Operating system for Lightroom, your opinion

Question

I am 66 years old, still working, use a computer for all of my work.  Our IT department despises Windows Vista.  I use Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 at home mostly, using Windows XP.  I am purchasing a new PC, not the most up to date, dual core, 3 GHz, 4 GB RAM.  It will be coming with Windows Vista installed, but I can downgrade it to Windows XP.  I know, I should have bought a Mac, but I'm not going to change at this point in my life.  My question is whether I should downgrade to XP.  I have heard a lot of horror stories about Vista, but I have also read that many people like it.  I'm not into gaming, don't need a speed demon.  What would your recommendation be?

Answer 1

Just a few things:
1) When are you buying the machine? If it is from a major producer, if you wait a couple weeks, you can buy it with an option for a free upgrade to Windows 7.  That, however, absolutely applies to Vista machines only.  Based upon the leaked Best Buy pricing memo (if real), other upgrades from existing copies of Vista will be quite affordable as well.
2) Will the machine you are planning on buying ship with the 64 bit version of Vista?  If so, Lightroom runs natively (and very well) on the 64 bit verison of Vista but is not usupported on the 64 bit version of XP.
3) Vista gets a bad rap mostly from people who do not run it.  It amazes me how an OS that was as despised as XP was in its first two years, and is still insecure and (at times) unstable has become a crutch for people. If the Vista development cycle had been shorter and Microsoft hadn't made a series of Vista PR blunders early on, I doubt you'd hear nearly as many Vista complaints.  I also take IT comments on the subject with a huge grain of salt since many IT people refused to pay for the obligatory courses to be Vista certified. I was both amused and annoyed to have an IT person last year tell me things that were wrong with Vista that were simply not true - they were also made a bit uptight when I then explained to them why they were wrong since all they could do was spew the equivalent of auto repair technician blather that I wasn't supposed to understand.  From my perspective of a couple years of use, Vista is a superior OS to any version of XP if run on a modern system.    With that said, Windows 7 (really the next version of Vista) is superior to both Vista and XP.
4) Leaving aside drivers for some legacy peripherals, when Vista was released people did have problems finding drivers for some system components but that is no longer the case (hasn't been since SP 1).  One thing to keep in mind though is it is starting to be the case that people are now having trouble finding drivers when trying to downgrade Vista systems to XP.  In the world of technology, XP is ancient and people can't always find working drivers for some components, or they have to employ work arounds to use some newer SATA drives. Take a look at the HP forums if you want to see some of the fun some people are having getting XP to work properly on systems that were designed for Vista.  
Given all of the above, it is pretty obvious what my advice would be:  buy the system with Vista (preferably the 64 bit version).  After you play with it a bit, you will probably realize it is a) easy to use, b) has some nice UI improvements, and c) is very stable.   Of course, I would then suggest upgrading to Windows 7 when available, since it is an impressive upgrade to Vista.  I run the Windows 7 64 bit RC on my primary machine and (minor beta quirks aside) remain impressed with it across the board.  It is faster and more efficient, with an enhanced Vista-based interface, and Vista's stability and security....
Stephen