Windows Vista

silvine

Should I buy a new PC now or wait till Vista comes out?

db

If you want to use Vista, wait until it comes out. There will be hardware improvements between now and then that you will be able to take advantage of and the PC manufacturers may have special offers to coincide with Vista.

irlrobins

Moving to windows forum

Capt'n Midnight

I'd refer you to Irish Psysics Live if they wern't linked to people who make unsolicited phone calls to try to get you to ring a premium rate number.


What features do think Vista has that you need / will need ?

What do you want the computer to do ?

How much do you want to spend ?

Bear in mind that a low cost computer may not be powerful enough to RUN the features of Vista (or at least those that wern't been dropped to get it shipped)

If you are looking for rock solid stability / security then with the possible exception of Dos 5.0 microsoft haven't released a OS that didn't need a service pack or two to settle down.

Previously there have been deals where you can get an option to upgrade for free, or in some cases the Windows license would allow you to use an earlier version - I've no idea what the rules will be as they seem to be decided by marketing rather than technical reasons.

Fr0g

Support for XP will end 2 years after Vista is released. Thats only 2.5 years away. Thats not long considering how dependant XP is on constant patching and updating. That said I still wouldn't touch Vista until the first sp is released.

If only Linux had better hardware support.

Capt'n Midnight

Fr0g wrote:

Support for XP will end 2 years after Vista is released. Thats only 2.5 years away. Thats not long considering how dependant XP is on constant patching and updating. That said I still wouldn't touch Vista until the first sp is released.

If only Linux had better hardware support.

Microsoft would like to drop XP in two years time, but most previous versions of windows have had their support lifes extended because ten's of millions of customers (especially corporates) stayed with what did the job for them.

A point in case is that while free support for older OS's has ended Microsoft released a patch for NT 4 this month for customers who have paid support. MS06-040

Microsoft officially ended security patch support for Windows NT 4.0 on December 31, 2004, however, they continue to create and ship security patches for NT 4.0 via their Custom Support Agreement.

Third parties have released patches for windows, there was one earlier this year for XP because of a massive image vulerablity. And for some thing like windows 95 you can remove IE and MsOffice and stick on a good software firewall (and use an external firewall / NAT too ) and with decent anti-malware and you are most of the way there.

TCP/IP seems to have gone a major rewite in Vista, from a security point of view this can either be viewed as a chance to sort out all the old problems OR you can see it as introducing new problems, 2003 was supposed to be more secure than previous OS's but it still has stuff to be sorted out with TCP/IP.

silvine

I think I might wait till Vista comes out. I want to get a high end PC to play the latest games and I don't fancy forking out for a new OS in few months.