Most of the programs on the list are protection programs that interact very closely with the inner workings of Windows. Most of them are subscription programs that are updated on a daily or weekly basis by their manufacturers, anyhow.

So far, I'm not convinced this "incompatibility" with Vista SP1 is a big deal.

And although I like Windows Vista, I've been having some very good luck with Windows XP lately. At the Women's Center, we had a donated computer that didn't work. The operating system disk was lost, but there was a Windows XP sticker on the computer. I reinstalled XP from the disks from another computer, and used the number on the sticker to get it activated. Then I dowloaded and installed Service Pack 2. Now it's the fastest computer in the office.

We had another computer with XP that was very sluggish. I opened the install/uninstall programs list, Googled all the programs I didn't recognize, and then uninstalled all unnecessary programs - particularly old "toolbars" that seemed to be clashing wiht Internet Explorer - and I added a gigabyte of RAM. Works like a charm now.

But I still prefer my dual core CPU with Windows Vista, 4 GB of RAM, and 1.5 terabytes of storage. And I continue to have no serious problems with Windows Vista.

-Joe-