Digital BW, The Print

> 
> > The OS is so voraciously power-hungry, ...

I have used XP for years and like it. The laptop I had to buy last 
year had Vista, and it was a awful until the upgrades finally solved 
some problems.  Now, I can notice some productivity improvements that 
are nice.  The workflow and profiling is actually easier now on Vista 
than XP -- more drag and drop compatibility, for example.

On the power issue, I'd urge getting the maximum ram as well as a 
good graphics board.  I understand there might still be some issues 
in that department.  On the recent laptop I bought for my daughter, I 
had a graphics board put in just to relieve the ram of the video drag 
the build in board puts on it. 

My MS relative says part of the reason for some incompatibilities 
stems from MS's decision to force writers to get the data out of the 
Program Files directory.  For security reasons they are trying to 
isolate the programs, but many programers are still storing data 
there.  If access to this directory is stopped, it apparently really 
helps with security.

So, there are still some problems, but I'm actually beginning to see 
some advantages to Vista.

I might add that I'm still using my old Windows 95 FTP program on the 
Vista machine.  I appreciate this backward compatibilty. 

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com