Re: I'm looking to buy a new PC so I gotta ask...

If you buy modern hardware*

I loaded it up last night on my laptop (SingleCore 2.8Ghz w/2G memory,
256M video and 7.2K RPM drive) and it flies. I've got full Aero and
there's no sluggishness at all. Hums right along. Almost seems faster
than XP, but I've not played w/it long enough yet to say for sure. I do
like the look/feel better.

One big change with Vista is that MS undid a past sin.

I actually didn't mind that sin. Yes, now the video subsystem can crash
and not kill the PC, just like it could in 3.51. However, you pay a huge
price in performance for the Ring 0/Ring 3 switch. I always looked at it
this way, on the desktop you may have high-end video with drivers that
are pushing the limits; they're likely to crash, and if they do they
used to bring down the whole PC, now just the video will die -- but what
good is a desktop I can't see? <G> On the server side you shouldn't be
playing w/high-end junk like DirectX and 3D graphics, so use a simpler
video card with tried-and-true drivers that won't crash. I guess the
combination of screamingly fast cpus and the fact that much of the video
processing is now offloaded to the video card's processor anyway
eliminates some of the concern about performance on the
kernel-mode/user-mode swap.

-Walden