What's your top 10 favorite things about Vista?

No bashing, whining, complaining or other negativity about Vista or such PLEASE!

If you don't like it, then you're welcome to hit CTRL-F4, or to click the "X" on the current browser tab (there's plenty of other places to say Vista sucks if that's what you wanna do...)

Here's 10, in no particular order:

1. The new file copy dialog
2. The new task manager and perfmon
3. The new audio mixer (no more struggling with apps screwing with wave or master volume!)
4. The new MMC snap ins
5. The new installer (the old XP one dating from the early NT days was REALLY overdue)
6. Windows update not using IE (no need to use IE anymore ever! )
7. The new explorer (all kinds of little things, like drive space usage bar graphs, F2 to rename doesn't select extension, etc)
8. MUI (better/avail on windows update/works even for speech recognition, etc)
9. New apps like the photo gallery, or the ones that were revamped (e.g. games)
10. IIS7 (no need for expensive windows 2003 or 2008 to have the latest IIS to develop & test web apps)

crahak - my list is pretty similar to yours... but there's one in particular that does it for me - insta-search!!!

This one goes to 11:

1. Its not XP (XP is starting to feel more and more like it was pieced together from spare parts lying around the MS junkyard)
2. The new file copy dialog (even though i use teracopy)
3. The new audio mixer (why was this not in 2k/XP?)
4. File-open/Browse dialogs don't assume everyone is running at 640*480
5. The renaming of random things that occurs in every OS upgrade makes sense this time. MS finally decided to remove "My " from the beginning of everything, "Documents and Settings" is now "Users", etc. (However the "Network and Sharing Center" sounds like a kindergarten teacher came up with it)
6. Breadcrumb menu in explorer
7. Open file location on shortcuts (saves 1 click and can be done in 2k/XP but nice to have it by default)
8. F2 rename doesnt select extension, new shortcuts/file copies are suffixed instead of prefixed
9. System tray clock/calendar popup (systray seems smarter about what is active/inactive too)
10. WIM Imaging
11. Much improved icon support (but still has a way to go IMO)

Alright, I'm going for round 2 then!

1. Zxian's post: I had indexing turned off, but I gave it a shot. Once the indexes are built, it's VERY convenient finding anything system-wide in < 1 sec. The day the extra 60MB overhead is too much, I'll get some more RAM (@30$/2GB, 60MB is less than a dollar's worth, and it saves me a LOT of time looking around for a file)
2. geek's point #5 -- not naming everything "my this" and "my that", and "Users" is a LOT quicker to type than "Documents and Settings". Nice for sure.
3. the sidebar with some nice addons e.g. weatherbug, the clock, the notes, app launcher (think quicklaunch, but with enough space), etc
4. With indexing enabled, the new start menu is kind of nice (press start, type some 2 or 3 letters and it'll find the app -- good for the stuff buried deeply, or menus with a very large number of entries)
5. the new and very useful new cmd line utils that come with it (e.g. mklink), the upgrades to existing commands (e.g. dir /al), and some of them being there by default instead of an addition (e.g. icacls)
6. ClearType enabled by default, and it doesn't run at 640x480 on first boot, then nags to go up to 800x600, to then have to change it yet again.
7. better driver set in the standard install disc (XP's is fairly dated, pretty much requires driverpacks, especially for mass storage adapters), most stuff works out of the box now
8. The lack of all the old crappy and outdated apps that comes by default on XP (MSN, Windows Messenger, Oulook Express, etc)
9. the nicer/better networking (ipv6 out of the box, nicer setup, has auto RWIN scaling, etc)
10. very good WMI improvements, like being able to know how many Physical and Logical CPUs (2k or XP lacked this badly, it was kind of a pain "guessing" if was a P4 with HT, or 2 CPUs)

I like the 11 reference, so I gotta go "one more" there as well:

