1. Amazing looking interface.

Windows XP proved that operating systems didn't have to be a series of flat grey boxes, but the brighter blue and green was deemed a “Fisher-price look” by many. To make things worse, it's now an aging Fisher-price look. Evan washable plastic doesn't last forever.

Vista. The Aero interface manages to be both eye-catching and unobtrusive. Much of this is down to the transparency effects on the window borders and menus – you can now see exactly what's where on the desktop. And the frosted look gives it a futuristic feel, but without getting in the whole bunch of new effects, such as Flip3D which shows every running application in a scrollable 3D stack of windows. You can actually see movies and games still cheerfully playing back, but in a thumbnail form.

2. Powerful photo gallery.

Despite how popular digital photography quickly became, Windows XP's treatment of images was limited. You had the option to view, copy or print new pictures when you plugged in a memory card, but anything more required costly third party software unless you wanted to edit photos with the basic Windows paint.

Photos are now treated like VIPs. The core function of the new Windows Photo Gallery tools should be pretty clear, but it's the new way that you can arrange things that makes it great, organising photos by tags you assign to them rather than their location. So, you could tag a bunch of related photos scattered across your hard drive "wedding anniversary" and find them listed under that, rather than only being able to group them together if they are all in the same folder. There are also some handy fixing tools, plus the option to burn pictures to disk or upload them to the web.

3. Very fast file finding facilities.

Windows XP's search function was rather slow and had become outdated. The task of finding a specific document or whatever else you might be looking for required Windows XP to physically trawl the entire computer, which took ages and tended to throw up loads of entirely irrelevent system files.

The new operating system has a constantly updated database, which keeps tabs on every file as it's created, changed or deleted. Type in a search term (filename, sender of a specific email, name of a song, or about a million other possibilities), and the results will be presented instantly, evan as you type.

4. Top class gaming.

In Windows XP, there was management of games, they were treated as common or garden applications, with no help at all with the complexities of running them, and each had its own subfolder in the start menu, rather than them all being in one place. And the fact that Windows XP was released long before the graphics card market became quite as complicated as it is now meant that it was often frustratingly difficult to work out whether a given game would even play on your system. Additionally, PC games were beginning to trail in the dust of the next generation consoles.

DirectX the part of Windows that handles games was upgraded to version 10 at the end of 2006, and is exclusively available with Windows Vista. It means improved graphics in recent releases (take a look at the likes of Crysis, World in conflict or Alan Wake, and you'll see the demonstrated in glorious colour) and better performance for older games. In DX10's wake, condoles look like the day before yesterday's news. Windows Vista also offers safe passage through the perplexing maelstrom of working out whether a given game will run on your PC. The performance Index tool checks out what hardware is in your system, then assigns a number to it that you can compare to the one on the PC games box. If your PC's number is equal or better, you can plat it kind of like a rigged lottery, but with better graphics.

5. Built in Media Center.

Everyone liked the Windows Media Center interface, but no one liked having to buy an expensive special version of Windows XP on top of the one they already owned if they wanted to use it or worse, having to buy a whole new PC, because Media Center wasn't technically speaking, available on its own.

Winows Media Center is component part ot the Windows Vista Home premium and Ultimate editions. Its advanced from your own sofa television recording, scheduling and time shifting capabilities mean that, for many of us, all other form of recording TV and movies will be obsolete. It's also a great way of managing a bewildering huge music and photo library, again all from sedentary comfort.

6. Speed.

Windows XP became noticeably slower as time went by and you accrued more applications and files, eventually requiring either a complete reinstall or a hardware upgrade to get it to perform as it originally did. This was either complicated and time consuming, or else expensive or both.

Windows Vista offers a way to eke a bit more life out of a labouring machine, and all without taking the side off of the case. ReadyBoost means an instant adrenaline infusion, and all it takes is plugging in a ReadyBoost compatible flash drive or digital camera memory card. Because these can read and write data very quickly, they can act as surrogate memory, meaning the PC can do most things at once without griding to a halt. It like using steroids, but without the expence, health risks or any fear of being banned from the Olympics.

7. Easy Set Up.

Windows XP's set up was rather time consuming and unnecessarily complicated and it couldn't even be left alone to finish ocne you'd started it off, because it paused repeatedly to ask you tedious questions about languages and networking.

With Windows Vista, you insert DVD, press Install, turn brain off. The set-up process for Windows Vista is no more taxing than installing a game, and it doesn't stop halfway through to ask an asinine question about whether you want to use pounds or euro symbols.

8. Parental Controls.

In Windows XP, there was no way to prevent children from playing violent video games or looking at unsuitable websites (newspapers carried regular reports of how easy it was for criminals to communicate with children online). unless, that is, you splashed out on some expensive extra software that was often of debatable merit. The previous version of Internet Explorer did allow some modification of what web content was and wasn't allowed, but it was still complicated to do and very limited in its scope.

9. Handy Sidebar.

Because it pre-dated the widespread use of broadband internet, Windows XP didn't anticipate just how much online information we would ultimately need to manage on a daily basis. It required you to laboriously load multiple applications if you wanted to quickly access everyday information such as scheduling, contacts, inboxes, headlines from your favourite websites and weather reports. This was time consuming, and required you to manage an irritating number of windows.

With Windows Vista, all the essentials (and plenty of entertaining inessentials) of the modern computing experience have been crammed into one neat little column on the desktop. Headlines from websites, your email inbox, the local weather, a TV guide, a photo gallery, a notepad, sudoku, pretty much everything that you care to mention has either already had a "gadget" made for it, or will do very soon.

10. Secure Safety.

Windows XP contained some serious securit problems. And while they were regularly fixed, you still had to apply large downloads to prevent some hacker remotely rifling throught your system or causing it to fail. Not to mention the need for third party applications if you wanted to stop your system being overrun with spyware, mailware and viruses every time you went online.

With Windows Vista security is a major focus this time round. As well as being designed in a fundamentally different way to Windows XP meaning that the most significant vulnerabilities simply no longer exist, Windows Vista keeps a beady eye open for online threats at all times, giving you a gentle nudge if it spots anything out of the ordinary. The new security center, meanwhile, documents just what's been going on. It can give your system a thorough scour for anything that shouldn't be there, then restore it to squeaky clean status.