Is this a real upgrade?

[doctorhifi@hotma]

Noob question.
My boss has given me an allowance towards a computer upgrade which is the only reason I'm thinking of doing it. Use it or lose it. This will still cost me some $$ out of my pocket so staying with what I have is definately an option. Otherwise it'd probably be a no brainer.

I don't do gaming. I use Pinnacle Studio 9 to create some videos occasionally and dump them to DVD. I do normal word processing stuff: Word, Excel, etc.
I occasionally use Photoshop CS and Illustrator and of course surf the web. I backup my digital camera photos and infrequently modify them.
I use Nero for various DVD/CD projects from time to time.

I currently have a Dell Dimension 4600 I bought around 2004:
2.8GHz Pentium 4
1536 Mb RAM
NVidia GeForce FX5500 256 Mb
Creative SoundBlaster Live! 5.1
80 Gb & 40Gb hard drives
DVD -ROM and CD/DVD burner with light scribe.
Windows XP SP2

I'm eyeing a new Dell Inspiron 531:
Athlon dual core 64 x 2 5600+ (2.8 GHz, 1Mx2)
2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
NVidia GeForce 8600GT-DDR3, 256MB
Integrated audio
320Gb hard drive
DVD-Rom (I'll add the lightscribe DVD from my other machine)
Vista Home Premium

My questions:
-Is this a real upgrade? I mean on paper it looks like its twice the PC in some ways but will I really notice a difference?
-what kind of improvements will I see using the application I use?
-Moving from XP to Vista makes me nervous only because I don't trust Vista yet and I've been doing fine with XP. Any software issues I'm going to run into when I reinstall my apps on the new PC
-Anything pitfalls I should avoid?
-I am limited to buying a Dell (don't ask why, just accept that I won't be building my own to save some $$)

Thanks in advance and sorry if these are stupid questions. I'm a noobie so go easy on me.

 

[ThatGuy16]

Yeah, that will be a pretty good upgrade. I dont think you would have any compatibility issues with vista, 95% of the apps that run on XP will on vista. You would be able to do a whole lot more multitasking with little to no lag, depends on how intense the programs are you use.

 

[Kornowski]

Yeah, that's a damn good upgrade! If it doesn't cost you that much, then, YEAH! Go for it, it'll be great!

 

[Risingtide93]

Heck, are you going to throw that old computer away though?

Anyway, yeah that is a decent upgrade. Even enough to notice the difference probably.

 

[lhoney2]

-Is this a real upgrade? I mean on paper it looks like its twice the PC in some ways but will I really notice a difference?

It will probably feel like 10 times the computer. I recently made a similar leap with my PC and it was really awesome to use the new machine. Enjoy!