In January, the CIO of the US government's Department of Transportation issued a ban on Vista, Office 2007 and IE 7, stating that there was "no compelling technical or business case" for adopting the software and that in addition there were additional reasons not to upgrade due to concerns about compatibility with specific software programs used by the DOT. This latter type of concern is critical for law firms as well. Many of the programs law firms use – practice management, document management, trial support software, etc. are produced by companies that do not have the resources to do extensive beta testing on a large pool of users with the new operating system. Therefore, while they may advertise that they are Vista-compatible, this frequently comes with reservations and exceptions: the fact of the matter is that there are almost certain to be problems with Vista as the user base expands. Early adoptors that want to have "cutting edge" technology are likely to discover why people often refer to this experience as being on the "bleeding edge." My advice: wait. Six months if you are feeling adventurous, or until Service Release 1 is out, a year if you want to be relatively certain that your software will actually work with Vista. In the meantime, if you have to buy a new PC, buy one that satisfy the heavy-duty memory requirements for Vista, but run Windows XP on it. That way, you can reformat the hard drive and install Vista when you are ready.