Well, this is actually kind of funny. My desktop is 8 years old and has 512MB of RAM (And it still works just fine. Has XP, came with ME) My laptop has 4 GB of RAM on XP. (Bought it early summer 2008) I keep the registry pristine, remove any and all temporary items (including the organization of my start menu and desktop), mod the boot process, mod the theme, add some extras, and manage pretty much everything else. The result? A good-looking, fast starting, faster running, safe computer more powerful than my desktop. Oh, and I shun the family Vista desktop. They make me maintain it (and buy the anitivirus), so it runs just fine. (Plus they make me figure out how to run their programs. Can you believe I got a racing game intended for Windows 95 not only working, but able to connect to the internet for IP races?) Vista may look good, but I like my modded XP theme. I can have all sorts of cool stuff. (And, if I really wanted to, I could easily fool people into thinking I had a hackintosh, but I don't like the Mac setup)