I have XP on my desktop and Vista on my Laptop.  I hate Vista only because I had them networked, very successfully for a while and then Vista dropped the network and won't recognize it.  Irks me to know end.  Yes, Vista does take a huge amount of memory, BUT it isn't so bad if you go in and turn off all the crap that runs in the background that isn't necessarily needed.  I even turned of the fancy see through window bars lol.  It looks almost XP'ish now lol.  When I was researching how to tame the hog, I read that Vista sees any Ram not in use as bad, in that if you have free memory, it is memory that is not being optimized lol.  *Scratches head  lol   I also download a memory manager for Vista.  FreeRAM works well, even though at the time I downloaded it they said it wasn't working with Vista...it does, and works well with mine lol.  I have it XP and I was desperate at the time.  I now can do fractal renderings.  With just Vista and no memory management, I'm lucky to have 300 mb free.  With a memory manager, I have at least 500 mb...perfect enough to run even my biggest renders.  (All that seems small, but the fractal program measures "physical memory", so those numbers might be exclusive to the program.  All that counts is it's almost double lol)

It's not really physically downgrading the OS since there are no clients that had Vista before.  In our Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft, we have a stipulation that we are able to downgrade to XP professional.  When we order hardware from our vendor of choice, they preload our "in house" created image of XP on to every machine before shipping.

Haha, no it's not boring it's actually kind of interesting to hear about the process. Is this such a huge process to go about doing every time Microsoft releases a new OS? I can imagine it would be a big headache but I suppose it provides work as well so it's not all bad.

I would recommend you not to upgrade to vista. When my friend upgraded from Xp to vista their computer got so slow that they sold it.

I'm staying with XP for a while longer. I eep hearing about errors and bugs with Vista, and though I don't know if they were fixed already or not, it's better to be safe than sorry. Plus, I never had a problem with running XP, so I don't see why I need to upgrade really.

I've got XP too, and wouldn't consider switching to Vista for all the apples in Washington. I hear nothing but trouble with it. The question comes up though... what next? I'm not sure I want to "go mac," but what OS choices do you have when you buy a PC these days?

Vista just had its first release of Service Pack 1. But again like true to form, problems have cropped up. Conflict issues with other drivers esp nVidia ones, software hangs and even the blue screen of death. Performance issues were always their. I guess it will take a few service packs more to rectify everything. If you are using graphical softwares, I would always suggest keep to XP and leave most of your RAM for Photoshop and like, why devote it to an OS like Vista. I don't think its worth it.

Judging by the overwhelming number of negative feedback I have heard about Vista, I don't think I'll ever be using it. I'm content with my XP- it has never annoyed me enough for me to consider any other OS.

Vista is awful. We wouldn't have it at all except it came with the new computer we bought in February.  There are games that Vista can't handle that my old emachine, which has XP installed on it, has no problems handling. It's depressing sometimes.

With all that being said, I"ll stay with my XP longer!  My friend recently bought a new laptop (Vista installed) and it runs so slow, I could have slept waiting for the applications to open!  Plus, the operations are frequently aborted.  Could be a technical snag or something?

I never even heard any good review about Vista so I can’t recommend it to you. XP is doing fine for me as it can support a lot of programs.

My brother upgraded to vista and I don't like it. It's incredibly slow! If it weren't such a hassle to switch back to XP, I would have done it eons ago. I just don't have the time to do it. And my brother won't because for some reason, he likes vista.

I haven’t used Window’s Vista personally, but I haven’t heard anything good about it.  I’ve heard it crashes countless times a day, doesn’t run older programs, and is incredibly slow. On the other hand, I’ve never had a problem with XP and it’s never crashed unless it was my fault.

definately XP not because it's the best out there but simply becos its better than vista. There seems to be many problems with vista, as well as restrictions and limitations to it, that and vista take up too much precious RAM

I am a Systems Engineer, specialized in Microsoft products (by schooling), and I can tell you, while Vista has a real, and I mean big problem in the way it's been rolled out, these problems are not impossible to overcome.

The first, and most important thing you can do is disable search indexing. Basically, search indexing is a program that runs in the background monitoring every little change you make to the file system, so that in the miracle that you ever use the built-in Windows search function (I personally know where all my files are by heart), it will find them slightly faster.

The problem: the hard disk where all data on on a computer is stored is a physical device, with a mechanical arm that moves back and forth rapidly to access different sections of the disk. What happens when the search indexing service is turned on in Windows Vista is that you are basically encouraging this very time-consuming physical action of the the hard disk access to run on almost everything you do.

Unless you've specifically paid a lot of money for a special hard drive that operates at high speeds, this can be a real drag.

SO..  a quick tip to get an immediate performance boost is to disable this search indexing service: Run Services (just type “Services” at the Start Search bar), right click on the Windows Search service and select “Properties”. Then choose “Disabled” for the start type. Afterwards, you have to stop this service by right clicking on it and selecting “Stop”.

If you are looking at the Hard Disk LED on your computer you will notice an immediate, big decrease in the amount of times its blinking. This = more performance.

Other than this, the best strategy is to always buy DOUBLE the hardware that you think you require currently. Sad but true.. if you buy that discounted laptop that is about to replaced by a new model, you are going be sore in the pocketbook in a year or two's time.     

I'm not a fan of Vista and I have it on my laptop. I decided last year that I had to have a new laptop, and of course I couldn't find one with XP on it. I know I could have reformatted and put XP on it, but I didn't feel like going through all that. I haven't had any major problems out of it yet though. I know a lot of people who have the Home Basic version who have nothing but problems out of it though. In all honesty, there's not much difference in how it looks, and works. Yes there is the 3D graphics and such. But like someone else mentioned, they stole that from Mac. But as far as navigating it, it's pretty much the same as XP was. There are a few things that I liked better in XP, but I've dealt with that and just accepted them.

i definitely would prefer XP over Vista... heard that there are quite a lot of problems with Vista.... It doesn't seem taht stable to use yet... I think I'll just wait a while longer before switching if need be =)

I wouldn’t used Vista because they have way too many bugs on it and based from what I heard Microsoft has abandoned it because they have already built Windows 7 which will be launch on 2009 or 2010.

I got my HP Slimline desktop in February 2007. It came with Vista Home Basic and only 512 MB. Ok, I, being not the least bit technically inclined, did not know that Vista really needed at least 1GB to work properly. I thought Vista is the latest so it must be the best...Wrong! I had nothing but trouble from the beginning w/Vista. So, finally a few months ago I decided to go back to XP. I uninstalled Vista and installed XP Pro and it has been so much better. No more lagging to deal with at all.

Can you even get xp on a new computer now or is vista the only thing that comes with new computers?