I am going to be starting college this upcoming fall for engineering and the school I plan on attending gives the option of either XP or Vista (I'm using the student discount through them) but i don't know which will be more helpful for my needs. I've heard Vista is the way i should go but no one has really given me solid reasons why so I want to ask if Vista has a solid future that i can put my money into, or should i stick with something that already has been tested and proven?

OK, if I were you, I would choose XP. You will most likely need to run some software, which would not be able to run at Vista and that could cause you problems. I think, that noone can really tell you, which one to choose, it depends, what software do you intend to run on it and what hardware do you have for it. Vista is quite demanding OS talking about hardware and all compatibility issues with hardware, software, games and so on, makes it almost unusable. By the way XP will be supported till 2014 and Vista so far only to 2012, because Vienna shall be released in 2009. So, if you run XP, you should not have any problems to run anything untill you finish the school.

Hi,
unless you are specifically running a program that requires vista such as the latest version of one of ms office things or outlook that requires vista itself, then xp should do the trick,...

I was one of the first people at the j/c whereat I teach to get vista, I needed it to teach an online gaming class. and guess what.....

the proggy wouldn't work in vista!

The one thing that vista does well is

IF IT IS ON THE COMPUTER to begin with, apparently, is to find wifi automatically....

everything else, ms crappola times two...

If all you need is OFFICE, sans outlook express...which is tied to Microsloth desktop then Open Office works great, along with Impress(Powerpoint) and the publisher program

I use them exclusively now, even though I am told by the IT people that I can't...escept, of course for this machine...

we FINALLY got steam to work on it, the problem was the micrsloth firewall which is almost IMPOSSIBLE to train...

Zone Alarm, which works great in XP is an easy "train".. if a program needs in, Zone alarm asks you and you say yes or no....with the windows firewall, you have to go through a bunch of buried menues to get somewhere near allowing a proggy in...

and as for something like playing a free shoutcast.... it took a bit of struggeling to get winamp on this machine...

I'd go for XP.... after all by the time you graduate, Vistas SP1 and 2 MIGHT be out and you'll have the money to buy the complete "fixerup" service at Circuit City....NEVER go to ...that OTHER....store.... and you're set...

but really try Xandros...if you aren't going to be running a proggy that NEEDS microsloth which you MAY need for engineering...depening on the apps...there are a ton of engineering apps that are open source...

luck

woodsmoke