There are a lot of compatibility issues - and if you really have 100's of old programs, 
I'd suspect a good number of them won't work (including compatibility mode). This 
is what I've found, and I don't have hundreds of old apps.

As well as dual booting, there is the option of using a virtual machine in vista 
(obvious advantage - no need to reboot). Microsoft's Virtual PC is now free, though 
obviously you need licence/install media for any operating system you wanted to load 
in it.

If I didn't need to support Vista, I'd still be using XP (I still have it on test 
machines). Its going to be around, and relevant for several years at least. I'd go 
for XP machine, but with a good enough spec to run Vista if you decide to upgrade 
later (ie, at least 1GB RAM, 2 is better, and decent size hard drive - Vista uses 
lots more of both than XP).







On Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 2:21 am, mick wrote:

>I am considering buying a new laptop but have been told that much of my old software 

>will not work on vista.  I have literally 100s of programs that I have collected 

>over the years each of which have associated files that I have generated.  It would 

>therefore not be acceptable if very few of them worked with vista.  Have I been 
correctly 

>informed of this problem?  If so would it be possible to have parallel operating 

>systems on the new computer?  
 

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