Dude, get Vista. It's worth it for its stability/security. It'll run all applications just fine. That's the great thing about Windows.
Go for Win XP Pro. I have both and Win XP Pro is by far better and faster. I have Vista on a high falutin laptop and it is sluggish in a lot of areas. Not happy with it at all. I'll be scrapping it and loading XP Pro on it shortly. Col
Why would you want to remain in the dark ages? Vista is bigger and does eat more resources, just like XP eats more resoureces than Windows 98. Vista is also more secure. I'd go with Vista
The smooth transition of windows and other eye-candy makes us feel like Vista is fast. In reality XP is better. Even Microsoft reported increased sales of XP pro after release of Vista, I forgot the link but this is true.
I just bought a new Lenovo Thinkpad (old-IBM). They offered both XP Pro and Vista. I opted for XP Pro based on the performance reports on my laptop. Since I was "only" getting 2 GB of RAM, the performance reports showed XP outperformed Vista by a mile. If I were to bump the RAM to 3 or 4 GB, then Vista could compete... But that would have cost me A LOT more cash. So I went with the tried and true XP. It flies with my dual-processor laptop, and all my existing software and peripherals work flawlessly. All my IT tech support friends agreed 100% with my decision, and told me their company was holding off on Vista as long as they could...
I like vista. Overtime it will kill xp. I like the way the default drives are set up alot better, guess that may be more relative to a dual core processor.
I would say Vista, vista is just annoying for the first few days becuase you have to get used to it, it is better to get Vista.
That's one of the reasons why I'm leaning more towards Vista... I'm also in the IT field so I'm constantly fixing my friends pc's, work buddies, etc for a little extra cash on the side. Once Microsoft does away with XP next year, Vista will become the standard. With no experience I might have a hard time figuring it out problems with their PC. For the ones that have Vista is everything else still the same like installing drivers, device manager, etc? Also, I saw that a few mentioned that they wouldn't pay extra to upgrade to Vista. It's actually the same cost which is why I'm only considering the upgrade. Windows XP pro, however, would cost extra.
Would go with what has been well tested by the market, XP. Vista is new and probably has bugs that will requires patches from time to time. Remember, that everytime something new comes to market, initially it likely will have problems.
I would say go with XP as Vista needs more resources and you can do every task on XP so i dont feel the need to move to Vista !!
Keeping up with technology isn't always best, always wait for all of the teething problems to be ironed out
My next computer is definitely going to be a Mac. I upgraded one of my home PCs to Vista and I do like it on the whole but it crashes every now and then for no reason. In my opinion, Vista is a crapshoot. If all the different peripherals and software that comes with your PC have drivers that were created with a lot of support from vendors, then you may be fine. However, as you seem to be relying on your PC for income and you get everything you need with XP Pro, then stick with XP.
Vista - it's a good operating system, there is no reason to use an older OS if you have a choice that doesn't involve the hassle of upgrading.