help you tweak Vista and remove any other bloat you may have.
Vista runs super fast on my lappy and is much more stable that all the other XP systems I own, (five others). It seldom ever crashes and it ain't slow by any standards. I vote for Vista...and by the way, I don't overclock or run any drivers other that what Dell recommends.

There is no solution to "clean up" Dell's stock install of Windows. Reinstall, it's faster, and more beneficial.

I disagree, so thats my opinion and you can keep yours.

Dell ships their computers with an operating system with old drivers, tons of crapware, and completely unoptimized. No amount of registry cleaning and uninstalling will get rid of that. Sure, you can uninstall alot of it, update drivers, and do SOME optimization, but I'd bet everything I own on the fresh, clean and optimized install of Windows will be more stable and better performing than a Dell install of Windows that's merely been "cleaned".

I do not disagree with a clean install, in fact I prefer it. All I am saying is it can be done and I am satisfied with what did and it runs without any flaws. I did update all the drivers, in fact I use this site to gather the info and drivers that are the best. A clean install will wipe the drive of the restore partition which may be of some future use to someone who intends to sell or upgrade to a newer model. I like to keep things original if possible and I learned on my Gen 2 laptop that overwriting the original Dell factory partition would make it un-usuable in the future and there is no turning back. That is why I prefer to tweak and tweak some more to get to where I am. Hell, it doesn't matter what version of Windows you use, tweak is the name of the game. I been doing this crap since dos days with dos 5 all the way up to Vista, I have a copy of them all including 95, 98, 98se,me,xp, xpmedia center, vista mac leopard, and they all need tweaked. So that is where I am coming from. And incidentally, I do a clean install on all my other systems that don't have the restore feature.

I have 3 systems running on Vista Ultimate 32bit versions.

I wouldn't say they run perfect, but I don't have problem like OP does.

vista on my e1705 wasnt a good experience for me (pre sp1), but after using a laptop that was designed with vista, (m1730) and after sp1, i actually really like it. i havent had one lockup, or one program crash surprisingly, and the only difficult thing about doing a clean install was the manual installation of that one driver.

but this thing is huge, its a love hate thing, i miss the form factor of my e1705. i think i might get an ultraportable for notes and stuff (asus eeepc? or maybe that new dell ultraportable [Dell E])

All those talks of xp/vista got me wanting to give vista another go after one year.
I've got my lappy one year ago with vista preinstalled.
It was crap, total crap!
The audio drivers were shitty - i kept hearing crackling noises and a bunch of other stuff that i don't remember now.

I feel that vista with sp1 and matured drivers might give a different experience.

I think i'll give it another try.

I have been using Vista (32 and 64) on all of my machines (3 desktops, a 9300, 1710, and now a 1730) since Vista launched. It's been a somewhat bumpy ride, but not that bad compared to what I have been reading online. I have gotten quite used to it and I like it.

However, this thread inspired me to install XP Pro SP3 (slipstreamed) on my 1730. The reason I did this was I was getting craptacular SLI performance with Vista 64 and some of the L2VG drivers. The framerates were okay, but whenever I launched a game the screen would flash to black about 6 or 7 times before settling in the game. Just too unstable for me. I tried a few different drivers and they were all the same. I wonder if this is why Dell has yet to put out official 64 bit drivers (at least not as of about 2 weeks ago), but I digress....

XP Pro SP3 absolutely has my 1730 purring. The benches were average (I think I pulled 11,400 in 3DMark06). But now when I start a game, it just starts. No more annoying flashes to black. I'm using the Dell Performance Driver.

Since there is also a Dell Performance Driver for Vista 32, I am going to try that again with SP1 slipstreamed. I am hoping it performs as well as XP because I really want to stay with Vista. I'll probably do that tonight. Will send an update.

It's really a shame about Vista 64. I had all of the issues worked out except that one, and I just didn't feel like installing 150 different video drivers. And I really wanted to use my full 4GB of RAM