Should You Upgrade ...
To Microsoft Windows Vista?
For many people, the most logical, economical, and trouble-free time to upgrade to Vista will be when they need to purchase a new computer. Certainly, you should make sure that any new computer you purchase after 30 January 2007 comes with Vista already installed. But if your current computer runs Windows XP and satisfies your needs, you shouldn't feel compelled to upgrade right away. Running Vista requires more memory than XP (for satisfactory performance you should have at least 1GB), as well as a relatively recent and powerful CPU and strong graphics capabilities.
Microsoft provides plenty of information on Vista, and reviews and articles are easy to locate on the Web. But upgrading can cost considerable time and money, so you need to weigh these costs against the benefits of any specific features you can identify in Vista that would improve your computing experience.
To Microsoft Office 2007?
The decision to move to Office 2007 probably has more serious implications than a decision to upgrade to Vista, and should not be undertaken lightly. The decisions can be made independently, as neither Vista nor Office 2007 requires the other. While upgrading your OS will primarily affect your own computing experience, upgrading to Office 2007 will require you both to learn a completely new user interface and to take special considerations when sharing files with others who haven't upgraded or who use Macintosh computers.
Office 2007 introduces a radically different user interface and new file formats which can't be read by previous versions of Office without special conversion software. Windows users can download and install Microsoft's free Office compatibility pack, which allows basic reading and writing of these new file formats from Windows versions of Office XP and Office 2003. However, documents utilizing features unique to Office 2007 may not be converted faithfully. Microsoft does not plan to release conversion software for Macintosh versions of Office until May 2007, and won't release Office 2008 for the Macintosh until late 2007 or early 2008. Office 2007 users can choose to save files in the older formats, but those documents cannot take advantage of new features.