Should I buy now or wait for VISTA?

[aiman]

Sorry, the message is in the title!

Is really worth waiting another 6-7 months or should I plunge now and buy a new PC with tried & tested XP?

[airborne_artist]

However good Vista is meant to be, it's another big step for MS, so I'd wait at least six months after launch before buying it, and that's over a year away!

XP Pro SP2 is good for me, stable, understood by loads of people etc. Unless there's a feature you must have that only exists in Vista, then buy now, IMHO.

There will be loads of hype, PR tosh about how bleeding edge Vista is, but it's just an OS, and unlikely to halve your workload.

[Keygrip]

....apart from which, whatever you buy now will be ready for retirement in 6-7 months.

[bradfordboy]

My son who is also my technical advisor on computer matters is running a copy of Vista now. Apparently you can get it free from Microsoft

His advice to me was to stick with XP.

[Mac the Knife]

They've got the worst bugs out of XP, which is a stable, versatile and (with a little care) reasonably safe OS. They're only just starting with Vista which won't be RTM for 6-8 months (and rapidly followed by a huge "service pack").

Apart from gorgeous eye-candy (for high-end systems only) Vista isn't doing anything magical that XP (or Linux) can't do. There's no "killer app" on the horizon or is there likely to be.

A 64-bit OS isn't magical, there are already plenty of stable 64-bit 'nixes and it won't make any speed difference to standard apps.

Device driver support, esp. for legacy devices is a big headache for Vista - many older devices will never be usable.

And the DRM!!!

By the time Vista is sorted out enought to be viable, in a a few years time, there'll be a choice of Linuxes that'll do everything that Vista does (including eye-candy), as or more easily, without the DRM, the "phoning home" and the not inconsiderable expense! And they'll run most MS apps (under WINE).

If I was to buy a new Windows machine today (unlikely), I'd make sure it was "Vista capable", but install XP SP2.

[future captain]

You can get a copy of VISTA from Microsoft at the moment, obviously not the full retail version set for release later, wheres the fun in that for Microsoft Its a late beta version and just to give people the jist of it, if you bought a new pc now, as long as it is high spec, P4 over 3.0 ghz and around 1gb ram, you could always upgrade to VISTA in the future when you see and read reviews on its performance, Microsft get the blame for always leaving exploits etc but the reason this is, and it doesnt occur so much on say the Linux operating system or Mac is because after all the hackers do have a brain, they would concentrate on finding flaws within Microsoft suite as they know most people use this and the people who use Linux etc are the minority, and usualy people who use Linux are very litterate around compters so attacking them would be abit more challenging, if more and more people started using Macs then the hackers would turn their attension in that direction.

[Conan the Librarian]

On the hardware side, Vista will demand more and we end up with a jump in mimimum specs. If you can hold out until Vista is released, I think there will be some real, late XP bargains to be had around next February as the big boys will need to dump stock.

Conan

[four_two]

Originally Posted by Conan the Librarian

... If you can hold out until Vista is released, I think there will be some real, late XP bargains to be had around next February as the big boys will need to dump stock.
Conan

I think I'll stick with XP and start looking at the possibility of adopting a Linux flavour (or whatever the word is).
I understand that there will be about 6 versions of Vista, has there been any mention of how much Bill will expect his punters to stump up for it?

[Saab Dastard]

how much Bill will expect his punters to stump up for it?

It depends if you include the cost of the new super-computer to run it?



SD

[planecrazy.eu]

Hey, I have ran Visa now for four years, since it was Longhorn, i have plenty of MS Contacts and i have an MSDN account. I have had five versions now and in my opinion from Longhorn to Vista they have got slower, i could run Longhorn on a PIII 800 Machine, its was just as quick as XP. I couldnt even install Vista RC or Beta on the Machine, installed it on my Core Duo 1.6 and its just not making me want to use it, i think its slower, things seem to become unstable or slow. I think i should have got an Intel Mac Book and installed XP on it for those Apps where only Windows will do. Every single person who i know with a MAC loves it and have never moaned. Visa was ment to be as stable as Linux and as designer as MAC. I think its neither, even though the interface is more Design and Style orientated. Just my two cents worth really.

I am told Lindows is pretty good, not got a copy yet but might try it soon, its got WINE on it that runs Windows Apps, but i have installed Wine on RedHat and couldnt get FS2004 to run =( so still gotta keep XP. As for stock dumping i am not to sure, i never seen no ME or 98 machines been dumped over here when there time was up, you can even still get Windows 2000 with some new computers as its regarded the best MS OS.

[Conan the Librarian]

Thank you Mr.Jobs :-)


Conan

[Mac the Knife]

Bought my wife a midrange laptop a year or so ago - loaded with XP Pro 'cos that's what she wanted. Runs mostly GPL software (OOo, Thunderbird etc etc.).

Main pain is Windows patches that breakthings and Norton's intrusive AV.

If I could do it all over again I'd (wait for it......








.......wait for it!






almost....







..........I'd buy her a Mac.

There, that's quite a confession from a Linux fanboi.....