void — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:57:22 +0000

Switching to Windows Vista will be a pricey investment for some people who want to upgrade from the current MS operating system. The minimum requirements for Vista are:
* A modern processor (at least 800MHz1).
* 512 MB of system memory.
* A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.

I think i'll be happy with my XP for some time.

JeevesBond — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:00:56 +0000

Well you could use Windows 2000. That's like XP but without all the spangly bits, most of the internals are the same. It's what I used until switching to Ubuntu Linux.

Depends on what software you need to run. One big problem for web designers is IE7 doesn't work on Windows 2000 (probably because MS don't want it to, not because it isn't capable).

Personally I have Windows XP in VMWare if I need to use IE7, you could do that.

If you think XP is slow, wait until they force you to upgrade to Vista. That's a real resource hog.