<p>Any suggestions on where to buy Windows XP? I intend to install it on my Mac, using Boot Camp. (Do not want to try Parallels or VMWare Fusion.)</p>
<p>Should I buy one for the system builder in order to save some money? I heard that even if I buy a retail one (I saw one at Office Depot the other day), I can still install it on one computer only.</p>
<p>Will either of the following ones work?</p>
<p>[Newegg.com</a> - Microsoft Windows XP Home SP3 for System Builders - Operating Systems](<a href=“Not Found: 404 Error”>Not Found: 404 Error)</p>
<p>who cares how many computers you install it on?</p>
<p>First off, if your school is a part of the MSDN Academic Alliance, and you enroll in a CS course, it may still be possible to legally download a copy of XP Pro SP3 for free.</p>
<p>Having said that, why are you looking for XP? Contrary to popular belief, Vista is actually a lot better than XP, mainly due to the SuperFetch technology. Even if you really don’t like Vista, Windows 7 will be released this year.</p>
<p>Personally, I see no point in buying a copy of XP now given that Windows 7 will be released so soon. If for whatever reason you really, really, really want a copy of XP, remember that XP Home pales in comparison to XP Pro.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply.</p>
<p>For some reason, I do not know why Vista seems to pick up such a bad reputation. All people I know suggested me to get XP instead of Vista. Many companies prohibit their employees from using Vista within their companies’ intranet. All of my friends shelled out additional money to “down-grade” their OS from Vista to XP, even when they order a brand-new PC from Dell today.</p>
<p>I am not an IT person. So I personally do not know what’s wrong with Vista. Is it the case that an early version of Vista is not very “mature” but now the current version is much improved? These days, it seems to me that almost nobody trusts the quality of the very first version of any software from any company.</p>
<p>When is the free upgrade to Windows 7 going to be released? I heard rumors it would be for all computers bought after July 1 or even June 26. Buying a computer now seems silly (especially if you’re going to pay extra for XP) when you can get something that will eventually have Windows 7 in a couple weeks.</p>
<p>mcat2,</p>
<p>As they say, first impressions count, and Vista had a terrible first impression. That actually wasn’t Microsoft’s fault; rather, it was the fault of all the third-parties who didn’t want to write good drivers for Vista. Almost all of the Vista “problems” have long since been fixed. Anyone who is still reciting them has clearly never used Vista.</p>
<p>Another thing is that Vista changed the way memory is perceived. Traditionally, lower RAM usage was seen as “better.” So, when people saw that Vista “uses more RAM than XP,” they freaked out and dismissed Vista as bloated crap. In actuality, they simply misunderstood the SuperFetch technology I mentioned earlier. Vista’s using more RAM is a good thing, not a bad thing. It indicates that programs that you frequently used are being cached for faster start-up.</p>
<p>But, Microsoft is ending the Vista line pretty soon. So, unless you desperately need XP now, it’s better to wait.</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation. I just skimmed over what wiki has to say about SuperFetch. It is an interesting idea. If the design idea is executed well, it does seem to have a lot of potential to get rid of the long latencies due to the access to a file on a hard disk. (It reminds of a lesson in which our professor taught us how to minimize the data access time in a Database class quite a while ago.)</p>
<p>It seems that many recent ideas about optimization of programs are about the optimization of data access, rather than about the number cruncher, since D. Kuck and other researchers introduced to us why the data optimization is so important. (Granted, those pioneers worked on supercomputers or parallel computers, rather on the processors on PCs.) I remember running into some embedded program for which > 50% of its work is to move data around in such a way that the code will run efficiently.</p>
<p>Thanks again for giving me an opportunity to learn this.</p>