1. Instant Search (especially Windows Search 4.0 upgrade + sidebar gadget - speed AND control!!!!) - once that index builds, it's fantastic
2. Aero Glass - yay eye candy that doesn't look like lego blocks for a change
3. An OS actually built for x64 natively
4. Dynamic memory management - you won't notice it, but your apps do!
5. The ability to plug in a camera or sd card, and import only the photos changed on that card since the last sync (woohoo!)
6. Superfetch/Readyboost - about time
7. Forcing OEMs to actually ship boxes with 2+GB of RAM finally - it's not 2001 anymore, RAM is cheap - sheesh!
8. Automatic disk defrag out of the box, preconfigured - keep those file systems running smoothly far longer
9. Wireless projector support (awesome if you use it)
10. 2-way firewall protection built-in - again, about time I had protection out of the box!
11. UAC - since Vista Home Premium upgrades for relatives and running low-rights, I haven't gotten calls for machines getting infected with anything malicious (I harped on my family members to PAY ATTENTION before entering in the admin password and clicking "OK" - it worked!!!)
12. Shift-Right-Click giving command prompt and copy path built into the explorer - had to hack to use those before, now they're inbox

oh god yes the instant search is the best!

And it's more than just that -- they not only made it 2-way, but they also combined XP's firewall, and the old IPsec policies dating from the win2k days, made it into one, and it's all configured using the same tool now (XP had 2 different things, both configured separately, and no outbound). And it all works, both on ipv4 and v6, right out of the box. And it has fancier filtering. It can be managed via GPO and all. HUGE improvements all-around here.


I'm being one-upped by everyone here I have to fix that!

31. Windows Photo Gallery Screensaver. Combined with some nice photos, it looks great on a nice LCD. Ppl are always like "look at that pic!"... It has nice features like showing photo (or not showing them) based on tags and ratings. I have a script scheduled to run everyday, changing the tags. You can also have it change mode between your favorite types (pan & zoom, album, etc), instead of using random which might use other types you don't like so much (look at the key named "Theme" in the same location).
32. Automatic self-defrag when the computer is idle (and when it needs it). About time! This way, people shouldn't have to even think about this anymore.
33. I have to steal cluberti's #12 from the next post. All kinds of small things like that, but it definitely adds up.
3. The reliability monitor seems like a very good way to check on how someone else's pc has been working. You see all the application/hardware/windows failures in one spot, with all the details, curves and all, plus install infos and such
35. IE's protected mode (if you use IE), making it much harder to get your PC all spyware'd up by letting someone else use it for 5 minutes, as well as DEP enhancements (especially on the x64 version) + ASLR which should make buffer overflow exploits mostly harmless (again, less malware hassles on clients/co-workers'/friends PCs and such). And Windows Service Hardening too (way more secure -- blocking possible attack methods like blaster used)
36. The nice new cleartype fonts (Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, Corbel, Nyala, Segoe, etc)
37. Better power saving options

I think I'm out of ideas for good now...

There's some other stuff that looks cool, but that I haven't tried or had a need for, like the mobility center for laptop users -- everything in one place (power, battery status, wifi, external displays, sync'ing, etc), offline files seems to have been improved a lot, new and actually useful backup utilities (like Complete PC Backup), remote assistance works thru NAT, and tons of little things like that, many of which we just seem to overlook. Seemingly, when you have the indexing turned on and such, you can even use it to do search remotely (the remote computer does the search)

Here are some of my reasons for liking Vista
sorry for breaking with the formatting...

SECURITY:

• Same kernel as Server editions
• UAC makes running as User more feasible
• Service Hardening
• IE7 in protected mode
• File/Folder Virtualization
• ASLR, DEP enforced

NETWORK:

• Next-Generation TCP/IP Stack (Native IPv6, Native Wireless, SMB2, SSTP)
• Windows Firewall with Advanced Security, IPSEC, NAP,
• RDP & RA improvements

Native X86-64

• Drivers exist!
• 4+ GB without PAE
• Kernel Patch Protection

GUI

• Can skip/rename files in use for copy/move operations
• DWM offloads alot of IO and CPU load to GPU and reduces GDI calls
• 256px compressed PNG for large icons
• Explorer Breadcrumbs, Windows Search integrated in toolbar
• Aero theme is good enough unlike default fisher price XP theme Luna
• Tray ballons stay on top of taskbar
• Time Calendar popup
• Improved DPI Support
• Open CMD here and Open file path integrated in shell

Deployment

• One answer file (XML)
• HAL independent
• Can inject drivers into image offline.
• WIM, SIM, ImageX, Sysprep are the norm

OTHER

• Improved Media Center, Games
• Comes with .NET Framework
• Supports AHCI
• Improved Reliability and Performance Monitor
• Users can burn discs using SPTI
• WinPE 2.x

OMG You guys have covered all major change...what should I write ??

only one thing...I wanna go with you ...