Hello...first post! Anywho...going through all of the text for the A+ cert and I am heading into foreign territory...vista and 7. So as of this point I know I need a new os but I am unsure which one I should purchase. Should I purchase vista or 7 for my new pc? I could buy both but well that seems like a waste of funds. Thanks in advance.

Paul

All these views and no replies...well sold off one of my older apples and picked up a windows 7 pc...hope it is similar enough to vista...time will tell

Windows 7 is just a modified version of Vista so 7 is the way to go.

Yep, definately 7, Microsoft said themselves that vista wasn't that great

Just wanted to add a small comment. Windows 7, the Ultimate edition, is the preferable OS if you think you will go onto a Microsoft certificate in the future.

Also not discussed so far is: is 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7 preferable? I dimly recall there being restrictions on some virtual machine software products ... that is, one can't intermix 32- and 64-bit host and client OS's. I am not using a VM (yet...). I suspect that when I do, I'll buy the 64-bit product.

you can indeed intermix x86 and x64 client OS's using virtualization providing your host OS is x64 and you have an x64 capable CPU.
However, in order to run x64 virtualization, the BIOS will need to be tweaked.
AMD calls the setting AMD-V and Intel calls it VT-x. This setting will need to be enabled in the BIOS.

Thanks for the clarification, @jimmy_b. So then, upon deconstructing your answer, one would have a problem running a 64-bit client VM (such as Microsoft's 2008 R2 Server) with a 32-bit Windows 7 host. So if @brownmutt purchased a PC with Windows 7 Home Premium edition 32-bit, there would be problems adding a VM. Right?...

Is the 64-bit client under a 64-bit host OS a hardware or architectural restriction? There are several VM products: OpenBox, Windows Virtual PC, VMWare's product, etc. Is this limitation shared with all products?

Just curious.

Well, it is possible to run a x64 guest on a x86 host, but there would be limitations.
For starters, the CPU would have to be x64 compatible and have the virtualizations settings listed above as active.
The x64 guest would also be limited to only the memory address space available to the x86 host (less than 4GB, so a portion of that allocated to the VM so that both OS's can run).
A much better alternative would be running an x86 guest on an x64 host. That way the Host would be able to address as much memory as you had installed (up to 192GB with Windows 7 Ultimate or a lot more with 2008R2). The guest would still only be able to address less than 4GB memory because of the 32bit architecture, but it's unlikely someone would want to asign more than that to a virtual OS anyway.

In my opinion, the sooner 32bit OS's become obsolete, the better, and I would encourage everyone to just stick with 64bit.
That way, in time all software venders would just write programs and games to just run on 64bit architecture and the world would be a better place.

I have the gist of it now. What you write makes sense. Thanks @jimmy_b for the input.