um red hat? suse? comeon i have lots of experience with both and the only reason not to go that route is support for gaming. is your wife really that much of a techie?

anyway, from what i have heard, vista does support multiprocessing better than windows, but windows does fine with a dual and seriously what home computer has more than that? i have also heard that the vista os has a much higher overhead than windows so you will definitely but putting to waste the luxuries of newer, more nimble technologies just to start up. keep in mind windows is the worst modern desktop os for multiprocessing. other than that i heard vista has a few cool effects like transparent windows, but that still doesnt become nearly as productive as simply having 2 monitors.

i vote not to vista, i also vote not to microsoft. i know both of my home computers run xp and i own an xbox, but i vote this way because i have microsoft and i use better every day at work.

EDIT: 4MB L2 cache is great!!! do NOT waste that on vista. and yes to 2nd what ben said, i have heard some issues about permissions being backwards with vista. i forgot the specifics. im sure you could google some solid info and post cliffnotes here :p

Hello -

Already a break in Vista ...

Vista DRM cracked?
https://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/29...m_cracked.html

Alex Ionesco, a security researcher in Montreal, has released technical details of a hack he's developed for Windows Vista. ...

CarloSW2

Well, Gaming
 

Not exactly, but we'd like to keep as much power on-tap instead of bogging it down with useless items. She's more mainstream IE, Word, etc. So...:rolleyes:

When I find some down-time, I like to play MS Flight Simulator (I'd actually like to fly for-real, but it's just too expensive - so I settle for for the game).

I bought FS-X when it came out a couple of months ago and the box gave ranges of "Minimum" requirements. Knowing that this was hogwash, I figured that my newer HP laptop could handle it as the specs were well above the minimum. Nope -- totally worthless. Not even close. So, I basically kept the game until a faster computer came along and used the old version of FS.

Enter the new laptop :D My wife doesn't play games on it, but I just might when it's not in-use :thumbup: So I like to free-up as many resources as possible to get the best frame-rate. I haven't tried FS-X on it yet, but I'm sure better dimensional clarity can be cranked-up.

So guilty as charged with the better video card :)

RH77

...
Definitely, not to Vista.

Hello -

I just remembered my ultimate solution to all these problems (if you have the ca$h). In my next notebook PC, I will *try* to get one with a removeable hard disk. Today, they are mostly embedded deep with the PC. I think the AlienWare Notebook PC has a removeable hard disk (my circa 1995 DOS 486 Compaq notebook PC has a removeable hard disk).

This way, I can pick and choose my OS. Linux? Pop-in the Red Hat hard disk. Windows XP? Pop-in the XP hard disk. Work only stuff? Pop-in the work hard disk. Vista? Yada yada yada ...

This is the best way to insure security/privacy. You could have an "internet" hard disk that has NO personal data or USB flash-only personal data.

Got Ca$h?

CarloSW2

If I had a new Vista machine I would probably just strip it out and install a nice Linux distro. Right now I'm posting on my 6.5 year old college laptop, just recently converted to Freespire, and I swear it runs better than my "good" machine running XP. And the system parameters are just **barely** within the listed OS requirements. It doesn't fold too fast but you can only expect so much from vintage 2000 chipset.

If not that, I would at least create a bootable Linux partition as a backup option. And then never boot to Windows. :)