another for Newegg. I have been running Vista on all of my machines for ~2 years and have had no issues, which is better than I can say for XP home, but that's just me. But I do love Media Center.
I also agree with Dave on building one's own. I have built a couple of bullet proof machines now.
All that said, Microsoft will continue to support XP for about 5 more years, and then it will cease.

 

Vista here on 3 desktops and 3 laptops all is fine, never really had an issue with it. I run 6 machines and all have vista. Although i do tweak it. XP was a nightmare for me especially on returning my laptops from standby. With vista i just shut the lid than open it back up type in my password and its on again.

 

windows 7 is now in release candidate status.
so consider it final tweaking.
so far the only issue I'm aware of is it gets funky if you use the power saving sleep mode.
it's wakes up like my 20 year old, kinda grumpy and takes a while to get working right after waking.
but disable the sleep mode and it's been rock solid.

it may be slightly faster than XP and is very efficient with memory.
I fully expect to be able to put it on a netbook this fall, it's that good.

The 64 bit driver issue if you go that way will have issues with legacy devices, printers scanners cameras and such.

32 bit W7 doesn't have most of those issues.
the only device I haven't gotten working is my garmin bike GPS,
but that was on the beta version and I think I screwed up the install.
I haven't had a chance to try it again.

and my install of an 8 year old cad program didn't work so hot, but I'm not shocked by that revelation either.

The 64 bit OS doesn't buy much in the way of speed it gets you bigger memory though.

a 32 bit OS can only address 4 Gbytes of memory total.
given that things like video cards etc use upwards of 1 Gbyte that only leaves 3 Gbytes left for system memory.
a 64 bit OS is effectively unlimited i.e. 16 giga-giga bytes of memory or
16,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of memory.
a lot new machines have hardware support for 24 Gbytes of memory.
hence they need the 64 bit OS.

 

looks like im sticking with vista for a while....

 

I don't keep up with the new stuff but I was under the impression that 500GB was the new norm for hard drives.

 

dave, i understand that RAM (working memory) and processor speed is more impt than hard drive size.....500MB being enough for a lifetime of storaqe for most people...unless you're storing serious high res photos or other similar files.

the various opinions on this thread about VISTA are where i am really confused....since folks seem to be either pro or con....rarely do they say "well, it's OK until the better OS comes along...."

in any event, i'm 90% sure to buy a new PC on Wednesday afternoon...b/c the next week is when i have time to deal with making the changeover: purchase....data migration.....software installation, etc.

 

Jerry, I presume you ment 500GB (not MB) for the hard drive. When it comes to RAM, I'd say 3GB is the norm. As for VISTA, I think XP continues to enjoy a better reputation than it

 

fixed typo....thanks! now off to PC shopping in a half hour

 

I know people who consider Vista an improvement over XP. They all have fast machines with plenty of memory (4Gb minimum), and they have all taken the time to learn the ins and outs of the OS and to tune it to their needs. It does offer better security and some nice features.

If you primarily use your PC to brows the web and maybe creat a document or spreadsheet now and then, you will probably be happier with XP. But if your are a more intense user of development software, applications heavy on 3D graphics, multimedia apps, etc, then Vista may well be worth the trouble. Think of it as having to master i-drive in order to use all the capabilities of a BMW M-5.

 

Or if you like memory leaks, buffer overruns, and other annoying anomalies that Microsoft can't fix stick with one of the Vista flavors over XP Pro's known shortcomings and wait for Windows 7.

Jerry-

Sorry but I don't make recommendations to friends about home computer buys. I hope you chose wisely and have minimal issues.