So my wife let me purchase a computer today. I decided that an iMac was not ideal as my main system and will probably get a MacBook down the road. I went ahead and just purchased a system since I'm tired of building them and shopping for discount parts.

I was running Windows 7 on my old P4 system because, well, it ran better than XP and Vista.

Now my new system is a quad-core with 6gb of RAM. Think I should stick with Vista and wait for my free Windows 7 upgrade or go ahead and format/install my 64-bit RC1 Windows 7 good until next year?

If you vote, I would appreciate details as to which you chose and why. It will help me decide better

I am still hunting for info on whether I can upgrade from Win 7 RC to the final version;

Presently dual boot with WinXP and Win7, Win7 runs much faster even in my old notebook although the graphics card is not supported; meaning no Aero and no playing of Spider

As an ex MS beta tester including WinXP and MS Office, I like to break my system with MS's betas. If you are comfortable with reinstalling software including the OS, go for Win7. There are many secrets to be explored.

I would install MS Vista and then image the installation as a backup; remove it and install Win7 and keep playing with it until it starts to shut down by itself every 2 hours. You have the choice of reverting to Vista if you don't like Win7 at the end of the day. Needless to say, keep a current backup of DATA.

Good Luck !!!

Yeah, I work extensively with beta products (yay for Technet subscription!). My system came with OEM recovery discs so there is really nothing to image. I'm leaning towards RC1 (downloading the 64-bit right now) unless someone can convince me otherwise :P

if given the choice, I would run both 32 and 64 under separate partitions lol

I haven't used Win7 yet but I'll still say it's better than Vista.

I'd go for Win7 64 bit.

I've been using Vista 64 bit for quite some time now and I really like it.. most people don't however. Most those who don't like Vista enjoy using Windows 7, so I guess Windows 7 is that good

Also, I think Amazon has a 50% off deal this week on Win7.

64bit is a must with 6gb of ram.

Chances are that all those who voted for Windows 7 just voted against Vista

Well it's a given that I'm going 64-bit ;-) I also get a free copy of Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on release.

I really have nothing against Vista. Until I started testing Windows 7 it was my main OS for 2 years. The only problem I really had was my old hardware just chugged along trying to run it (had to disable Aero and stuff to get my performance back).

Oh how I loathe reinstalling/importing my data...