Mary, you'll do yourself a big favor by skipping VISTA entirely. That said, if you upgrade to Win7 Ultimate (the most robust version of Win7) it doesn't play nicely with some older programs, and I find that new devices need to state that they work with it or they won't install or work properly. So you might look for that when you shop, assuming that eventually you will have the newer OS.

If you have a device that works with Win7 that doesn't exclude the older versions - see if there is a list of several operating systems in the device's list of system requirements on the package.

SRS