and the pitter patter of the roaches or mice or rats at Oh' dark 3 am . . . [ it is the unknown of which it is that is the fear ]

Sorry for the caps, but damn [ insert happy dance here ]

And you will love me for it.

I have several computers around the house at work etc . . .

From my point XP works.

Vista was a boondoggle that someone stole money from you if you paid for it.

Win7 while I like and functions a bit better still can not be configured as easy or as well as XP. You can find out how . . . software . . . everything that can make XP do what a user would just about ever want to do . . . Win7 is far from that ability.

( btw : I have found Win7 so useful it is running a headless server . . . yes, it is reliable and works but just still not enough for the main desktop )

As the need(s) in China for power become greater it would make sense they would advance faster into the new more efficient technologies. And if you are going to build something where you need to employ the masses - support building it at home (ie in China).

Most of the United States (and Europe) power is from an aging existing system. This was once new technologies but like an old car or truck . . . drive it to the grave and hope it lasts as long as possible. Driven by the econimics of every squeezing every last dime before I invest heavily into something new.

So as long as the cost of the existing product is affordable and makes due - there is no reason to upgrade or grow.

China is at the buying stage for something new. It isn't a question of upgrading but bringing the services to the masses, and yes - they have masses on a scale that no other country face ( combined ).

I noticed when I exceeded 2 gb on both the Wintel and Mac side my page swaps dropped to 0 page in/out.

With a 0 swap in / out I have eliminated ALL my swap spaces. I have over the years encounter too many problems with hard drive failures / errors and the operating system to not recover from simple errors which will occur with year of writing the same data over and over (frequently it is the few processes that access these swap spaces anymore).

Also if you are running Photoshop - creating a dead drive space for just the swap disk is useful when working on LARGE data . . . Earse this space / drive from time to time to eliminate stupid errors that develop over time (shame there are few simple methods to do the same for vitual memory spaces).