Like Pesto said, Vista isn't all bad. We had a driver Vista issue. We bought two Gateway machines, 1 laptop and 1 desktop with Vista earlier in the year. We originally had problems with the "sleep mode" on the desktop. We had several conversation with Gateway about it. Eventually they realized they had an issue. Of all things it was an audio driver that was causing it. Strange. The tech that developed the patch and had been betta testing the fix called us, emailed us the driver and gave us his personal phone number. The betta fix worked. A few weeks later the new driver was released but we didn't need it of course. After we got past tech support and was working with the engineer, it was wonderful. So life with Vista has been fine, I wouldn't be afraid of it. (run photoshop CS 3 on both of them) We've been running Gateways since 1994 (desktop and laptop Radio Shack DOS machines before that) and have been happy with them. (the state of Iowa had a class action lawsuit against Microsoft, so going down memory lane looking at my paperwork on computers for the rebate). Have fun!