Windows Vista - any nice-to-know-about features?

[Bob]

My new computers, which I'm expecting just after the weekend, both come shipped with Windows Vista Home Premium. To this date my only experience with Vista has been a handful of times when some less computer-knowledgeable friends/family have asked for help with some basic stuff. And I must say: it wasn't a pleasant experience. But Dell won't deliver XP anymore, so I didn't have much of a choice...

I do plan on dual-boot Kubuntu on both of them, but still I'll probably use some time to familiarize myself with Vista. So my question to you is then as follows: are there any nifty must-know/nice-to-know/cool-to-know features or tricks new to Vista for someone who are only experienced with XP?

I have been googling a bit around and did find some random stuff:
http://www.winvistaclub.com/f21.html
http://www.cyber-knowledge.net/blog/2006/09/21/5-windosws-vista-secrets-you-must-know/

But I'm sure you folks have lots of nice things to share here

[T-Bag]

Start Menu searching is a huge step forwards. Impossible to live without once you're used to using it. I can't remember the last time I actually browsed through my start menu.

It's not such a huge leap overall. Windows 7 is going to make far more changes than Vista ever did. The biggest problem with Vista is when it came out the majority of people didn't have good enough computers to run it properly, and the hadn't added support for some old programs so running some programs was a really pain (often do-able but far harder than it ever should be). Add to that the list of features they decided mention and not add in the end and the negativity from all that has hung over and means people don't like the OS even though they're not really sure why.

Most features like Readyboost don't get used, but searching, gadgets (I don't use them), DX10, New version of Paint, New folder views all come in handy.

[smilodon]

Another big early problem was lack of driver support which is now mostly fixed. Apart from the comments T-Bag made and that it's a bit prettier than XP there's not much to mention.

[Bob]

Start Menu searching is a huge step forwards. Impossible to live without once you're used to using it. I can't remember the last time I actually browsed through my start menu.

For this kind of feature (both searching and quick-launching of programs) I have always used Google Desktop (disabled those annoying gadgets, defaulting to program launch instead of search etc) - and yes, also impossible to live without once you're used to using it. How good is the new and improved search in Vista compared to Google Desktop? Is it still worth installing it?