Bought a new computer lately? My colleague Mitch Wagner and I have both done just that. Mitch made the leap from PC to Mac, while I -- under a time crunch due to the "expiration" of my existing notebook -- bought an XP-loaded, Vista-capable PC in the days leading up to the late-January Vista launch.Mitch details his start-up process and first few days of use in this blog entry. One of his key conclusions: getting up and running with the Mac is much easier than with a PC, but the Mac hasn't been quite as reliable as the pro-Apple hype suggests. His system has been prone to crashes during initial use.

My experience with the new HP Pavilion dv6000 (AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology, 2g RAM and 120G hard drive) has been mostly positive. But the many decisions to be made around the transition are anything but painless. In the days leading up to the Vista launch, the retail PC cupboards were bare, the major vendors' websites were baffling at best, and whatever system I purchased was bound to induce lingering doubts about its Vista-readiness.

It's likely I over-bought (at least vs. what I wanted to spend) just so I could one day run Vista -- even though I'm not sure I want to, given the various software incompatibilities already being reported. The migration "path" that's been laid requires that I do most of the work.

Because Vista can be so confusing, we're taking a crack at sorting out how to decide which PCs can give you the Vista power you need -- and which can't -- in this special report by David DeJean. I wish I'd had these insights two weeks ago.

Please weigh in with your Vista upgrade or Mac switching experiences below.