Microsoft Windows 7 / Vista Operating System

The first thing you'll notice about Microsoft Vista is the price -- currently about $175. Given the deep discounts that Microsoft offers to resellers who purchase large quantities of their operating systems, you may be better off just getting a media-center computer with Vista already installed. This is especially true if your computer is a couple years old, and you are contemplating one or more upgrades to accomodate the new OS.

Many of these systems are currently shipping with MS Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, but will probably feature Vista when current stocks are depleted. If Vista is you OS of choice, be sure to check this.

Critics of Microsoft Operating Systems have long noted that Windows is the operating system "so advanced you'll need a new computer to run it."

Microsoft has certainly emphasized new features and capabilities more than they have cleaner code and faster execution for a standard feature set. Whether or not this constitutes "bloatware" depends entirely upon whether you want or need the new features.

While Microsoft claims that Vista will run on a 1GHz x86 platform, we certainly recommend that you upgrade to the newer x64 standard for optimum performance.

You should also consider the total cost involved in simply getting a computer with Vista pre-installed, as Microsoft continues its deep discounts to manufacturers who purchase thousands of copies of their software.

Windows 7 will ship October 22 -- unless Microsoft misses another deadline. It appears to be primarily a debugged Windows Vista without the Vista name which has proved to be marketing poison.

The biggest improvement seems to be that Windows 7 will run XP and Vista apps in a transparent compatiblity mode, and the EULA will include a Windows XP license. Advance reviews have generally been good, although the compatibility mode is still vaporware.

It's hard to evaluate a product that is still in pre-release, but at present, I'd say that if your current computer is getting long in the tooth, and you're thinking about a new one, you might want to hold off for a while for Windows 7 to become available.

New IBM-compatible PCs use a 64-bit architecture which is a big hardware improvement over the Pentium 4 and earlier set-up. Until now, Vista has been the only Microsoft product to fully take advantage of the extra "horsepower," and it is / was notoriously buggy.

If Winddows 7 lives up to its pre-release hype (a big if!), it would certainly be the best choice for a Microsoft OS.

If you are having trouble with your Vista computer, this is Microsoft's way of charging you for fixing it.