Here's an interesting article: Vista UI Is a 'Step Back' for Microsoft

For a moment, I thought someone must have an odd job measuring "the fluidity and/or reactivity of an operating system to commands." But then again, the time it takes from clicking on a menu to when it completely appears is measurable. It's just I haven't heard of someone actually having done it. Anyway, to be able to support statements like these, you have to have the timings and compared it with XP.

Here's the interesting conclusion. The eye candy that is Aero (new UI for Vista) is actually worse than Luna (new UI for XP when it came out) in terms of wasting time - in the 3 benchmarks measured - menu latency: 20% slower; common desktop tasks (opening a folder, deleting files, etc.): 14% slower; mouse precision: 30% worse.

The article did not mention XP had its own ways of wasting time for the sake of making things look "nicer." I have turned these off, namely the fade effect/scroll effect for menus and tooltips and the shadows under menus. They may add only a fraction of a second to the act of showing a menu but with an aging computer, with loads of crud in the background, the effect is more pronounced. It turns out the latency in Aero will be even more - 20% more.

I know these things are probably not that significant in the grand scheme of things. Vista is such a huge beast that quibbles like these can easily get lost in the discussion. But it should have been addressed. After all, Microsoft spent billions of dollars and 5 years to develop it. I was hoping to Vista will fix simple everyday XP irritations like spending forever to show the contents under Start-All Programs or the interminable wait for the context menu to appear when I do a right click in Windows Explorer just so I can create a new folder.

I was considering Vista for when the time comes to get a new PC. But things are getting stacked against it. Higher cost, higher power consumption with Aero, incompatibility with my software and peripherals, etc. And now this. Maybe I can still find a vendor who sells XP OEM with a Vista upgrade coupon.