Having written the article "Why You Want Vista Now!" in our May 9 issue, I held my breath when I installed beta 2, fearing that after the OS gets hammered by as many as 2 million users beyond the usual set of testers, I'd have to eat my words. To my relief, this release largely lives up to my expectations. Sure, it's still beta code and not something to run on a production system. There are bugs and nuisances, it blue-screens sometimes when resuming from sleep, and compatibility isn't perfect. But there's a lot that's enticing, and increasingly, there are features I miss when I'm using XP.
The new Start menu is a winner. Its integrated search box lets me easily find programs, files, and documents including e-mails—I haven't yet needed to download the desktop-search tools I consider essential for XP. And I'm becoming accustomed to pressing the Windows key, typing a destination (like C:\users\john or www.pcmag.com), and immediately jumping there without explicitly launching an app.