Upgrade to Vista
Should you upgrade to Vista? That is currently a big question on quite a few minds.
If you are buying a new pc, the question is moot. Almost all new pc’s now come with some version of Vista.
The real question, then, is whether you should upgrade to Vista if you are keeping your current computer. In the short term, the answer will be no for most people.
A good general rule of thumb with upgrading an OS is to wait a couple months for the first bugs to shake out. Once that happens, then you can make the move.
Vista adds a few other things to consider though. For one, the hardware requirements are quite hefty. If you want to use all the special features and whiz-bangs of Vista, you are going to need a fairly new and hefty machine with a really great video card. Forget about on board video. The new Aero Glass eats up a ton of video resources. You will need a system with a new graphics card that has at least 128MB video ram, but I would recommend even more. You will also need a card with pixel shader 2.0 built in.
You may be able to run Vista without the hefty video card, but you will lose out on certain of the ‘cool’ features. For some people that is ok, just make sure they are aware of what they are losing (like Aero Glass).
Microsoft also recommends a 1GHZ processor, but again we would recommend something bigger than that. Without a faster processor and without a high end graphics, Windows may run very slowly. Especially once you add all the other programs that people usually have on their system.
Generally, we haven’t been recommending most people to run out and buy Vista right now. There are some great things and nice things but for most people there isn’t a real driving need to upgrade at the moment. For most people, the best time to upgrade would be within the next year when they buy a new PC. If they just bought a PC, ok, great, go ahead and upgrade. If not, it may be best to wait.
A couple articles that are about this:
http://www.mindarch.com/b2/2006/10/06/windows-vista-2/
http://www.mindarch.com/b2/2006/11/10/directx-10-the-xp-killer/