Beware the sparkly Vista

Yes, Windows Vista is the new operating system kid on the block. You would think that by now we have learned not to necessarily trust "dot-oh" versions of operating systems. However, people will still get Vista for the purpose of having the latest cool thing. That's fine. If you're one of those people, you better keep the following in mind.

If you purchase the upgrade, you cannot do a fresh clean install of Vista onto a new drive. According to Microsoft's support site:

This problem occurs because Windows Vista does not check upgrade compliance. Therefore, you cannot use an upgrade key to perform a clean installation of Windows Vista.

Your choices are to install Vista directly on top of XP, or to purchase a license that allows a clean installation onto an empty hard drive. For me, the only way to install a new operating system is to install it fresh without any extraneous junk files that could get in the way. I'm going to wait until the initial frenzy dies down, and then we'll see if things change. It might even be worthwhile to wait for the first service pack so all of the initial bugs are out of the way as well.