Hester - 11:05 am on Dec 1, 2006 (gmt 0)

To Upgrade Or Not To Upgrade, That Is The Question
On the one hand, we have XP - a stable product that offers a reasonable enough platform to work with pleasantly, and is backwards compatible with a lot of software.

On the other hand, we have Vista. To many users, it will appear identical to XP, but with a new look. So they, like some posters here, feel no reason to upgrade. But like any technology, be it a car or a DVD player, it may appear to be the same, but there will be a lot of improvements under the bonnet. Security, file handling, internet access speed, High Definition TV support, future program support (as XP will one day stop being supported) and so on. So in theory it will make a lot of sense to upgrade.

The reasons not to upgrade are things like DRM, worse installation/reactivation problems (like having to buy a new copy if you change your mobo? No thanks!) and who knows what else they've added in the name of "customer enhancements". We need to be careful before making the plunge.

I'm on the fence right now. XP is "good enough" for me, but I like some of what I've seen of Vista. I'd like to get it, but not if it will cause problems with changing hardware and running old software. (And if it won't run Photoshop Elements 1 or 2, untested so far, forget it!)

So I'm going to wait and see. Besides, there'll be countless bugs to be fixed for a while yet. They're still fixing them in XP. (Or updating it to deal with hackers.) No doubt soon we'll see a major Vista security bug emerge, leaving all the XP users to laugh loudly. But the fact remains, especially when new programs are written for Vista, that one day we'll all have to upgrade.