My honest-to-goodness, objective answer is that an upgrade to Vista can be a good thing. I don't have the time to go into all the details, so I'll break it down really simple and quick:
-There are many people who say that there's nothing wrong with XP so why upgrade? And that is true to an extent, no argument on that. However, I would also say that would you keep your little Chevy car if it works and you had the chance to upgrade to a Lexus for "free" or "inexpensive"? You probably would. It's a matter of perspective, and people get all caught up in the "if it ain't broke" mentality. Well, how many people here upgrade their hardware when it's not broke? Why not the OS?
-I've used Vista since the day it came out. And YES, it had many problems at first, and also for quite some time. Almost all of those were related to 3rd party drivers though, not much inherent to Vista, though it did have its problems too. With Service Pack 1, those have pretty much been fixed. It run smooth and stable. Period. And almost EVERY 3rd party offers 32-bit and 64-bit Vista drivers without fail. So drivers are not much of an issue. Sure there are some rogue problems, but this leads me to my next point..........
-XP has been out for a LONG time. Vista has been out a year. Vista a 1 year old is far better than XP was at 1 year old. This is fact. I've used both and can say without a doubt that Vista is the superior OS, and at the very least in terms of maturity per given time frame. Of course XP has all the bugs worked out, it's been out serveral years longer than Vista. But considering Vista has been out for only 1 year, it now runs pretty darn good and stable.
-Lastly, every person I know that has given Vista a chance and run it for a couple weeks (because it WILL take some time getting used to, no question), has NOT gone back to XP at all. I will not go back to XP if you paid me. Vista is just much easier, better features, better integrate, far more stable, and on and on. Working on XP now is like going back to the little Chevy from a Lexus. Sure, it's cute for a time but I want my Lexus back. It's really how it feels (I don't own a Lexus for the record lol, it's just an analogy). Working in XP makes me feel handcuffed, I can't do the advanced things like I can in Vista quickly.
Do a dual boot, give Vista a try for a couple weeks. XP is familiar, you bet. But change is sometimes hard, but the payoffs are worth it. All the Vista-bashers are perpetuating things they heard a year ago, those arguments don't apply anymore, it's just rubbish. Vista's bloated, blah blah. Well XP is bloated compared to Win2000, which was bloated compared to Win98, etc, etc. Boo hoo. I would tell those people to go back to their Pentium II and get Win95 then. You got the hardware horsepower? Then drive it on the Vista highway baby, and don't look back![]()