This Vista Upgrade Won't Hurt

“The upgrade went smoothly, but dealing with such a slow system day after day [before I bought a new graphics card] was like torture,” Clayton recalls. “I was close to uninstalling Vista and going back to XP.”

Of course, it’s hard to stay calm when you’re exasperated. “Many users have expressed frustration with Vista mostly because software developers and hardware manufacturers haven’t kept up with Vista development,” Barnett says. But users are also frustrated because learning new ways of doing things can be a royal pain in the neck.

“I was a little frustrated when a couple of my older applications and games didn’t work in Vista—I couldn’t find updated versions, so I basically just gave up,” recalls Scott. “But what really started to irk me was the number of times I found myself wondering, ‘why [on earth] did they move that?’ I bought a book to relearn everything.”

According to the experts, you can keep anxiety under control in the first 30 days by reading up on Windows Vista problems—which you happen to be doing right now—and approaching these issues with an open mind. “With patience, the minor problems currently experienced by Vista users can be solved,” says Barnett.

On top of all that, there are so many features that have changed from XP to Windows Vista that users can feel overwhelmed and out of sorts. New applications like the Aero interface, the taskbar thumbnails, the Sidebar and Flip 3D might be cool, but if you can’t find the things you need, your frustration level can skyrocket. “There are people who really like Vista and those who are not thrilled with it,” notes McCracken. “Microsoft changed a lot of stuff—not always for reasons that are obvious—and many folks who were comfortable with the old ways find Vista a bit jarring.”