VISTA - what do you experts think?

Answer Basically what you have now and maybe some more RAM.

As for Vista it's OK for Home Users maybe but I personally hate being a Paying Beta Tester which is what the current Home Users are.

When it comes to business systems it's currently not suitable as there are still numerous Applications that are not supported issues with drivers suitable for Vista and problems with HDD formatted on different OS that are unreadable. All of that currently makes the Vista Offerings unsuitable for Business currently.

Not to mention problems with Networking that require radical different procedures to allow them to work nearly as well as XP currently is doing.

Personally I'll leave the Home Users to test it and work the bugs out before I even consider rolling it out in a Business environment. It's really great to have such a vast pool of [b]Beta Testers[/b] out there to fix the problems that have been created by the coding. :D

BTW I've had the production version of Vista Ultimate since November 2006 and I'm still to permanently install any of the licenses that I have. Maybe when the Quad Cores become more common in Desktops.

Col

As Smeg said, for a home user, it's probably ok, although you may want to add more RAM at some point. SP1 is due out soon, so the business community will be anxiously awaiting response from the home users to see how it's working.

The main problem all users will face is trying to put older software on it. The computer is built for it, but the software? So, before you load up any software, be sure to check the programs compatibility with Vista. Software manufacturer's web sites usually have some sort of claim/disclaimer about what OS their software is compatible with.

For personal use as long as you don't need to run legacy applications or use legacy hardware, the only problem I have with Vista is the learning curve.

The laptop I bought this fall had a significant performance jump when I maxed out the installed RAM.

Even so, it is not as useful as I had hoped because I cannot access some of the remote applications that my company has set up for road warriors.

Many business web based and security applications don't work with IE 7, let alone Vista.

We are considering getting laptops for my mother and the family farm. Both of those will get XP just so there is less I will need to train the user on.

Chas

Vista should be running well on that hardware platform. The question really is, "What OS do YOU want to run?"

XP will also run very happily in the scenario you describe. So will virtually any Linux. So you have a lot of choice.

My personal decision, when I purchased new hardware, was to go Mac. My reasoning was that I would have to learn something new, no matter what I did and I wanted the ability to step away from Microsoft. The Mac gives me fabulous hardware that is wholly OS agnostic. I can run anything- including Vista- on this platform.

Consider what your expectations of the machine are. Consider what you want to do. Then select an OS that will facilitate those things.

LOL..... Really now? I sure hope everyone reads the bottom line on that page! I ALMOST fell for it! Wishfull thinking, I suppose! ;)

[i]"BBspot is a satire news and comedy source and meant to be funny. If you are easily offended, gullible or don't have a sense of humor we suggest you go elsewhere."[/i]

What happens if I find if I roll back my OS to XP.
Answer: Don't do it

If you aren't satisfied with Vista you have two options;

1. Live with it and learn, it should be around until 2016.
2. Try and learn Linux

If you go back to XP you have an OS that has a lifecycle that exipres in 16 months.

Microsoft Support Lifecycle
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3223