There are readers here much more in the know than I but I would suggest you made the right decision. Good job, Bird!

Good choice. I got my wife a new computer about two months ago. It came pre-loaded with Vista and we had nothing but trouble with it at first. Vista has some really jacked up stuff going on with how it handles networks. After downloading a few things and tweaking some settings, I was able to get it to work right.

It's working fine now, but unless you're coming at it from a purely aesthetic standpoint, I don't see how anyone could consider Vista an improvement.

I'm old. I have XP and I like it.

I don't see Vista becoming a viable replacement for XP for a long time. Stick with XP as long as you can. It's good, it works, it's secure.

I guess I'll be the dissenting voice here. I'm a software developer (specifically, I work at a company developing windows database software using .NET), so I know a decent amount about Windows.

Vista is far from perfect, and people justifiably complain about how long it took to develop, it not being as good as Mac OS X, etc...but by and large, I have been very satisfied with Vista. I haven't had any of the networking problems or problems with drivers that you hear about sometimes. I like a lot of the new features.

Is it worth paying money to upgrade? I don't think so--if you have a computer with XP, I wouldn't recommend paying to upgrade, but if you're buying a new computer, and you have to stick with Windows, I'd definitely choose Vista over XP, unless you specifically know that some of your software or devices are incompatible with Vista.

Why would you choose Vista over XP at this point?

I think there are 3 reasons to go with Vista over XP. One, you want to play DirectX 10 games. For this you need Vista. Two, you want to HTPC that has cablecards. This also only comes with Vista. Three, it will be supported by Microsoft longer than XP. The bad part about Vista is that the supported hardware list is smaller than XP. So if you're upgrading I say don't get Vista. If you're buying new, then Vista is ok as long as you're ok with some growing pains. Otherwise I say stick with XP. It works great!!

I have Vista on my home laptop. EVERY TIME Microsoft updates my computer I lose my wireless router. I am really tired of this so I turned off automatic updates. If anyone has any suggestions about this I would really appreciate it.

If I had had a choice I think I would have chosen XP.

After doing some Internet research, and reading the comments on here, I'm confident I made the right choice.

Bird - if you REALLY loved your mother-in-law, you would have forked over the extra $$$ for an Apple and not said anything :)

Where I work, we aren't allowed to upgrade to Vista. It's a University wide policy. Tech people don't notice problems with Vista because they just go around them without noticing. They've been doing it for years with XP, so they just continue with Vista. People that aren't so tech savy run into all kinds of stuff - not just issues with older software or devices. It just wasn't ready for release. The whole mindset that Microsoft is based on has gone out of style in the computer world. People are getting used to the Google and Apple way of doing things - Web2.0, open-source, etc. MS just can't go that way and stay in business. So they have to try ad come up with something that looks current, but still make a lot of money. And it's not really working.

I have Vista on my laptop I hadn't thought that the updates messed up my wireless. It's an easy fix.

I'm with Crossbow. You should have demonstrated a servant's heart and gotten her a Macbook. I'm a techie and used Windows for years but Macs are just wonderful. It really is true what they say. It just works. And it's fun to use. Movies, photos, tunes, integration. It's all there. But maybe what you're Mom don't know cain't hurt her.