Is vista for me?

People complain way too much about Vista. It is fine and has no problem running on 2GB ram.

Vista may be the old news also. You said you do not want OS outdated in 2 years. Windows 7 should be out by end of 09, beginning of 10. Alot of pressure on uSoft to continue support of XP thru 20012. As acceptance to vista has been below par, May well be.
Added
My vote XP - Still Pis___ at MS big brother " approach to DRM. If more people would have baulk, they may have been forced to trop that feaure - result would have also improved vista performace.

I just built a rig to run Vista 64 ult, couldn't be happier, From everything I could digest you'll need 4 gigs min and benifits from 8 gigs of ram. If you want to run "AERO" which is the coolest addition, youll need a 3d video card, and it should support DX10. I have 8 gigs pc800 and Vista boots a lot faster than my XP machine, But to be fair the XP rig is an AMD 4200+ vs the Vista rig is a Intel E6850 both have Raptors for HDs. The 64 bit version of Vista will use all 8 gigs, the 32 bit version can only use 4 gigs. I have not had any issues, but I build this to "play" with Vista 64, so far so good, Vista Aero is slick, easy on the eyes and a nice step forward for Mr softy. If your building a new system, go for it no risk involved. I would never "upgrade" from XP to Vista unless your willing to trash your system as a result. All critical files are still on old faithful until this machine proves reliable, programs and files compatible and even after that' Ill keep two copies on seperate HDs. XP will be around for a long time, its a proven 32 bit OS and compatible with a lot of older 16 bit apps. XP is about to get a final SP3 upgrade, so theres still life in the old girl. Vista only makes sense for the 64 bit performance if you have the right apps and system. If you plan to get Vista 32, make sure it is "upgradeable" most OEM versions are not. System work best when balanced, if you have older (2+yrs) hardware forget it. Stay with XP.

4gb of ram would be a better investment than a newer CPU in your case. Personally, If your budget allows, Get a p-35 board, 8gb memory, the best CPU you can afford, and go with Vista 64. Skip Vista 32. Ram is dirt cheap (relatively) for DDR2 right now. Unless you are playing topline games your present video card will do for a while. Try getting a Q6600 CPU. With the newer intel chips out these are very good perfomance for the price cpu's right now and the P-35 boards can be upgraded with the latest CPU's whenever you want.

No it's not. Throughing Ram at it doesn't automatically speed up your games to XP levels!
I would personally get Vista but only because this person doesn't sound like they are comfortable with XP or too invested in any OS right now. Although XP does put itself in a good position for a few reasons; faster, THE standard even without official MS support, lower requirements, and with older games like the poster wants to play DX10 isn't needed or even wanted.
I'm torn but I'd still go with Vista just cause it can be had cheaper in OEM form than XP pro.
Never will I understand the ram requirements of Vista, nor will I except them just because RAM prices have dropped! Same goes for those pentium 4's and D's that made users buy into the 600+ watt power supplies.

I dont know about you, but when i switched from xp to vista 64, my games and general windows experience ran faster, not slower....
and dude, the more ram the better for vista, due to superfetch, it basically keeps mostly used applications and so on ready to fly open in the ram for faster loading times, your paying for performance.
I would honestly prefer my 4 gigs of ram be used rather than age needlessly imo

So true. The Vista hate out there is irrational. Odd that tech would be so infected with mindless fanboyism and fear of the new but it certainly is. All the latest benchmarks show Vista is as fast as XP. On gaming it's a done deal. http://www.extremetech.com/article [...] 500,00.asp

A lot of the Vista hate is being perpetuated by the valley-centric, Apple loving tech press and bloggers - not to mention the zillion dollar genius advertising campaign that is solely dedicated to this job and has managed to do this without one shred of evidence beyond such general statements as "Vista is glitchy". It's time that serious tech people wake up and take a stand for reality and stop acting like Mac-loving wussies!