I've been running Vista Business that I got from my college, and I don't really like it that much. Though, I didn't like Windows 2000 when it first came out because it didn't support directx, but later I found that it was my OS of choice for a few years just because it ran so well after they got all those patches made for it. Similarly, Vista has its share of problems. Performance-wise, I have a gig of ram and a 2.4 ghz Pentium 4 processor and it runs relatively decently. The problem that's been coming up is that annoying prompt that asks permission every time before you run a setup program or a configuration tool. I haven't yet found a way to shut that off. That aside, the next problem that came up was when I went to install Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, only to find that it was incompatible with Vista, and it's cd-checking protection came up and was denied by vista because it is unsupported. Blah.
Another thing I miss is mplayer2.exe. Mplayer2 has been used as long as I can remember as a bare bones compliment to Windows Media Player. This vista apparently doesn't have it. And only has the bulky Media Player 10. Bleh.
Overall, I think I'm going to switch back to Windows 2000 again, just because of it's reliability. XP has too many bells and whistles which slows it down. Windows 2000 is just right for what I use it for... If it weren't for some programs like Dreamweaver or directx, I'd totally just switch to Linux

I'm going to be getting a Windows Vista Home Basic. What are some good things about it?

Microsoft released the famous Windows Vista with plenty of eye candy for users. I thought about getting Vista in the future - after all, I would be getting Vista with any new PC I buy, since they're all coming equipped with Vista already - but the revelation that there were six versions of Vista stopped me in my tracks. These versions would be:

• Windows Vista Starter
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows Vista Ultimate

Surely they didn't have to divide Vista into so many versions? (Oh, there's also the two European "N" editions; if you count those, you have eight versions of Vista! Wheee.) Windows Vista Starter only allows you to run three applications at a time and does not have many features that a computer should have. It's targeted to "emerging markets who can only afford a low cost PC." All the other editions grow from there, the Ultimate version being the one that has the features of all the other versions plus special features like the Game Performance Tweaker. As for the "N" editions:
I find the need for all these versions pointless. Imagine buying a computer! It'll take quite a while to figure which version you want and would make purchasing a computer daunting for beginners. ...Is Windows trying to catch up to the five or so years of not making any new operating systems by creating six (or eight) releases of their newest OS? You can read more about Vista here, which includes screenshots of most of the Vista versions.

So. Tell me what you think about MS creating six versions of Vista.

Serena