Operating System

[TommyBNSF]

2 of our 3 computers here are Windows XP, including mine, and the other is Vista which is my sister's. Vista is not one of my favorites, although my dad and grandma have Vista. My dad's girlfriend has Windows 7 which I have yet to try. One thing I might recommend is Sun VirtualBox for those who have a powerful machine. My laptop(Dell Latitue D610)isn't powerful to support VirtualBox, but it allows you to run other operating systems on machines, and I think you could Mac OS on it.

[rrcrossing]

IMO the problems with Vista are that Microsoft rushed it to market without adequately checking it for compatibility with hardware and older software, and they made it a very resource-taxing OS before most user's hardware had caught up. For example, my current laptop (HP bought new with Vista in 2008) has higher specifications than my old laptop (HP bought new with XP in 2004), but in some respects responds slower than my old one did.

Vista's not bad once you get the stupid UAC shut down (This is MAH computer, AH OWN this computer, AH AM the Administrator, and AH WILL SAVE MY FILES TO THE DIRECTORY I WANT!), but an operating system should NEVER be slower and less responsive than an older OS, on a machine with technically "faster" hardware.

I've heard with Windows 7 you can no longer customize the Taskbar, Start menu, and folders to look like Windows 95/98, like you can with XP and Vista, which is mainly what's stopping me from trying it. I really like the old Windows style, and not the new one so much.

I have Win7 and it a IMO faster and more "nimble" than Vista. You can change your theme to the "classic" Win 98 style if you desire. The UAC system is also vastly improved in Win7, I leave it on and it almost never notifies me like it did in Vista.

[gedunk]

I've had this HP around 6 months, and Vista leaves me pretty cold. I contacted HP about the possibility of upgrading to Windows 7, and - thank you very much - they sent me the program discs free of charge.

[MichiganCSX622]

i have 2 computers but only 1 is connected to the internet. The one which has Vista is a HP pavilion and the other one (which isnt connected to the internet) has XP and the make is Gateway.

[Smjh1979]

I checked Windows 7 as well as XP. I'll explain on how I got a computer with Windows 7 in a few days.

[TommyBNSF]

Change for me, I just switched to Mac OS X a few weeks ago and I'm loving it.