IT'S faster, more user-friendly, has a host of new and improved features and looks fantastic. Yes, the solitaire game included with Vista is by far and away the best Microsoft has ever produced.

It is one of the features that shows the benefit of the lengthy and expensive overhaul the company has performed on Windows since the last new version, XP, was released in 2001.

There are improvements, of that there is no doubt. Vista is more intuitive and is easier to navigate. The desktop is much tidier and, thanks to a much improved desktop search feature, is likely to remain much tidier as you accumulate more files. It has never been as easy to organise your data with Windows.

Browsing folders is a much more enjoyable experience.

A helpful preview function shows you a small snapshot of what each document and file looks like before you open it, which is particularly handy if your folders tend to become cluttered with reams of Power Point presentations and PDF files. Vista will make life a lot easier and enable you to find the right file much faster than you ever could have with XP.

The security features are greatly enhanced and Vista benefits from the introduction of parental controls, which allow parents much greater flexibility to restrict access to certain programs and block out certain web access privileges for young children.

Aesthetically, too, Vista is a treat. The desktop dashboard with clock and built-in RSS feeds is certainly a welcome touch.

It's hard to escape the conclusion, though, that many of the best touches simply pay homage to what other software makers have been doing in the years since XP arrived.

The search function won't be particularly impressive to anyone who already has Google's desktop search, Apple's OSX offered the slick dashboard functions two years ago and the improvements to Internet Explorer merely bring Vista's internet browser back in line with Mozilla's Firefox.

Backwards compatibility, despite Microsoft's protestations to the contrary, is still an issue. We had difficulty installing Irish Broadband's Go! wireless modem which, for some reason, Vista seemed to take an instant dislike to. A first attempt to install the latest version of Grisoft's popular Anti-Virus Guard, meanwhile, crashed the review laptop.

Microsoft has made much of the flavours of Vista that are available, including pareddown versions for those not willing to spend thousands on a souped-up desktop or notebook. Just as well, because it is a hungry beast. Even on a powerful Vista-capable Dell Latitude D620, the Ultimate edition of the operating system did slow down noticeably when asked to juggle several tasks.

For best results, we suspect the only option is to buy a new computer with the software pre-installed rather than hoping that your current machine - Vista-capable or not - is up to the demands.

That would be an awful lot of trouble and expense to go to for an operating system that, although an improvement on its predecessor, still feels unfinished. Given the length of the wait we had the right to expect better.