My advice: stick to XP. Some will agree, some will disagree. My experiences, however, have not been particularly great. Vista is pretty, and some features are very nice. But Vista can be slow and clunky where it doesn't have to be; Vista settings can be a pain in the neck; and Vista is not compatible with a lot of things. I have it on one of my machines; it won't be going on any others, and, if I had time to wipe it and download the billion plus drivers (it's a high performance laptop that came with Vista) that I need for all my hardware, I'd get rid of it. Honestly, it's not as bad as I've heard some people say (if it was, I'd make time to get rid of it); but it's not worth getting, either.