On Jan. 30, Windows Vista, the newest Microsoft Windows operating system, will be released to the home PC user.

"Unless you really know you need it or you are buying a brand new system that is vista ready, then I would wait a couple of months at least, as this will give them time to work out bugs," said Gerry Santoro, assistant professor of information sciences and technology.

Santoro advised students to stay with their system if it works.

"My advice would be that if the operating system you have now is working for what you want to do, stay with it," Santoro added. "Definitely do not upgrade during the semester because that could take your machine out, and it could be weeks before you get it working again if problems occur."

So what's the difference between Windows XP and Windows Vista?

"There were many changes made within the internals, and there were also a few changes in terms of the user applications provided," Santoro said. "They also wanted to build in some better security features."

Windows Vista also features increased multimedia support. Santoro cautioned students against upgrading their existing Windows XP operating system to Windows Vista because of the new multimedia software.

"You really have to have a good graphic driver to handle the better graphics and multimedia," said Santoro. "Some older computers with older types of video graphic drivers may not run vista at all."

Additionally, third-party software and games may not be compatible with Windows Vista, Santoro said.

"There's a chance that some of your old programs will not work anymore, typically with games, but conceivably it could happen with other types of software as well, especially freeware and shareware," Santoro said.

On Microsoft's Web site there is a program students can download called Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor to determine the compatibility of their existing computer to Windows Vista, Santoro aid. This program will look at the computer's hardware and storage to determine whether Vista can run properly.

"Students running a machine that is older than two years should be really cautious," Santoro said. "Also be cautious if student has computer they put together themselves."

Santoro also talked about the backward migration safety path, which can be used to return a computer to Windows XP after installing Windows Vista.

"When you do an upgrade of an operating system, typically they provide an emergency way to go back to your older operating system," Santoro said. "They may not have done this with Vista, but did do that with XP."

If students bought their current computer with the operating system already installed, they may not have installation disks that are needed to use the backward migration safety path.

These students can read the installation instructions to determine whether they can make their own disk, enabling them to go back to XP if needed, Santoro said.

Using the backward migration safety path allows students to return to Windows XP or any older operating system without having to wipe the system clean and reinstall XP as if it was new, Santoro added.

The Penn State Computer Store will not sell the new Windows until April, and Information Technology Services (ITS) may not install the program in the many computer labs around campus until summer of 2008, said Robin Anderson, director of customer communications for ITS.

"We are going very slowly with it; we don't know when the computer labs will be changing to Vista. This is such a radical change in operating system that we're just going to take our time," Anderson said. "One of our concerns is that with the new office that comes with Vista it has different file formats, and its going to cause problems for people who don't make the switch."

Even Microsoft Word files will be saved in a different format, making it harder for users to send and receive Word files, Anderson said.

Microsoft Word documents will be saved as .docx in the 2007 Microsoft Office System, instead of being saved as .doc as in all previous Word versions, Anderson said.

The user interface is also very different from previous versions of Windows that some students may find themselves disoriented, Anderson said.

ITS has been part of the beta test of the pre-release Vista software for the past seven months and are making their decisions based on the outcome, Anderson said.

"Other schools in the Big Ten are basically doing the same thing, so it's not just Penn State," she said.

Microsoft could not be reached by press time.

For more information from Microsoft on Windows Vista, visit www.microsoft.com/windowsvista.