When Microsoft introduced Windows XP it took them over three years to get it mostly bug free. So, the short answer is NO. I would wait until at least a year and several upgrades before considering it.

Microsoft has extended retail sales of XP for five more months until June 2008. The new end-of-availability pushed back to June 30, 2010. Shows what the market is demanding.

Sales of Vista have been lackluster, so maybe the buying public is making a statement? Only time will tell.

– Price. Very expensive. $399 new, or $299 for the upgrade to Windows Ultimate? The cheapest version, Basic ($199 full, $100 upgrade), isn't worth the trouble. The extra hardware needed is even more daunting. You need to check first which version you intend on upgrading to? You might need 2GB RAM, a very, very fast CPU and even an integrated graphics chip with it's own onboard RAM (not found in many laptops).

– Not much new. It looks pretty, but do you care about photo tagging and 3-D window flipping? Not me!

– It's annoying. Most Vista users have turned off User Account Control, which nags you with an "Are you sure?" prompt every time you try to do anything beyond run the calculator.

– Many, many missing drivers. Who wants their scanner or printer to stop working? Lots of software won't run on Vista, so one of your important applications might not run.

– It's confusing. Everything that XP could do, Vista can do… only it's buried under a different menu and it has a new name. Sigh!

– It's doesn't work that well. There are many bugs and flaws with the design of Vista and it needs a Service Pack. So, you should wait for one or maybe two.

On the other side I expect over time Microsoft with it's vast resources will fix the problems and you will get to the good stuff. AERO: Transparent windows, tasteful animation, elegant design. 2. SEARCH: Fast, smart, and you can create virtual search folders to revisit your searches with a single click. 3. NETWORK MAP: Finally, Microsoft gets networking right; it's a great way to get an overview of your network and its devices. 4. WIRELESS NETWORKING: Connecting to multiple wireless networks and hotspots is a simple affair. 5. SECURITY: You get a firewall with outbound filtering, a better browser, and a lot under the hood offering better protection. Maybe in 2008 or 2009 Vista will be something worth considering.

If you have decided to upgrade it is not simple a matter analizing your computing habits and then figuring out which of the seven versions of Vista meets your needs. Windows 9X, ME and 2000 cannot be upgraded without performing a clean installation. Various versions of XP can be only upgraded to various versions of Vista per the following article:

You should also note that Micrsoft has set up the Vista Upgrade to install only if your hard drive already has Windows XP or Windows 2000 already loaded. According to Microsoft, only the full retail license of Windows Vista can be transferred to new devices. OEM versions are ostensibly tied to motherboards, and upgrade versions are now technically tied to previous installations.

Your laptop is vulnerable to hackers and crooks. There are things you can do to protect yourself and your laptop.

Create a virtual sheild. Buy or find and use AntiVirus softare. I use the excellent AVG AntiVirus program and it is free. At work we use Norton Antivirus. Use an Anti-Spy software package. We include AdaWare on the laptops we sell. Microsoft purchased a spyware bought a company and repackaged their applications and are now providing it to customers. Add a Firewall program. Microsoft has one and there are a number of other commercial packages.

Beware of phonies. Companies and individuals pretend they are sending a message from Ebay, PayPal or others and ask for passwords and other personal information. Never, ever give it out. Sometimes they will install spyware on your program or that can steal information from your computer. Never open a link unless you feel comfortable it is safe to do so. Make sure thata the padlock icon is there and look for a seal from the BBB or Truste. Don't ever respond to unsoliced offers for free screen savers as you will wind up with pop-ups and some are very, very difficult to get off your laptop. If you get a message to update your account, instead call the company on the phone to verify it is a legitimate request and not a fraud about to steal your valuable account information.

If you have a MAC portable computer and want to run Microsoft Windows a good choice for $50 would be Parallels Workstation 2.1 for Win&Lin. You should check out the Minimum System Requirements before taking the plunge. You could also go with the free solution provide by Apple, which is cumbersome to use and requires you to switch from one to the other. Parallels desktop let's you switch back and forth.

Everyone loves digital cameras and the ease of operating without film, but storing all the images can be an issue. At home I like to store them on my laptop and back them up to CDs.

If you are going on vacation for a week and plan on taking lots of pictures. You should know how many images you can you store on your laptop?

Most consumer shoot in compressed JPEG mode, and the images are between 250k bytes and perhaps 1.4M bytes. A 1 GB CF will hold as many as a thousand or more images. If you are like me it is easy these days to shoot a lot of pictures in a very short time. You could buy another CF or transfer the images to your laptop.

Laptops do not hold all that much data. How many gigs of disk capacity do you have left on your personal laptop? The newer ones will come with 40 or even 100 GB drives, but most people don’t have ones that new, and many also have a bunch of stuff loaded already. So, check out the size of your HD and see how much space is left for your photos. If your laptop has a CD burner bring extra blank CDs so you can burn the photos. A great little back tool is http://www.secondcopy.com. You could also back them up to your ISPs server.

I recently heard about a way to send large e-mail attachments that will avoid clogging your inbox and causing bounced e-mails. Pando Networks Inc., has developed a program that allows you to distribute very large files, like photos. This is an efficient way to share files without using a website to share your personal videos or photos.

Another option might be to buy a portable hard drive. You can find them the size of good-sized glasses case. You stick your CF in a slot, turn the gadget on, and dump the CF into the gadget’s storage. These range can be found from 20GB to 60GB+ and are $100+.

Stand-alone burners can burn CDs & DVDs, and some will also play DVD movies, audio CDs, etc as well so you can bring your movies and music along while traveling.

If you have a new laptop it might have a fast firewire connection, if not you will need to use the USB connection to transfer the photos.

So, taking a few precautions and planning ahead a little will insure that you get to keep all the photos that you took as a reminder of that wonderful, long ago vacation.

We are often asked what laptop would be best for my needs. This question really needs to be answered by buyer. It depends upon your needs and what applications you are going to be running on the laptop.

Some general guidelines for the various things people do with their laptop and what hardware is needed follows:

Word Processing requires minimal RAM and HD and CPU. You can't type faster than a Pentium 90 and even an older $200 Pentium 2 laptop is fine for word processing.

E-mail requires the minimal amount of CPU speed, RAM etc. The speed of the connection is more important, but still does not matter much if you are only sending text messages back and forth. Even a 28.8 modem works fine for e-mail.

Web browsing works fine one even a Pentium 2 laptop with 64MB RAM. 128MB is preferred and is fine for most situations. Again the type of connection to the Internet is more important than the hardware. DSL or Cable Modem are far faster than a modem.

Excel requires minimal CPU, RAM and HD unless you are a power Excel user with huge spreadsheets then you might need lots of RAM, a fast CPU and a big Hard Drive.

Music is again does not require much in the way of CPU or processor, but if you have a lot of songs a large Hard Drive (at least 20GB is ok and 40GB is better).

Photography might require both a fast CPU, lots of RAM and lots of Hard Drive Storage. If you are using an intense application to edit the photos and take it very serious look at the software's requirements. If you take thousands of photos then you would need a large Hard Drive (20GB minimum, 40GB preferred). You might even consider and external Hard Drive for extra storage and would want a CDRW to burn the photos.

If you are a gamer, then all bets are off, depending upon which game you play. If you use the latest games then a very fast CPU, a graphics chip and as much as 2GB RAM might be needed.

If you are in doubt about what your applications need then go to the software vendors website and check out the Minimum Systems Requirements. That will show you the needed CPU, RAM, HD space and any other special requirement the specific application might require.