Why I've moved from Vista to Ubuntu

I've been using Windows since it was battling for desktop supremacy with GEM in the early 90s. In the mid 90s I spent several years producing newspapers on Apple Macs. Since the late 90s I've dabbled with Linux, but there have always been compelling reasons to return to, or stick with, Windows. No more, for two reasons: Through all this time I have looked forward to each new version of Windows either because I expected it to be more stable, add better hardware support, or correct problems in some other way. Several weeks ago I took delivery of a brand, spanking, £1300-worth of notebook in the form of an Asus V1S desktop replacement. It's a lovely machine, if unwieldy. A quick tour of the stickers next to the keyboard reveals such delights as a SATA hard drive, GeForce 8600 GT graphics card with 512MB of video RAM, Core 2 duo processor and 1GB RAM. It also came with Vista which, after several weeks of concentrated use, has left me with numerous questions.

* Why is Vista so slow (part 1)? On a brand new £1300 notebook built (one would think) with Vista in mind, the operating system should fly, especially when no applications are running. Not so; it's a complete dog. It's so slow that applications often won't register that I've hit the space bar until I'm halfway through the next word. I'm a fast typer, but not that fast.

* Why is Vista so slow (part 2)? After tracking the ever increasing speeds of processors and computers for the past 15 years I'm left somewhat dismayed to see menu bar so sluggish, and finding myself waiting around for the OS to do the most simple of tasks.

* Why is Vista so slow (part 3)? I know, I know, I should by an extra 1GB. I would but for two reasons: First, I would have to buy a 2GB to upgrade to 2GB, and while I may contemplate doing so should I discover I *really* need that much memory for some application, I resent the thought of doing so just for the operating system. Operating systems should be light, run in the background and do everything they can to keep out of my way.