Windows

No much difference between XP and Vista.Vista has better graphics and security than xp that is all.Vista is going to cost twice as much as an xp i think.But for the upgrade it would be alot cheaper.

I think this article might help you out... http://www.bentuser.com/article.aspx?ID=332&page=1

Well Vista is aailable right now so you can get it 8)

Give a chance to FREEDOS!!

Windows Vista clearly is not a great new performer when it comes to executing single applications at maximum speed. Although we only looked at the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Enterprise, we do not expect the 64-bit edition to be faster (at least not with 32-bit applications). Overall, applications performed as expected, or executed slightly slower than under Windows XP. The synthetic benchmarks such as Everest, PCMark05 or Sandra 2007 show that differences are non-existent on a component level. We also found some programs that refused to work, and others that seem to cause problems at first but eventually ran properly. In any case, we recommend watching for Vista-related software upgrades from your software vendors. There are some programs that showed deeply disappointing performance. Unreal Tournament 2004 and the professional graphics benchmarking suite SPECviewperf 9.03 suffered heavily from the lack of support for the OpenGL graphics library under Windows Vista. This is something we expected, and we clearly advise against replacing Windows XP with Windows Vista if you need to run professional graphics applications. Both ATI and Nvidia will offer OpenGL support in upcoming driver releases, but it remains to be seen if and how other graphics vendors or Microsoft may offer it. We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP. There aren't newer versions available, and we don't see immediate solutions to this issue. There is good news as well: we did not find evidence that Windows Vista's new and fancy AeroGlass interface consumes more energy than Windows XP's 2D desktop. Although our measurements indicate a 1 W increase in power draw at the plug, this is too little of a difference to draw any conclusions. Obviously, the requirements for displaying all elements in 3D, rotating and moving them aren't enough to heat up graphics processors. This might also be a result of Windows Vista's more advanced implementation of ACPI 2.0 (and parts of 3.0), which allows the control of power of system components separately. Our hopes that Vista might be able to speed up applications are gone. First tests with 64-bit editions result in numbers similar to our 32-bit results, and we believe it's safe to say that users looking for more raw performance will be disappointed with Vista. Vista is the better Windows, because it behaves better, because it looks better and because it feels better. But it cannot perform better than Windows XP. Is this a K.O. for Windows Vista in the enthusiast space? If you really need your PC to finish huge encoding, transcoding or rendering workloads within a defined time frame, yes, it is. Don't do it; stay with XP. But as long as you don't need to finish workloads in record time, we believe it makes sense to consider these three bullet points: * Vista runs considerably more services and thus has to spend somewhat more resources on itself. Indexing, connectivity and usability don't come for free. * There is a lot of CPU performance available today! We've got really fast dual core processors, and even faster quad cores will hit the market by the middle of the year. Even though you will lose application performance by upgrading to Vista, today's hardware is much faster than yesterday's, and tomorrow's processors will clearly leap even further ahead. * No new Windows release has been able to offer more application performance than its predecessor. Although application performance has had this drawback, the new Windows Vista performance features SuperFetch and ReadyDrive help to make Vista feel faster and smoother than Windows XP.

Vista offers alot of improvements over Windows XP, but most of them are conveniences rather than essentials. The pros include the following: Improved security, slick aero interface,parvasive search, Better built in apps and lots of other little things like Readyboost. I have found Vista runs faster than XP aswell. The cons include the following: hefty hardware requirements, for instance you need a decent graphics card to use the aero theme as Vista runs its GUI via the graphics card. Minor bugs and rough edges are also noticeable. Not to mention there are still software company's that don't support vista (i.e - drivers). This is very very annoying. I think Vista is only a backbone at the moment. I still think theres a long way to go with updates for this new Operating system. But its a good start, i wouldn't recommend buying it yet though, XP does the job nicely, I can justify paying a few hundre dollars for Vista yet, maybe in the future. Well not maybe, DEFFINATELY. Vista is the way forward, many people in the past said they wouldn't go from ME/2000 to Vista but I bet nearly everyone has or had XP now. 60 million brought copies, I bet theres plenty of illegal copies out there also. It looks like Micrsoft are taking it more seriously this time though with security and preveting illegal copies being used. I'm using Vista now and i have the Ultimate edition, the eye candy is pleasing but overall I forget i'm using it most of the time. I use XP at work and come home to use Vista but don't see any major difference to be honest. Readyboost is a good idea but I wonder if it really makes a huge difference, I haven't noticed it yet. I'm trying to be as anti-biast as possible. Its hard to say at the moment. But if you have money to blow then get Vista, if not then wait for a while and make sure you research lots before buying it. As I say, it requires a decent computer to run,preferabbly a good graphics card for aero and obviously hardware including sound cards that actually support vista and the companys can actually be bothered to create drivers for the hardware. Goodluck

well i think windows vista is also best but it is similar to xp but it is best for their new feautres and it is also good...