Say I want to upgrade my PC

[baloo]

Not sure where I said upgrade. Agree, clean build when moving one OS to another.

Yes, XP is still for sale and you can order PCs direct from places like Dell and IBM with XP installed.

Get XP. Move to Windows 7 when it's released. If you go to Vista I think we should start a new sub-forum under Geeks & Gadgets just for your Vista rants.

[Burbage]

As long as the games programmers can keep vista in the background I don't see why I should have to interact with it at all. Switch on, click game short cut, play game, exit game, switch off. Windows 98 would probably do the job, but it wouldn't know any of the hardware.

[Jedi]

I don't think you can ignore the OS impact on gameplay, seeing as the game runs on top of the OS. I would imagine that microsoft are focusing direct x advancements on Vista (windows 7 now) and not XP. Same for hardware manufacturers.

[Burbage]

That's all pinkydory. As long as I don't have to interact with the blasted thing.

An operating system should be like a good theatre technical crew, you know they're there, and you know they're making it all work, but you never notice them.