If XP Does All You Want It To Do Keep It!

I believe if I asked Good Booters what they consider to be the harbinger of Spring in SWF, most would say it’s the arrival of pitchers and catchers at Hammond Stadium and City of Palms Park.

I on the other hand would say its lovable Sam Cook’s first diatribe about snowbirds professing how much better things are and done "up North".

Unfortunately for Sam he’s never met the enlightened snowbirds who attend our User Group meetings and seminars. Not only are they appreciative of all we provide for them during their stay in paradise, they admit they’ve been struggling "up North" as so many have "down South" with whether or not to forsake their XP for the new guy on the block - Vista.

My advice for what it’s worth is:
* If you’re a novice with little need to be state of the art and your XP computer is doing all you need it to do - stay with XP. Although Vista will undoubtable be in your future, beyond a bit more security and oodles of eye candy, it’s not going to add significantly to your computing adventure. Wait until you need a new computer for whatever reason to become a Vista user.
* If you do need a new computer but are concerned about having to replace your legacy hardware and non Vista ready software, consider installing a dual boot. If you have your XP installation CD a dual boot will cost you nothing. You’ll have the best of both worlds with the option in the future should you decide to do so, of uninstalling XP.
Our User Group computer is a dual boot computer. And I can assure you I’ve had no problems running legacy hardware and non Vista ready software simply by booting to XP rather than Vista. In fact because the computer was built to support Vista’s Home Premium ( state of the art video card and 2 gigabytes of RAM memory), XP has benefitted from the additional resources.

There’s a third alternative. Purchase a computer with an XP operating system. There’s nothing wrong with this decision if the computer’s resources are Vista ready. For not doing and because Vista will undoubtable be in your future, it would be a shame for you to have to purchase another new computer because you purchased one that doesn’t have the resources to support Vista or for that matter software programs that require Vista’s resources.

Here’s Wishing you a Good Boot.