QuoteWhat have you found to be the significant improvements/advantages of Vista that justify the higher system requirements?
Its not that Vista justifies higher system requirements, rather that a high spec system justifies installing Vista.I guess its difficult to say what is an improvement due to the new OS (Vista 64) and the new system, they both go hand in hand. Prior to installing Vista I was running WinXP 64 Professional on the my new system. Due to my own lack of knowledge I could not get it to recognize all 4 gig of ram. I threw the towel in so to speak and got myself a copy of Vista 64. (I later found a solution to XP not seeing all 4 gig or ram, Bios tweak). That said I had absolutely no problems installing Vista, all hardware drivers went in smoothly, scanner, printer, router etc. I would not say that the improvements in Vista necessarily justify the higher system requirements, however apps that run within Vista are now able to perform so much smoother. Photoshop has no problem accessing huge data files, Lightwave can render massive data sets and the OS just sits in the background doing its job. Cant wait for TG2 to get multi threading! Cold boot time is about 15 sec! The search function is much better/faster (although one really should know where one saved ones files anyway, lol). Fancy new GUI (Aero), take it, leave it or just switch it off!
If you have a system that can support Vista then its a useful choice, if not, then avoid it like the plague.
A low performance system with a high spec OS will be crippled, similarly a high performance system with a low spec OS will also be crippled, so use an OS that is appropriate to your system specs.
Richard