Getting new machine: Vista or XP?

[shadowypirate]

I got a new machine recently, had vista on it. Played around with it a bit, the next day it was converted to XP. I still have the vista cd if i wanna add it later. I prefer XP right now.

[Eloricth]

I've run Vista since Beta 2 with no issues.

The only issue has been with my soundcard drivers, but that's Creative's fault -- not Microsoft's.

I would recommend Vista for a new PC. It's designed for today's technology. It's been 8 years since XP was launched. In those 8 years, the power of PC's has exponentially increased. Microsoft has just taken better advantage of this power. In a few years when XP reaches it's end-of-life, most people will have computers that can run Vista without issue.

@ Dead Bodies: Linux is nice, but to run games that rely on DirectX, you have to use an emulator.

-Elo

[mongo]

When my PC died, I had little choice except to go with Vista (the machines still being marketed with XP all seemed too ... limited).

The first day with the new machine was a bit of hair pulling and cursing while I got the old info transferred over and everything installed and configured. I still have some trouble finding things occasionally but it's getting better. But I also tried and failed to get POTCO up and running on it (there are patches and fixes but at the time I didn't want to jump through the hoops)

I initially installed POTCO on my Mac Mini (Intel) and it was OK with 1 GB of RAM but when I broke out the putty knives (don't laugh that's how you open the case) and upped it to 2GB it has been smooth sailing ever since.

There have been more posts how to get POTCO running on a Vista system but it's not as urgent for me since I have a perfectly good Mac and I need both OS's for my job (desktop publishing).

Overall I am liking Vista more and more and would recommend the system that will give the most flexibilty going forward rather than what makes life easiest now. Microsoft has the annoying habit of forcing the issue by stopping support of its older operating systems. It won't be happening with XP in the immediate future but I can see it happening in 2-3 years which is when you would potentially start having issues with a system you're buying now. Do you have any other apps that would require one over the other? If the answer is no, I would say bite the bullet, get the best features in your price range and jump to Vista and make the necessary changes to run POTCO and any other games you like.