probably day might come when everyone might use vista...(when Bill gates starts earning thousands of billion dollars instead of 50-60 billion dollars).
one thing for sure..at present at upgrading vista freely itself is a bad deal. Probably after 6 months it m ight change but i think you can still get vista for same price at that time.
first of all
1) you need atleast 2gb ram
2) minumum of 80gb hard drive( considering you wont use your comp for storage purpose and also you not into software like SAP)

this vista software definetly going rip money from ordinary people here. We still have millions of people who live on minumum wages, they can afford a small computer but cannot buy each and every software...
Just my thoughts....

I didn't read if anyone else was actually successful in getting the 12% Off and $50 Gift Card so I tried it this evening. SHOT DOWN!

As an earlier poster (supersnoop00) stated, combining a coupon and getting a gift card with purchase would not work and they are correct. It's built into the system, folks! You can't do 2 promotions at the same time! The person who rang me up put in the coupon, but it wouldn't provide the gift card.

I got in on Vista last year when the offer was a free upgrade to Vista with purchase of XP operating system on Newegg. Even then, I believe I shelled out about $109 (but have licenses for 2 OS's). Anyway, here's my insight about the Vista upgrade disk (which I currently own and use). Normally, you can't do a clean install using the upgrade disk, but there is still a work around that works 100% of the time. I'm a huge fan of always making clean installs whenever needed as opposed to upgrading an existing OS. Anyway, insert your vista upgrade disk, reboot, and perform an install without entering the cd key or choosing the activate immediately method. Be sure to choose a full install as opposed to an upgrade install. Be aware that you won't be able to make a full install and activate using an upgrade product key (hence the workaround). Once the 1st install completes, choose to install again within Vista (eg load up to Vista then launch the cd from within the os). This time enter your CD key, choose to activate, and choose an upgrade install. Once finished, you'll have used your upgrade copy to create a full install of vista. On my setup, the whole process (2 installs total) takes about 45 minutes to an hour.

I think that's all the info you'd need, but I'm pretty sure google should help if I've missed something. And you can always just perform an upgrade install without all this hassle, but if you want to perform a clean install, this is pretty much the only way to do so with an upgrade disk...

HOWEVER, YMMV: I purchased the upgrade version of Vista when it first launched. I'd doubt that M$ changed how the upgrade process works, but if they did, then the clean install may not be an option.

Overall, I am pleased with Vista's performance over XP. It automates a few tasks that your average user would not think to (automatic defrag for instance). I have a pretty high end machine and hit some stability issues every now and then when running some of the latest games (universe at war atm), but that could very well have to do with the developer, as opposed to weak code in Vista.

I've been running Vista for almost a year, and have had very little problems with this new OS. The permissions to install anything do get a little annoying, but other than that it's a great OS. I did turn off the gadgets as well as the Aero look since I didnt want to take the performance hit for running these programs of little value.

I also really like Office 2007, although the interface - like most pieces of new technology - take a little getting used to.

Thanks for the deal on this OP, as some of us who like using new technology may be interested in this.

both 10% and 12% didnt stack with the $50 gift card bonus. Did you guys request they price adjust instead of scanning the coupon

Honestly - I've been tempted lately solely due to Direct X 10. Someone tell me that it's not that impressive, please.

nikkai said:Honestly - I've been tempted lately solely due to Direct X 10. Someone tell me that it's not that impressive, please.

It's not that impressive. It's more about future-proofing.

nikkai said:Honestly - I've been tempted lately solely due to Direct X 10. Someone tell me that it's not that impressive, please.

It's really not as impressive as people are being led to believe. Turns out all of those huge graphics improvements in Crysis when going from XP to Vista don't really require DX10 after all. People discovered that the VERY HIGH graphics settings could be re-enabled under Windows XP, and the graphics were then virtually identical under DX9 with a huge performance advantage when compared to running under DX10 to boot.

http://www.pureoverclock.com/story1585.html

On top of that, there is also a hack that allows you to run DX10 under Windows XP - something that Microsoft has not surprisingly claimed was impossible. (Conveniently, Microsoft seems to claim incompetence whenever they don't want to do something, sort of like when they needlessly integrated Internet Explorer into Windows Explorer, and then claimed that it was also impossible to remove when ordered to do so by the courts.)

GWBush said:LOL, isn't that how every men get out of chores their wives wanna do? By botching jobs so badly it's never asked to be done again!
LOL. Is that why GWBush started the Iraq war?

GWBush said:I thought things are going pretty well! o.O
That's cuz ur still alive to post on fw.