Window 7 is vista hopefully with fixes. It's a major re-release of vista thats works. Balmer talks to us about it 2 weeks ago in Fla. Time will tell, but I would install vista and not xp at this stage of the game. I just hate to cost of the tiered approach. home, pre, ulitimate.. etc. I have had no issue with DX10 and vista. Works well, runsfairly quickly and has some neat parental controls built in. Its also hard to get used too if you are an XP power user. I can never find what I need quickly. I know its in there, just cant find without 500 clicks of the mouse, too Bill's point above. If you have the cash, Mac's are awesome and fun.