PC World sez that Vista is underrated and XP overrated, but that hasn't stopped a few big players like Dell, HP and others from offering an XP downgrade option that lets you order your box with XP preloaded and the Vista disks included. Now M$ is offering a free download (35 megs) of Virtual PC 2007, a program "...that lets you run almost any OS in a virtual machine window." according to PC World (11/08). Presumably, one could start Vista and run XP in a virtual window.

As I've noted previously, almost none of my legacy software ran properly under Vista. I do not want or require all of the latest versions of any particular software package. I still use Photoshop 7, for example, and although it lacks a few modern embellishments like HDR, it is still the same excellent package it was the day it was released.

If anyone tries Virtual PC 2007, I'd be interested in seeing some benchmarks for software running in the virtual window.

S