Check with your vendor. Some are offering "XP-Downgrades" free with all Vista PC's (so you get Vista and XP). That way you can use XP for now and switch to vista later on if, for example, you happen to go completely daft.

A couple of months ago I received the "downgrade" gratis on a couple of dozen Dell PC's I purchased.

Our experience might not be representative of Vista. We've got it set up to be doing HEAVY network operations on the laptop. Plus, we sorta cheaped out and went with an AMD processor. So I can't tell you how it would run on an Intel box without having several network volumes mounted.

I don't use the file server for general computing a whole lot, but when I do, it definitely is running Vista much more efficiently than the laptop is, for whatever reason. I'm perfectly satisfied with Vista there.

Okay, this obviously comes from a biased source, but I just found an early review of SP1 beta:

So, that would be a precise list of the issues we have on our laptop. So I'll be definitely trying SP1 when it releases (actually, I have access to the beta, but no thanks).

ETA: Oh hey look, RC1 was made available publicly yesterday! That I might be willing to give a whirl.

It should boot just fine without a monitor.

Bah da *crash* :D

We've got an old PIII-500mhz machine running Ubuntu playing print server for the other computers in the house (my system dual boots Ubuntu Gutsy 64bit and Vista Home Premium 32bit) and Rose's runs Vista Home Premium. They all play together really nicely.

I say stick a fork in the PC and buy an 8-Core Mac Pro that will last you for a decade. ;)

So far, my experience with the 8 core Pro hasn't been very good.

Apple put WAAAAY too much thermal compound between the heatsink and the processors on many units, and it literally oozed out on to the motherboard.
I saw (and got to correct) the problem on a friend's system, but I wonder how many out there will be working along, and right in the middle of a big rendering project gonk out because of thermal issues? Pro system, with some seriously amateur construction issues.

I've been inside 2 other 8 core mac pros, and they had airflow issues that might not be a big deal now, but give a year or 2, and if that's what they all look like inside, I wouldn't doubt we see a bunch of Apple forums going crazy.

Interesting.

Although, I'm very anal retentive with opening my case and blasting it with an air duster at least once a month, and it sits on an elevated shelf, with all 4 sides and the top completely exposed. So, airflow might not be too much an issue on mine.

Damn you Moonliner, you've got me shopping again.

I'm eying a more reliable external hard drive. I've currently got a 300GB USB 2.0 drive. It's serviceable, but I did kinda buy it on the cheap. I have no idea what the specs are, but I'd be willing to be it's 5400rpm. It'd be nice to replace it with a 7200rpm firewire drive.

Firewire drives are awesome. :D