All this talk has me revisiting Ubuntu on my laptop. I'm on the test version right now.

I have a lot of stuff to back up, though, before I can try installing it for real.

It'* actually pretty quick for running off of RAM and a CD.....

And Badnit, it'* got a built in spell checker (or maybe that'* just Firefox)

How about installing the BootIt partition manager and using it to shrink down an existing partition? Then you can just dual boot.

False. got a brand new laptop from Dell, wireless card not recognized and was unusable. But was clearly configurable in the BIOS.

One year is not enough time to develop and test anything, especially when the operating system is a work in progress and moving target itself.

Do you want to spend the time and the money suffering with a less than mature product in the meantime? Surely Vista will be stable before support for XP is discontinued...

Vista will be figured out by the time I can afford a new computer, that'* for sure....

I run vista on the computer i just built....its pretty buggy, if you plan on doing much of anything you have to do something else just to get it to work...if your good with computers its not bad, it runs really smooth and is very pretty but ide wait untill sp1 or comes out for it!!! if your not so good with computers....[/img]

go OS X =)

Vista will be osbolete by the time I buy a new PC

MOS, keep that a secret will ya?

I did dual boot last time, and I didn't like it. I have XP on my desktop and The Missus'* laptop, so there'* no need to deal boot this relatively tiny HD

I don't see it as suffering at all. Since the latest updates, I have not had ONE. SINGLE. PROBLEM with this OS. Our latest technologies have expanded, things like patches/fixes, and service packs can be developed in response to an error/bug/virus/etc at a rate significantly faster than back in 2001 when XP premiered, or even 2004 when XP SP2 was released! So far the only buggy problems I've had are just simple lockups, and they were MAINLY attributed to incorrect plug ins in Firefox. Pretty much everything I do on this computer is related somehow to my browser, its the most important program on here, as it is for most people. You have to separate the difference between a buggy operating system and drivers/plug ins/programs/etc that were not DESIGNED for the OS. Thats like using the wrong fluid somewhere in a car, and then expecting it to respond the SAME way that the old fluid worked in the older thing that it originally worked in!

New plug ins, programs and drivers/hardware designed for this OS are coming out everyday. Once I got past the point of getting things right, I've discovered that this is a very stable OS. It is completely redesigned from XP, things work in a completely different way. I find that the way RAM is handled is much more efficient than previous versions of windows. There don't seem to be as many memory leaks, therefore enabling you to be more productive and not experience extended downtime from having to constantly restart your computer because a memory intensive program and the OS did not fully recover all the used memory.

as far as the most advertised features go, such as Aero, I find it completely and utterly useless. Yes, THAT is a memory hog. 100% I have it disabled and I honestly don't notice the difference at all except the fact that its alot faster now without it. It loads down the processor and taxes out the memory to an unbelievable level. If you're going to run it for everyday use, you need at LEAST 2GB of memory, if not, and you're just doing everyday tasks, 1GB is fine for minor multitasking and such. To give you an idea...it takes up an average of 256MB of RAM just to sit idle. Just by eliminating a few things, I went from starting up at 80 some % load to 44% load, or from 800+MB RAM load to 440MB. And I have not even had the computer to activate the paging even once since then.

My point is, give it a good chance to adapt, if its running this stable for me, I have no doubts it would be even better than XP for people who do nothing but check bc, read their e-mail, browse the internet and run messenger programs. Its JUST as good if not better than XP.

And I've only experienced one program that would not install because of it being too old, and that was Diskeeper. Other than that, EVERYTHING has worked flawlessly, INCLUDING MS Office 2k3, all messenger programs, etc. Its all good. And for any of you out there who are reading this thread and have not tried it yet and are happy with XP, well thats great, then stick with XP, theres NO problem with that, my point was, is that if you are CURRENTLY buying or building a new computer, go with Vista to ensure that you would be able to achieve full compatibility and functionality instead of going with older hardware and XP.

I hope that all made sense. No sleep/lack of sleep does a brain NO good

I say go with Vista, because its cheaper to buy XP now. This way when Vista sp1 gets released you can load it and upgrade w/o have to spend $200 (and UP)