Are we talking out of the box from Dell, HP, Gateway, etc., or are we talking the latest high end Rage card from Fry's?

Well PSP is my graphics program of choice because I can't afford photoshop :( so if I can't run that, it will be an issue for me. iTunes, yeah, that too.

Thanks to everyone who has responded, I appreciate the feedback. :snap: :cheers:

This just shows me I need to do much more research and also just chill out until it is time to order the new toy. Unless my current, doddering old PC gives up the ghost in between now and the fall, I'm good to go.

Circumstances forced me to buy a new computer earlier this week and unfortunately the one that best mixed gaming ability and HTPC-goodness came preinstalled with Vista.

So far, though, I haven't had a single problem (running 4 days without a reboot) and have installed all of my necessary software for work without any hiccups (even a two-year-old version of HomeSite).

I have a friend who just last night upgraded Alienware (but severely tweaked) machine to Vista and while the install took 2 hours (on a blazing fast machine) it went smoothly and the only already installed software that had problems was AVG, which just required a reinstall.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Snowflake... sweetie... get a copy of Photoshop Elements. They're like $60 and actually easier to use than regular Photoshop, IMHO. I have both, and I typically use PS-E because some of the functions I like best are easier to find.

:)

Great advice, Morrigoon. My dad has thousands of slides that he's slowly been scanning and 'tweaking' for his archive. I got him a copy of PS-E, and he couldn't be happier.

I also have Photoshop Elements. Works fine for what I need.

Speaking of slides. Anyone know of a reasonably priced product to mass scan slides? We've got oh say 30,000ish that my Mom would like to scan in but one at a time will take forever.

Ok, I was wondering how all you people could buy copies of photoshop

Buy?

Okay where are all you people getting free copies of Photoshop - did they give them out in breakfast cereal or something?

You will need something like the Nikon CoolScan products. Here is the link to one of them at their web site. Since they are fairly outdated, you should be able to find one for much less than their original prices that went towards $1,000. Just make sure to get the optional slide feeder.

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One of my coworkers installed Vista on a new iMac today. It will be intersting to see how things go.