[{HVY-E}Jinxx]

I've been running Vista Ultimate 64bit for about a year now and aside from having to wait for decent 64bit video drivers, I've had very few problems with it. There are a couple of little quirks, like having to run HL and TS in XP SP2 mode and the occassional problem installing some apps such as HL, but all in all, I've been very pleased.

Now, keep in mind that my system specs aren't your typical player's rig. I'm running 8gb of Ram and 2tb of storage, so I'm not plauged by some of the slow downs that others have experienced with the Vista OS.

Without knowing what you're running now and what your expectations are, I really can't tell you weather or not you should wait for Windows 7 x64 or what.

I've come to see Vista vs XP the same way we compared Win 98SE to Win ME a few years back. Everyone thought that ME was going to be this great OS and it was a dog. It wasn't until the very end that it finally became a stable and somewhat reliable gaming platform, but by the time that happened, the damage was done. I went straight to the 64bit ver of Vista so as to bypass most if not all of the problems that were hounding the 32bit users. With the latest SP2 release for Vista, my gaming experience has improved 10 fold.

As for getting the OS for $100.00 and then upping to Win 7 for free, I'd say go for it. Just make sure that the version you're getting is the version you REALLY want. Home Basic is o.k. but I personally prefer the Ultimate edition due to the added Network security for my rig (server).