I am going to be doing a new build in the next 2 months and I am torn on whether to stay with XP or move to Vista. From what I've seen and heard about Vista so far, I have no real desire to use it...in fact, I'd rather stay with XP. But on the other hand, Vista is the new/current OS and I should move to it, shouldn't I? The system will be used for web surfing, some gaming, office apps, some photoshop. What is everyone else doing for an OS on a new build?


(This is my 2nd try at this. The first one stayed closed. This one might work.)

Vista Business or Ultimate will run Windows XP via a Virtual machine installation.

I upgraded from XP pro to Vista Ultimate on my old PC, but switched back to XP pro when i built my new "rig".
I'm not really missing any of the features from vista except for maybe.. the fancy looking clear windows and stuff.
Vista for me was a resource hog, took 600 Mb of RAM sitting on desktop with messenger/winamp open.

I'd say stick with xp Pro for now. Unless you tire of xp's look and want something different, and that funky thing people call DX10. (OMG Crysis??)



Note: UAC was the bane of my existence, so I disabled it. Its exactly like the "I'm a Mac/PC" commercials, except less funny.

If your going to want to do DX10 gaming then you need vista. If you are going to use vista then you will need atleast 2gigs of RAM and a good video card. If you are going to do gaming that does not require dx10 then just stick with xp pro. vista will give you less frames in games. Stick with XP Pro. it would be better

vista is vista. xp wasnt perfect when it came out. Give vista some time.

I use Vista Ultimate and my mem usuage jumps from 512 to 1gig just sitting there. Keep that in mind

Vista is a real resource hog. For a OS that only see's 2GB of memory it sure loves to suck it all up. Personally I build my rigs for pure gaming/photoshop work. My current build plans is to do a dual boot between Vista and XP cause i just have this sinking feeling if i go all Vista 100% i'll be very very disappointed and missing the stability of XP. If you have the ability to do so, do a dual boot of both OS and get best of both worlds. Vista, even though only close to a year old, is still in it's infancy. Gamers are attracted to it for it's DX10 ability but the OS itself is it's own enemy. Why get excited about playing a DX10 game like Crysis when your OS is sucking up resources in the background making your gaming experience less impressive. If you can't dual boot i'd stick with XP pro and keep a copy of Vista handly till they improve it.

Where's the XP Media Center option? It's as good as XP Pro for what I need and $40 less

Hmm...tell me more! I actually know nothing about Media Center. What are the differences?

Guess I should have had an "Other" option...for media center, linux, etc.

XP will run everything with out problems and -every- thing will run faster on it than Vista.
If your worried about DX10 only being in Vista...stop. Vista is no longer needed for DX10 or any Vista DRM protected software. Just Google around.
Months ago Microsoft said it would no longer give support for Vista at the end of the 2nd year it was out,no doubt over user complaints,bad reveiws and sales of XP surging 2 1/2-3 months after the release of Vista.

Vista Home Pro 64bit. If you work hard on hotfixes and drivers it's doable, in about 3 months it should be pretty good. I couldn't justify paying MS for an OS that is being replaced...

No you don't.
Use Google.

Vista was a flop as far as sales and Microsoft has already killed all support for it at the end of 2008 as per their news release (Google it).
Vista is the M.E. of this decade.

very bold statement. i'd really like to see some kind of proof of that

WoW! I googled it and it's true.

Thank Goodness I love Suse Linux!