Main difference as far as trading is in the networking features of XP Pro. I don't know the details, but the tech guys in my clearing firm will not allow an XP Home based OS on their network for trading.
For trading it really should not matter whether the "bugs have been worked out of Vista". XP Pro will be around until about 2015, or so (at least on "extended support"), so one would never be REQUIRED to upgrade to Vista (or, would that actually be a downgrade?). Vista is all about eye candy and DX10 for gaming. Neither of those apply to a trading machine.
Testers See Windows XP Passing Vista http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Microsoft-XP-SP3-Performance.html
Been running Vista for a while now. No problems, nada. Never had a blue screen. No compatibility problems. Very stable. Faster than XP on my system. Fast, seamless install. H
Is it really faster or did you have an old xp install that had slowed down because you hadn't reinstalled recently?
Oh, I keep my system lean and clean on a regular basis. Besides, my last clean install of XP had been on the system less than a year when I did the new Vista install. It's definitely faster. Just relating my experience. As always, YMMV. H
Thanks H, I am planning to try the SP3 beta thats been reviewed well. It seems reasonably far along the beta track so hopefully I wont need a quick Acronis restore to recover from it.
I have two DELL laptops, one bought three years ago running XP. And one bought three months ago running Vista, which i bought for my wife. The Vista one has blue screened twice since we got it, and my wife doesnt use it that much. Ive never seen a blue screen on my XP laptop even after three years of very heavy use.