I don't know what the difference between Vista and XP is. I just see Vista as a glorified XP. Does anyone have any other opinions?

Other than the 64-bit idea, it strikes me as effectively a shiny version of XP, full of bugs etc. Sure, currently XP is infested with viruses, but Vista just doesn't look too promising.

Either way, does it matter? Linux is the way forwards.

I think Vista can support new formats of files (so games/software that are made for vista wont work on anything else ect). Vista should be just a real big sp3 of windows XP in my opinion. It is all flash and graphics with microsoft. Some day they will learn that proformance along with security matters also. But by then Linux, Mac or some other OS will have become popular and it will be too late. Not that I have anything against microsoft but they could use some new origional Ideas like Mac with The Iphone and Mac with the run multiple systems at once deal.
Thats my opinion,
Sparkx

Vista is a completely rewritten Windows, it doesn't even follow the old Windows NT design concept much. Just look at the UAC, a very different approach to how Microsoft manages software security (more of an annoyance since they still haven't got it fully working), they try to really be as close to UNIX as much as possible without actually implementing UNIX into Windows. However, their efforts aren't quite what most of us expect, it doesn't work really well.

They finally got 64-bit working, but haven't rapped their reads around that in order to push the industry, they must push the 64-bit version as the primary version than pushing the 32-bit. However, granted they haven't got it fully working, it still has bugs.

I still highly recommend UNIX based systems like Linux and MacOS X anyday over Windows NT based.

xboxrulz

Being a bit of an old school kind of guy I only upgraded to XP about 6 months when I was forced to by a new mixing desk that was XP only ;(
After many attempts to get it running in my favoured Windows OS Win2k I got sick of staring at Blue screens of death so I got round to installing XP.
I had tried XP before when it was released and after a week of it I reverted back to Win2k because I found XP then to be "not ready" and fit to use as my main Ps because before SP1 for instance there were many problems with drivers and some bits of my audio kit would not work at all.
I am just about pretty happy with XP these days, after SP2 and lots of updates I have finally got a rock solid stable as hell XP build which I have Ghosted and I re image the build every few months with the latest updates and new bits of software I have installed since the previous image.This has turned out good because XP with Sp2 and all of the programs I use on a daily basis ( no games) including Adobe Cs3, when ghosted will just about fit on a DVD, with games its 3 DVDS ;(( but Ghost lets you span the image over many disks these days )

So Vista comes out, again I tried a copy of it for a demo and this was a beta rc1 copy not the full blown Vista, I really did not like it at all!! I found it very slow bloated and just plain annoying with all these pop ups that try to help you with everything you click on ;( I just got plain sick of telling Vista it was ok to run this or do that when I tried to open files. It never seems to remember its asked you before and bombards you with them ;( also lots of stuff didn’t have drivers or flunked out unless you rebooted with the USB devices attached then it would find them all again ;(
A few weeks ago I finally upgraded my main pc to a shiny new AMD X2 5600 64 bit CPU with 2 gig of DDR2 and a whopping great NVIDIA 8500 GTS with 512 MB RAM
After a couple of days I got bored of the lightening speed in XP I get and wanted to see if it could go faster on a native 64bit OS.
So once again I installed Vista to see what it could do, GRR!!! Yet again I am in driver hell!! Yet again I am being nagged to death by pop ups and hassle screens whenever I do something.
I still love the interface and I really love directx 10, I have got a few brand new games and they look absolutely amazing in Vista!! The textures, the shadows the fill rates are just unbelievable!! The recent games we play like MotoGP 07 look so lifelike and really suck you in!! Bioshock is just stunning in directx10!! It’s made a totally immersive game in to virtual reality!! The game is amazing and scares the crap out of my when im playing late at night with the headphones on!!
Another problem I face is the HD playback from Vista, this Christmas we are buying a new 1080HD TV and of course want to watch as much as we can at 1080 resolution. I hear that Vista has nasty DRM like software that kicks in when you try to play "un licensed" material and forces the HD screen down to a really low resolution or just plain refuses to play it.
XP seems to be able to do this no problem but its really tasking the CPU when I test it out ;(

I think I might be rebuilding again this weekend and make Vista dual boot XP so that I can maybe just use Vista when I play games, I really am used to XP for working on and multimedia but I would love the added enhancements that directx10 gives me in the games I play.

So like always with moving between one release of windows and the next, its painful and it will cost a lot of time, you will find added benefits but also you will lose things you cannot do without ;(
They never seem to get it right do they?

OK, I think that there are probably rather few differences.
However, I'm fully convinced that this is a part of the standard way of managing commerical operating systems today.
The rather old windows 2000 was rather good, some bugs were discovered. And some new functionnalities, new drivers appeared to be needed. Instead of correcting the bugs in the old version, and add new functionnalities in the old version, they create a new version. So, the new systems will need the new version. And the new version has improved wordprocessors, improved spreadsheets that are not compatible with the old versions. So, your friends, in order to share your documents, will have to buy the new software which will run only with the new operating system.
So, I will say, if your new computer is sold with Vista installed, it's OK. But if you have to re-install your old PC, installing the win2k or the Win XP sold with your old pc will be enough.
I would say that Vista is very good only for the things that don't work with win XP. And, of course, I would be very disappointed if I buy a new game for my PC and I discover that it's a Vista game and it does not work on XP. We experienced this kind of gamers disappointments some years ago when switching from WinMe to WinXP, I hope that we will not have the same angry moments du to the Vista irruption.
Regards
Yordan

Windows XP is enough for me. I'm not thinking to migrate to Vista someday because I have not found something critical that can make me upgrade.

Windows is not cheap. After buying XP a year ago, my wife said : "You spend so much money just to buy an OS ? Don't tell me that you'll buy the office too !!!"
So, I said NO to Vista if I have to pay for the upgrade.

For gamers, they must upgrade sooner or later because a lot of games are going to be Vista only soon. Halo 2 already shows that as a Vista only thing.

Microsoft loves to push their people hard to the next level. Apple, not so much.

xboxrulz

I disagree. It's still the same structure as Windows XP. The completely rewritten Windows will be "Vienna".

I have Vista, but only because Half-Life 2 based games will only work in Vista on my laptop, and because I might get Halo 2 for PC later.

Between the 2, I prefer Windows XP, but out of all OSes, I think PCLinuxOS could very possibly be the best.

That's quite true actually, my bad. It is NT6.0, but most parts of it has been rewritten although it's based on NT5.2.

xboxrulz