In my opinion, windows always work instable, slowly until MS release 3rd patch(about service pack 3). So i recommend you that we should not buy or upgrade our OS until MS prove their OS work ok, especially for vista.
not sure which os ur talking about but for vista, its not really recommended for a low to mid end PC... and if you're a gamer, vista might be your worst nightmare because a lot of games doesn't work for it.. and i don't really blame microsoft for once because the only way that they could get it stable is by people (and a lot of people) to test it so that it will be close to perfect.. and you don't have to worry about getting a new SP update because you can get that for free in windows update (im sure vista has that doesn't it? i dun have vista powered computer) just don't buy vista till a couple of years so that a lot of games would be compatible with it
This is valid not only for the OS, but for all other software too (IMO). Why should I upgrade something, when the previous version covers all of my requirements, especially when the newer version is a lot more buggy and incompatible?
Yup lol, vista for games is rubbish, I've just finashed my downgrade to XP, and my PC runs so fast now! my vista was running on higer specs then the reconmened and to about 5-10mins to login to vista it's self, now all I have to do is wait 5 seconds and my computer is turned on and perfectly funtuaning.
Even after SP1 i don't think it'll be reliable, to be honest. XP is fine, whith AVG pro and so on, and i'm sticking with it until LInux becomes more viable for me. Forget vista
This is the best advice I have seen on this thread. I'm not saying you should wait until it is obsolete, but you should do it close to when they start marketing their next generation OS. This will give you a good 1 to 1.5 years of use out of that OS while it is still in production. Then it will give you another year or so while they work out the bugs with the new OS. At which time you will be ready to upgrade again. This puts you on a 3-4 year life cycle both for your OS and for your PC. This way you never have to worry about upgrading at all. You can just get the new OS with a new PC. This is a lot cheaper... believe me. On top of that you can time your Office upgrade at the same time. Again this is cheaper. As for the comment from the original poster about MS having a slow OS until a certain Service Pack is released, this is not true entirely. Maybe they will make minor improvements with the code to improve performance, but I guarantee you it will be minimal. The real performance factors are Ram, CPU, Video memory, and drivers. These factors are all dependent upon what you are doing. If it is speed with a printer or other hardware, then an updated driver or older driver may improve performance. If it is application loading time, then I can't say this enough buy as much ram as you can afford, but no more than 4 GB. 4GB of ram should handle anything you throw at it. If it is being able to run multiple applications at once or gaming issues, then CPU is the main factor in addition to video ram and system ram. If you can't afford a decent system for Vista, meaning 3.0 Ghz Dual Core, 2 GB Ram, 256 MB Video Card... then you need to stick with Windows XP until you can afford one. I have been testing Vista for the company I work for since september. 1 GB of Ram just will not cut it. Basically these systems with 1 GB of ram are using 85% of the Ram sitting idle. 1 GB of ram just won't cut it. 2 GB of ram seems to do okay. These are also systems with 3.0 Ghz dual core processors. If you have a slower processor then that could slow you down as well. Do not believe the specs that manufacturers throw at you for minimum requirements. They are trying to sell you PC's. They don't care how slow your PC runs. You will just have to call them and complain at $59.95 per call, just to have them tell you that you need 2 GB of ram and not 1 GB, which they will likely charge you $100 for the ram/installation. All because you wouldn't spend an extra $40 on the system when you had it built. So believe me it is a lot cheaper to have no less than 2 GB when you get a new computer with Vista. Otherwise just stick with Windows XP.