People who don't like change are stuck on XP. People who like the next generation are using Windows 7. People who are stuck in a transition period use Windows Vista, and thats my personal view on it. I preferred XP after Vista came out and I bought a laptop with Vista on, it wasn't what I was used to, it asked me to permiss myself to do things which is a bit silly to be fair (this option can be turned off though, its called User Account Control).

I enjoy using Windows Vista but I don't think they finalised it and made it so it was optimal for performance, I think they shipped out this product half heartedly to make a bit of money and get some feedback while they continued to Work on Windows 7, thats what it feels like, Vista is not efficient, needing 2Gb of ram to just run smoothly its clunky if you buy a budget PC that will almost certainly come with 1GB ram meaning your struggling from the moment you turn the PC on, let alone multi-tasking.

There are some nice features, feels like you have more control and options and has some nice displays at the cost of system processing power and RAM memory

There are 2 versions which are 32 bit and 64 bit both of which are pretty identical apart from the RAM limitations on the 32 bit which will only allow you to have about 3.4GB Ram utilized, the 64 bit OS you can pretty much add what you want, its quite a high figure, something like 128GB RAM but don't quote me on that.

I think although its newer and will need a service pack soon to fix any known bugs I would prefer Windows 7 as my operating system because its basically a refined and reformed version of Vista and its what Vista should've been in the first place. I've had countless problems with wireless networking and still to this day cannot seem to connect to my wireless router all the time if I use security, this is not just a problem I am experiencing, look at Google.