Is now the right time to buy a new PC?

Core i7's right now are at a premium and are a waste of money considering the price/performance. Also, $1500-$2000 is way overkill for a non gaming PC (let alone a decent gaming PC). Personally I'm a fan of buying the most bang for the buck PCs at cheap prices and upgrading more often vs shelling out a huge amount for a top of the line PC (which frankly 99% of people don't need.). Core 2 Duos/Quads are great performers and the i7 won't get you a huge speed burst. My Q6600 system cost me $600 and I do full time development on it. I just built another Quad core AMD for under $400.

I just got a Dell with the i7 and 64bit Vista, plus 6 gigs of ram and a new monitor (and not a shabby one at that) for $999. I do not regret my purchase. I didn't want to build a system either, and while I like OS X and use an 8 core Mac Pro at work, I couldn't justify spending two to three times as much for a comparable system at home. I'm tweaking Vista, which isn't bad at all, but I'm still planning to upgrade to win7. Vista is VERY responsive on this machine, and feels even faster than Leopard on my Mac Pro. This is with Aero-or-whatever-it-is turned on, too. Is the Dell a perfect machine? No, but it serves my purposes well. Team Fortress 2 looks and runs great, and--while I'm still taking baby steps--my virtualization performance is pretty impressive. I know I'll hit a performance wall at some point in my testing, but so far it's been a smooth experience.

Well, there's going to be an announcement shortly from microsoft, but there will be a http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/04/24/secret-no-more-revealing-virtual-windows-xp-for-windows-7.aspx in windows 7 - a free virtual copy of XP hosted inside windows 7, XP Mode - that is fully integrated into the host windows 7 OS. Basically, you'll be able to run XP apps inside XP mode, launched from the start menu, running as a window alongside your windows 7 native app windows - so IE6 on XPM, next to IE8 in windows 7. I think this could well be the killer feature over vista microsoft were needing, to get people to upgrade from XP to 7.

Just Nth ing the 'vista is fine' response (and believe me I'm anything but a MS fanboy). I got Vista Ultimate and maxed out the memory, put the UI back to 'Windows Classic' (or whatever it's called - looks like Windows 2000) and really it's hard to remember what OS you're on. I do think the comment above about unsuitable hardware causing vista complaints is true. I also wonder whether users who were used to running as Administrator all the time in XP and didn't in Vista were then puzzled by the need to authorise some (not many) tasks in Vista. For myself I've never run as Administrator (I mean for day to day work) and so this aspect of Vista was actually superior to XP. The really weird thing about Vista is how 'nothing' it is (I mean once you've turned off the UI nonsense) - five years of effort and 50 million lines of code and what is there ? If you use Office and if you're planning to upgrade it as part of this move you will find the move to Office 2007 orders of magnitude more invasive (once again that's if you turn the Vista UI back to Windows Classic - can't speak for if you retain Aero or whatever).

Either wait -- not just for Win 7, but for the Core i7 mobo/s to become affordable -- or make the leap now to a Core2 or Phenom II-based system. The AMD boards are fairly attractive right now, as they appear to offer a smoother upgrade path to later processors, whereas Core2 marks the end of the line for that Intel socket. Not that CPU speed really matters for most home users these days. Before that, though, try a fresh XP install. My 2003-vintage AMD box can't do HDTV-capacity video, which is the one reason I'm thinking of an upgrade, but otherwise clips along at a decent pace on what is, after all, a 2001 operating system. (I'm now well-versed in pruning services, doing fairly regular reinstalls, etc.) The time you spend on building a box -- or swapping out a motherboard/CPU/RAM that fits your specs -- is likely to be no more than the time you spend searching round for a pre-built box that meets those criteria. Of course, you can always see if Local Computer Shop will order the parts and do the build for you.

You should definitely stick with your current rig until Windows 7 comes out. The key for now will be getting your rig in better working order with some minor investigation. What type of virus scanner are you running? It's likely that it is a major resource hog. You should consider disabling any active scanning if you are comfortable with your ability to not get tricked into installing something virus-laden. These days, a combination of updated OS/browser and general savviness goes a long way. You could also consider running on a guest account. Also, using an online backup source like Mozy might make PC security less critical, depending on what type of financial transactions you do on the machine and how secure those sites are. Consider using Google Chrome also as a browser if you get rid of your virus scanner, as it is more secure than Firefox. The other thing to do is Google every single process running on your machine to make sure no unnecessary software is loading. Uninstalling stuff you don't use anymore to reduce processor/memory overhang. This should be able to revitalize your machine enough to get you through the next couple of months. Your computer was presumably adequately fast at one time, so there is no reason you can't restore that level of satisfaction.

Vista64 SP1 is not bad at all. It should run like a dream on current high-end hardware (it does on all our newer machines at work and home). Beware getting XP without Vista: There will be no upgrade path to Win7 from XP. Also, with >4gb of ram, it'll be a waste with XP32, and XP64 is absolutely terrible. I won't advise getting a Mac (since the PC is cheaper and good for your purposes) but don't discount the Mac too much; you won't be compromising on performance and stability. Hell, I'm running Photoshop in Paralels on my entry-level MacBook faster and sturdier than my old PC.

Ah, here we are, if you want XP - the dell vista business upgrade + XP downgrade option, supposedly available on http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/sitelets/solutions/software/business/xp_smb?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&~tab=2.

Also, a lot of vista's bad reputation is down to crappy laptops being certified for vista when they had nowhere near the grunt for it; especially intel's atrocious onboard video chips and lack of RAM. The network performance when transfering files was also subject to some truly annoying slowdowns. Lack of good drivers, especially creative and nvidia didn't help either. All the crap OEMs put on new pcs was also a factor. Some 2 years on, vista SP1 has addressed many of the problems, SP2 due any day now should address most of the rest and the drivers are VASTLY improved. Moore's law has working it's magic too, and laptops finally ship with enough RAM, so that vista performance these days is no worse than XP in most cases, and it does have some nice features - plus of course, it's much prettier.