2.8 ghz dual core processer with 3 gig of memory and a 600 meg hard drive. Block up poper stops mose stuff, this is a late model top of the line machine! Vista DOES run smooth, rarely gives a problem, very stable, very smooth. Awesome hardware specs, this thing should run so fast it would leave black marks between corners, and yet, it aint 'that fast'. My XP machine, with similiar hardware specs, is clearly faster overall!
Like I said, things I DON'T like about Vista, compared to a COMPARABLE hardware spec machine running XP:
Slower to boot. File and Folder manipulation (copying, moving, looking, editing, etc.) is more clumsy with Vista than with XP. Some of this has to do with 'security issues' to keep you from 'doing bad stuff' to your files/folders, which also means you can't do 'good stuff' either.
When it comes to 'gaming' Vista is just TO dang slow in general. Vista machine 'hangs' on occasion running Call of Duty in single player mode. That NEVER happens on my XP machine. Vista is much slower to 'hook' to games online, XP machine means I'm usually the first one on the battle field.
I bought my son a new Dell 17" laptop, top of the line killer maching. Check this out, you could ONLY GET XP on the top of the line models! The less expensive machines were Vista only. Now think about that, the expensive business machines you can get with XP or Vista, but the cheaper consumer models were Vista only. Things that make you go, Hmmmmmm....