i was thinking of upgrading vista because Microsoft is slowly working out the bugs. i was running the system check for it and it said it would work except it said that my video card might not support windows aero. what is aero? can i disable that function and still use vista? my video card seems to work well with games that it doesn't support. i just click the "run anyway" button. will i still be able to do that with vista? my computer has an intell mobile 128mb graphics card (NOT upgradeable as it is integrated onto the motherboard), 2GB of RAM, 120GB hard disk, 1.73Ghz processor.

Windows aero is just a display feature, it simply makes the edges of your windows transparent, it looks cool, but takes more memory than the standard vista theme w/o aero, and yes you can disable it. Windows Vista basic doesn't have it anyways, just premium, business, and ultimate. When you say, you "just click the run anyway", are you talking about games on steam? Your games should run fine as well.

Regards,
Matt

I have vista and personally I hate it. Half of the programs I use [I tune high performance cars on the side] have to be ran under XP SP-2 emulation. The vista OS uses over 400mb ram just in itself. I'm going to be buying a laptop with XP pro installed at some point down the road and staying away from vista until I have to upgrade.

The version of vista I have is Basic, so there arent any of the other frills that use even more of the system resources if that tells you anything.

Dan