This is my story...
I work at Geek Squad (now that half of you have stopped reading...) part
time, as a "fun job" when I'm not doing my other job.
OK so it's not really a story, it's just what I like to tell customers who
come in and say, Why do you like Vista?
I tell them, "See all these computers behind me (our precinct has 80-90
systems in repair on any given day), they all have 3 things in common. 1>
they are running Limewire, 2> they all have viruses, and 3> they are all
running Windows XP.
It's been well over a year and rarely, if ever do we get Vista machines in
for virus removal or basic software repair. We occasionally get hardware
problems which are easily fixed. The initial setup of Vista can be a pain
in the ass, but once it's done, or done right the OS works really well.
My other job we upgraded half of the computers to Vista. The network has
XP and 2K boxes as well, and they connect to a 2k server. No real issues.
The only issue is we got 1gig of ram, which even in "business mode",
meaning we don't game on them, can occasionally get slow because Vista is
just a dog with RAM, but the OS is stable, it has AMAZING reliability and
stability diagnostic tools built in. It cleans itself and generally does a
lot of thing to prevent problems down the road.
If you've never upgraded your systems, you simply don't know what you're
missing.
I don't recommend upgrading all your systems at once, in fact I don't
recommend upgrading anything. Buy new systems with Vista on it, and
gradually rotate them into your day to day business after through testing.
If you take the time to do an upgrade right, Vista is an extremely
pleasant experience.
Now the question is, do you really need to upgrade? Running a Public
Library is there really any need for state of the art? If your systems
suffer from frequent virus attacks I would say, upgrade. I don't think
there are many reference programs that require DirectX 10, dunno, maybe if
you posted your reqirements we could comment on your phobias.