I have a custom pc with a AMD Duron 1.80GHz 512 MB of RAM 20GB HDD
with 8 GB free and a second HDD of 10GB with 5GB free. Win XP Home
with SP2
runs ok.

what do you think i would be better doing:

1.) Buy a vista upgrade.
2.) Buy a new pc with vista pre-installed

The only thing is that I can get a vista Business Upgrade for £99.

What Do You Think

you can not upgrade from xp home to xp business -- see the last post in this thread.

Your computer's speed is adequate, but I think you need to add more RAM. And you should replace those two small hard drives with one larger one -- I bought a 350 gig drive here in USA for about $100 USD.

If you have the money to blow then you will probably be better off just buying a new pc with vista pre-installed. Give you current pc to a relative kid or donate it to your favorite charity and get tax writeoff.

If i were you i'd just go the extra mile and give Vista a nice home to live on. You really don't need to go buy a Vista preinstalled pc cause you already have half the equipment you neeed. Just go to newegg.com or whatever store you use and get a nice intel core duo and motherboard for about 500-600 have at least a gig of ram, and upgrade your harddrive. you'll have a top of the line pc that cost you maybe 100 dollars more than that cheap vista preinstalled acer computer that barely runs vista basic.

but then hed need to buy the ful lversion of vista (as im guessing is xp is OEM and tied to his motherboard)

It's pretty much been covered, but just to get my own 2 cents in, I would just go all out and buy a brand spanking new machine... in a few months.

If you want Vista you are best off being able to use all of it's features (basically the look of the thing is the appeal for me). Though right now there will be countless bugs that need'a fixing. There were several updates within days of it's release here.

Wait until the majority of problems are sorted, treat yourself to a brand new machine. And my advice is to get a lot more than the recommended specs. Mainly because you might want to use other software that drains ye old memory.

Lol isnt that essencially just replacing the whole computer except for the CD drive and the case. I would suggest going out and buying parts and simply building a new PC that way you can get a snazzy new case as well or if your not confident enough to build it yourself find a company that will do it for you from parts that they sell.

If i was you though i wouldnt even buy vista just yet and stick with XP for now till they get rid of all the bugs plus this wont cost you any extra money as long as you get an OEM copy of XP with a vista upgrade coupon