I am aware that when Vista was first released it was full of bugs and was very nonsupporting for Drivers. I was wondering if it has been fixed up at all by this time since it has been out for quite a while now. Also, which Operating System is better for gaming at this time, Windows Vista or XP? A final question I have is that of the worthiness of Vista, is it worth it to buy the Ultimate Edition, or what? If I'm planning on using the computer for Web and Image Design, as well as Hardcore Gaming what Edition should I seek?

I am using windows vista service pack 1 right now along with 5 other operating systems (hexa-booting) in my AMD machine.

I have used the beta/first release of vista. My motherboard is an Asus M2n32-SLI vista Edition. All the drivers were compatible in the beta version, except one. The
screen duo gadget's driver is the problem, it only works fine in XP. Lately, I installed the vista SP1 on my AMD PC - everything works fine! almost all necessary drivers were pre-installed already! Vista is a DirectX 10 support-ready for quality graphics.

Most hardware vendors should have produced Windows Vista compatible drivers by now. However, you should check with the vendor whether Windows Vista drivers are available for that hardware.

In regard to the editions of Windows Vista, I suggest you go with Windows Vista Home Premium, which has Media Center included in it. I do not suggest you buy Windows Vista Ultimate unless you want the business features that are available in Windows Vista Ultimate or are after the Ultimate extras, which at the moment isn't worth a mention. Your last choice after that is Windows Vista Business, which contains the business features but lacks features available in the Home editions such as Media Center.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what version of Windows Vista your running as long as your software applications for web and image design work on Windows Vista. If you have the money, you would probably get Windows Vista Ultimate, which after all as all the available features of Windows Vista. However, I must note that some Adobe applications do not work on Windows Vista Home Basic, so you should not buy that edition.

Vista drivers have come a long way and are easily obtainable for most current hardware. The release of SP1 also has helped with many of Vista's growing pains, however if you're asking will Vista perform as well as XP with most games, the answer is going to be NO. Even with SP1, Vista generally runs games slower on a hole than XP with either SP2 or the newly release SP3. (Caution on SP3, it has shown to result in system crashes with some AMD hardware configurations). If you have over 2GB of memory, a top of the line cpu and sub-system, the best you'll get is Vista to run about the same speed as XP, it will never run faster.

If you're a gamer and want the absolute highest frame rates, you're still going to want to stick with XP if you're thinking about building a new box or formatting the drive and reinstalling the O/S. Just finished wiping Vista off a pretty high end dell for my wife's son and installation a copy of XP in its place. He's much happier and Elder Scrolls no longer drops to the desktop every few minutes.

Windows® Vista is a high-end OS. Lets go to the basics: why do we use an Operating System (OS)? To gracefully interact with our hardware and provide a baseline for our software to allow them do things we want to with the help of the hardware. Have a glance at the 'Minimum Requirements' for using Windows® Vista. As Darasen has rightly quoted in this topic,

QUOTE(Darasen)

Bare minimum in Microsoft parlance means that the PC will start, eventually. Realistically Vista will not run with the aforementioned specs.

So lets put it straight:Windows® Vista uses much of your hardware to run itself, leaving little more, 'leftovers', for your games, applications. Well, suppose you do have that high-end hardware config, allowing you to run Windows® Vista & leaves much for your 'hardcore gaming', then as GeorgeT quoted,

QUOTE(GeorgeT)

the best you'll get is Vista to run about the same speed as XP, it will never run faster.

Bottom line: If you're happy using your current PC with Windows® XP, then its the best you can get. Windows® Vista is only feasible if you plan to upgrade your hardware & meet with those specs, which also will give you just the same performance as on WIndows® XP, nothing more! So much for Windows® Vista??

I've been using vista home premium for a while now and I quite happy about it. It has a lot of features and tricks I do miss in XP (like that new explorer and startup menu) but it also has a lot of features I realy dislike (like UAC, Aero, ...). Driverwise I haven't had many problems, but that's probably because it came pre-installed on my laptop (I can't install it on my main pc due to a lack of soundstorm-compatibility).
Speedwise it isn't faster as XP, but it isn't slower either (as long as you have at least 2Gb of memory, but I guess a hard-core gamer has at least 2Gb of memory ). Some things (like network overview) starts a bit slower tough ...
As a hard-core gamer I'd go for XP since a lot of games don't run decently on Vista (yet). The only thing you'll miss is DirectX 10 support, but for what I've heard it's not that much of a miss .