Lucky you; you just received a brand new shiny PC for your [fill in the occasion: birthday, anniversary, graduation, holiday]. Unfortunately, your new rig almost certainly came preinstalled with Windows Vista, and you’ve got a ton of legacy software that require an older 32-bit Windows OS for operation. What’s a poor Vista PC to do?

You can almost feel the bipolar sense of anticipation and dread building: Microsoft is about to release a major new version of Windows, the operating system software that makes most of our computers run -- or halt, depending on the operating system's whim. We'll be getting lots of new housekeeping functions in Windows XP, some "enhanced reliability," and probably an improved Internet browser, depending on the U.S. Justice Department's capriciousness.