| I was a Vista Beta tester (I was using it since RC1, before the public beta test.), I recomend that if you're going to be buying a new (Pre-built) computer, get it with vista, because the specs on it will be up to snuff.
If you're going to be upgrading, wait until at least next year before you take the plunge. That way, there will be more DirectX 10 video cards on the market, there will actually DX10 games, and the kinks should have been mostly worked out of the OS with hotfixes.
But if you ARE going to upgrade now, Make sure you have At least a Gig of Ram (You should always have more ram then what the OS says is minimum), a video card that is at least 256mb, and a processor faster then 1.5ghz
As for Windows XP vs Server 2003, let me get my stupid stick out and beat you with it. Server 2003 was designed to run... well, Servers. It wasn't designed for day to day computer use like Windows XP is. Its missing services that are in XP that make stuff like Gaming faster, but it does have services that you won't even use that take up system resources because you won't be running a website of your computer.
Me and my brother practicly have the same computer (we both custom built ours at the same time) and for a while, he ran Server 2003. He had nothing but trouble, his gaming performance was noticibly less then on my PC.
Also, Server 2003 is unforgiving. You screw something up. You're screwed. At least in XP, there's a pretty good chance that you can fix it. Server 2003 is designed for people who know what they are doing (meaning they've taking post secondary education courses on how to admin servers). |