windows xp or vista???

[capnq]

I am running XP Pro on a system that I bought used from a friend who was forced to "upgrade" to Vista for her job. She hates Vista with a passion, and is of the opinion that XP is the best OS Microsoft ever released.

The only thing I can think of Vista's favor is that many new games require DirectX 10.

[Leternel]

I strongly discourage upgrading to Vista, because it is too restrictive, and considers you as a "slave". It also has many options you can't change without "cheating".

Regarding DirectX10, most of the recent games recommend it, but are able to restrict themself to DirectX9.

The probably best advice is to wait and see for Windows 7, at least until XP runs out of support.