In spite of everything that can be said against Windows, I find that in general it works for me at least well enough that I do not feel the urgent need to change. Even the screen crashes that used to sicken me every once in a while seem to have become less frequent - or maybe I have got smarter in using the system. Mind you, Vista might be the straw that breaks the camel's back - worse in that this is the first computer I ever bought new, instead of second-hand, with a seasoned Windows system full of patches and improvements. Norton, however, is different. I have never once had it on (I used it for brief periods a few years ago, and now I got one month free with the new machine) without any serious problems. Conversely, AVG has always satisfied me - for one thing, you can set it for three in the morning when you are asleep, and for another, the worst it does even at the height of activity is to slow down the computer a bit. Norton works so badly, especially compared to AVG - and AVG's basic model is free - that it was wholly counter-intuitive to me that it should sell at all, let alone be the marktet leader. I think superversive below gives quite a credible account.