I somehow doubt SP3 will be faster than SP2. The last thing M$ would want to do is make their old operating system, which is already faster than their new OS, even faster. The the only way they can get people to "upgrade" to Vista is by cutting off the supply of Windows XP. Now, it's not all about performance. That's part of the reason why I prefer to program in Java even though it is probably slower than C++ in most cases. And it used to be much, much slower than C++. But with Java, I don't have to worry about memory management and I have great tools for Java development like the Eclipse IDE. So I may be giving up a little performance, but at least I am getting a lot in return. Plus, if I want it faster, I either go back and develop it in C++ or buy faster hardware. Although, hardware is cheaper than my time so I'll probably opt for the brute force approach if that is an alternative. But with Vista, I don't see what one gains. I suppose it's probably more secure than XP, but only if one happens to be a complete idiot and attempts to open / install everything they can find on the Internet. I like Ubuntu, if it was not for some compatibility issues, I would be using it exclusively.