Upgrading to a new OS is something I generally tend to do further down the track; when the numerous bugs are worked out, a couple of service packs have been released and all driver issues are sorted. My original plan with Vista was to do the same thing. I was going to wait.

Alas just as time waits for no man, it would appear the boss of my other job has demanded I make the upgrade now. For this to make sense I should point out that my life is not always that of freelance gaming writer, during those daylight hours that most other people work by I work from home as a consultant of sorts. My boss does the same thing and the ability of our computers to speak to each other in a common tongue is what makes this whole office at home arrangement work. Now he has gone off and bought a new PC with Vista (the networking options of which has him quite excited) and as a result I have to join him on the OS frontier, like a Charlie Utter to his Wild Bill Hickok.

Of course this is a worrisome proposition for a gamer such as me. Our very own forums are rife with people experiencing - at best - lesser performance in games than they are used to and - at worst - certain games refusing to work at all. I have no doubt that all these issues will evaporate in time, particularly with Microsoft pushing DirectX 10 as the next big thing in PC gaming, but for the moment the switch to Vista is something of a concern to me. Particularly because part of my income is derived from the ability to play games in the first place.

In many ways the situation reminds me of the same one currently being experienced by the console gamers out there. Getting a brand new console maybe significantly more exciting than a new OS but some of the same problems apply. I'm talking mainly about the ability to play existing games. None of the new consoles have 100% backwards compatibility (Any Wii owners wanting to take me up on that can come around and attempt to play my copy of the sublime Ikaruga on Nintendo's new system) and that does mean there needs to be a willingness to part with some those games you may be currently playing in favour of moving forward.

But after some thinking I realised the situation for console gamers is not totally analogous with the one I'm experiencing on PC. Why? Well I've never had real cause to take this step before and as a result I almost missed the opportunity entirely. But the answer lies in that most wonderful of OS concepts, dual booting!

That's right. Alongside my copy of Windows Vista I have purchased a new hard drive specifically for the new OS and its applications. Granted, the new drive is not necessary to dual boot Vista and XP but if you saw how little space was on my current drive you would understand.

And this, my friends, is one of the strengths a PC will always have over its console brethren and the reason it will never find its self relegated to the junk heap of antiquated technologies. While there are those who see the ability to do such things as a needless complication I will always see it as a wonderful versatility. The PC can always makes strides forward and the risks you would normally take in riding the wave can be largely obviated by a little bit of PC know-how.

So thanks to a second hard-drive and some knowledge of the possibilities of dual-booting my previous cold feet are now firmly ensconced in the warm slippers of certainty. Vista by day. XP by night. I'm ready.