At work I'm beginning to take on more than just IT--for better or worse I'm starting to learn the GIS world and I'm learning some CAD. I have a couple problems here. I have a good workstation: Sun Ultra 24 with dual Intel Core 2 Quads @ 2.40GHz and 8GB of RAM. That's not a problem. But I need a 64-bit operating system to use all that power. And my CAD and GIS software is, unfortunately, Windows only. (We are locked into Autodesk and ESRI... don't argue with me, it's the way it is for now, though I'm trying to use as much FOSS as possible.) Vista 64? Not a chance. See... actually I tried it. Although Civil3D and ArcGIS are both supposedly Vista 64-bit compatible, they aren't really. Things break. Things crash. Things go bump hourly. Hourly. I don't like force quitting and restarting these programs hourly. XP 64? Maybe. I haven't tried it, honestly. I didn't want to attempt it only to find out that there are still 64-bit gotchas. So... what am I doing?