Question

[_Ray]

I'm not buying until this summer.

Will Windows 7 be out by then? (Official, not beta)

If it's not, should I get XP, like now, or should I get Vista?

I absolutely LOVE XP, but i've heard many good and many bad things about Vista.

But I'm tempted to not get XP, as it's almost 10 years old.

Do keep in mind that either way, I'll be going 64-bit. So please compare the 64-bit versions, not the 32-bit.

Edited February 3, 2009 by raybob95

[Huckleberry Pie]

I'm not buying until this summer.

Will Windows 7 be out by then? (Official, not beta)

If it's not, should I get XP, like now, or should I get Vista?

I absolutely LOVE XP, but i've heard many good and many bad things about Vista.

But I'm tempted to not get XP, as it's almost 10 years old.

Well, I still suggest XP over Vista, even if it's quite antiquated, since it is more flexible in my opinion...

[_Ray]

How well does Vista's 32-bit emulator work?

[Spaz The Great]

I'm pretty sure it's irrelevant at this point. If you get 64-bit software/hardware, your 32-bit shit will still work with it. Or at least, it seems as though there are no longer any problems with that.

[Gerard]

64-bit isn't going to give you any advantages, unless you are using more than 4 gig of ram. If you're only using 2 or 3 now, and you intend to use more than 4 gig in the future, then you can always stick with 32-bit XP until you're ready to upgrade to something 64-bit in the future. Of course you can still use a 32-bit OS with more than 4 gig of ram, but it'll just ignore the excess RAM.

64-bit XP isn't worth the hassle, because a lot of drivers haven't been released for it. That's just laziness on the part of the hardware developers, but it makes it useless unless you have perfectly-working hardware and software.

Personally, I don't touch Vista. Yes I've used it lots, but I really prefer XP, and a well-patched XP is a lot faster than any Vista.

I've been using the Windows 7 alphas and beta, and they're superb. Microsoft has recently said there will not be a beta 2, and there will only be one Release Candidate, which means it should be on sale sometime this year, probably Autumn (October-ish). It's not finished yet, but it takes the best bits of both XP (fast) and Vista (shiny) and makes it better, so well worth looking out for.

[_Ray]

64-bit isn't going to give you any advantages, unless you are using more than 4 gig of ram. If you're only using 2 or 3 now, and you intend to use more than 4 gig in the future, then you can always stick with 32-bit XP until you're ready to upgrade to something 64-bit in the future. Of course you can still use a 32-bit OS with more than 4 gig of ram, but it'll just ignore the excess RAM.

64-bit XP isn't worth the hassle, because a lot of drivers haven't been released for it. That's just laziness on the part of the hardware developers, but it makes it useless unless you have perfectly-working hardware and software.

Personally, I don't touch Vista. Yes I've used it lots, but I really prefer XP, and a well-patched XP is a lot faster than any Vista.

I've been using the Windows 7 alphas and beta, and they're superb. Microsoft has recently said there will not be a beta 2, and there will only be one Release Candidate, which means it should be on sale sometime this year, probably Autumn (October-ish). It's not finished yet, but it takes the best bits of both XP (fast) and Vista (shiny) and makes it better, so well worth looking out for.

Yeah, I'm going to have 8GB Dual Channel DDR2 1066 RAM