Hi everyone, I'm copying several people on this message. When buying a new computer, you will be forced to the new unstable version of Windows, Vista and additionally you will likely buy a lead free computer the could also have reliability issues.
So, it's a double whammy, both hardware and software reliability could be significantly worse.
Below is the story of a technical person who tested Vista for 30 days in April 2007. This person gave Vista a fair shot, installing a new copy and using it for 30 days as his work computer. He tested two different computers that run XP and Linux reliably.
To summarize: "In summary, for a generally clean Windows installation, there were a profane amount of quirks and instabilities that caused us to lose data on more than one occasion."
"Stability: I'm just going to cut to the chase: On both Pugetina and Whakataruna, the computer would suddenly, and without warning, reboot. This was not to say that the computer crashed with something like a blue screen of death (BSOD) - the computer went into shutdown mode without being prompted or giving me a chance to save the data that I was working on. As a result, I lost some of my work.
That is essentially the definition of unstable, and as this was tested on two separate machines with the same result, I'm fairly sure that it's not my hardware (which works perfectly in Windows XP and Linux, by the way).
Every so often, inexplicably, processor utilization will ramp up to
100%...with no applications open. I had to reboot to restore the system back to a true idle state. ""Throughout the 30 days, different third-party applications would often not install, install but crash with errors at startup, crash when using a specific feature, or simply crash randomly. I had one or more of these issues with the following applications: Gaim, Avi2Dvd, Second Life, Darwinia, Quake 4, Prey, and others."
"Backwards compatibility is very poor, and it's a crapshoot whether the third-party utility you rely on will work. "
From the above, a fresh install of Vista performs worse than a badly infected version of XP
Remember, this is a "clean and fresh install". Vista will only get worse as it's attacked by viruses and faulty programs.
In short, Vista could be becoming stable in 2 to 3 years time. Your choice will be to buy a Vista machine (Microsoft is forbidding machines to be shipped with XP) and reinstall XP or Linux. Reinstalling XP could likely be challenging, it might be best to deal with someone who has installed Vista "on the same identical computer" for at least 10 machines and is a clever knowledgeable computer software mechanic. It will also cost you an additional $200 for XP Home, plus the cost of installation.
Additional note: Most new computers are lead free. According to top experts, lead free has lots of problems so I suggest that you buy the longest and best warranty you can get, at least 3 years and make sure you cover all reasons including dropping. Microsoft has a 1 billion dollar repair bill for it's Xbox very likely due to lead free solder. "now Microsoft cannot deny that fact due to Xbox 360s failing at an average rate of around thirty to thirty-three percent of all consoles sold."
Even better, hold of buying a new computer until the dust settles on all these problems, say 2009 or 2010.
Mike