Forget about Vista for now. XP PRO is the way to go. Sure it has had quirks, all of them did, but that's been worked out. By far it's much better than 95, 98 and of course the memory inefficient version of 98SE, known as ME, lol -("shivers"). If your using non inferior chipsets you should have no problem. Of course when upgrading drivers, try to get them from the hardware manuf. because MS is usually 6-11 months behind on updates.(PS: Just about every new computer needs all drivers updated straight out of the box, for any OS to run efficient. It wouldn't hurt to tweak the OS a bit, MS always insists on everything running in the background whether needed or not. At least SP2 adressed some of them, by turning a few off by default.)

In comparison to Vista, lol, XP PRO wins again. You have to purchase XP Premium, Business, or Ultimate to get the Aero package and network connectivity. Vista Home Basic lacks both these. Also Vista requires a much faster computer than XP PRO, do to it's quench for resources. If Vista had been released with the original new kernel design it was suppose to have, I would have probably been in favor of it. But, instead we get another re-skinned OS with a few more bells and whistles. One main improvement, Vista has over XP PRO is the capability of handling much more ram. (But again it needs it to operate as quick as XP PRO, since it's been tested on average operating 7-10% slower than XP PRO on most applications. Overall, save your money and get XP PRO, and wait until B. Gates forces you to upgrade to Vista.