Windows Vista

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You must be referring to something else than the rest of us when you say "Vista."

I couldn't find my way around the Vista GUI to save my life. How many clicks does it take just to switch from one network to another (ie going from wireless to wired when you plug in an ethernet cable)? In any non-brain-dead OS, the system automatically switches you from wireless to ethernet, and you can manually switch to any available network with at most two or three clicks from an item in the menubar or panel. In Vista, the taskbar indicator for networks opens a window in some settings area, which is not the correct place to switch connections anyways so you have to navigate to it (if you can ever find it) and of course wait five minutes after each click as Vista drags along like a turtle riding on a snail though molasses.

And security? No other OS in use today is less secure than Windows.

My numbers are based on the same percentage that Windows XP's official minimum requires to run at 64MB RAM. I have multiplied that in comparison with XP's recommended 1GB RAM to run well. My personal minimum for XP 32bit is 256MB for the OS and some other apps.

I have used the same figures with the percentages and the results are above accordingly. No-one can deny that applications will require more memory. Windows Seven is accepted as manufacturers have developed drivers for 32/64bit capability. Thus the time span between Vista and Seven being based on the same kernel, will be compatible as many people know, Seven is built on Vista. Windows XP is also built on Windows 2000. Many people believe that XP was built from the ground up as an operating system far apart from 2000. There are people who believe that Seven is built on XP. I can only see Seven as a glorified version of Vista with a few tweaks here and there.

My personal computer of which I refer to my most powerful computer runs the outdated nForce 590 SLI chipset with 2 GeForce 9600GTs in SLI arrangement. I'm also running 6GB of RAM in 2x Dual Channel configuration. My last gaming rig was enough to run Vista with Aero enabled.

I have the brains to know that for ideal performance, tweaks must be made. An operating system with multiple programs and other applications taking up memory and paging file space, will tie down resources and threads from the processor. I have another OS only for gaming where only the essentials are installed so I can switch easily between XP and Vista - Yes, I do run Vista and with the scores, I get 5.5 across the board on all. Some peaking at 5.9.

I await what they will call Windows version 7.0.xxx ?....

My biggest complaints about Vista would have to be UAC and that it randomly has a BSOD every five or so boots on my desktop. One of my friends has Vista running on a laptop and recently had to reinstall Vista for the third time because it would not boot up. I have been using the Windows 7 Beta and RC since they were first released and found it to be a lot better than Vista. Admittedly I had problems with the Windows 7 Beta and RC but those were all my fault, unlike the problems I have had with Vista. (actually I completely killed the beta but the RC was released the next day so I was about to reformat anyway)

I have Windows Vista and I haven't seemed to be receiving any problems with it, maybe I was lucky that i bought the stable version of vista as i got it a few weeks before Windows 7 was released.

What I don't like about vista is the fact that it eats up your RAM so if anyone was to concider buying a vista computer, I highly recommend a 2GB RAM and more because I have two other vista computers and they run terribly slow and it takes one of them 10 minutes for the computer to start up

I personally prefer XP as it was the most stable operating system that I could think of, hardly any errors and the new features also happened to caught my mind

It felt weird adapting to a new OS, but it's still similar to XP. I recently got a new laptop with an AMD Turion X2 Ultra, 4 GB of RAM. I haven't had any flaws, but my old PC with XP felt like a magnet for Viruses. I'd expect that upgrading to Vista might not make your computer vulnerable to the already numerous ones existing for XP. I don't know if it's Norton or not, but I was never into anti-virus anyway. I preferred a memory wipe every half a year after backing up the more valuable data on a external hard drive, but sometimes sooner assuming XP was like a magnet.

That isn't very scientific though.

The formula should be: RAM for the Windows core + auto start programs + applications that you run together + some extra for disk cache

Only the RAM used by the Windows core is variable, all the other parts are the same no matter what version of Windows you used. 64-bit programs will use ~10% more RAM than their 32-bit counterparts, but it's still the same for 64-bit XP and Windows 7.

The core components of XP uses about 256MB out of the box (you can tweak it down to 64MB and still get good compatibility). Let's say anti-virus and fireware take another 256MB, then you can run 512MB of programs quite comfortably with 1GB of RAM.

The core of Windows 7 is about 320MB, but without disabling extra components like prefetch and indexing, it uses about 1GB by default. To run the same 256MB anti-virus and firewall + 512MB programs, you'll need 1.75GB.

I'm getting a new computer for Christmas, and I have two options I'm thinking about. A slightly used computer with XP (which I like from experience) or a netbook laptop with vista (which I'm scared of getting, but I really want a laptop). What would you recommend?
And yes, this means I have no clue about vista