BASIC stamp question

I want to self teach myself Basic Stamp, I have a laptop with Vista, is that good enough to start or do I need something else, besides the proto-board. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Just download the stamp editor for vista from the Parallax site, if you dont have a serial port on your PC make sure to use an approved usb to serial cable, some dont work with the stamp...

I have used a Basic Stamp and it's relatively easy to program and control from the STAMP PC interface editor, especially if you are familiar with BASIC. If not BASIC is probably the easiest programming language to learn. Have fun.

What board will you be using to program the Basic Stamp? The Parallax Super Carrier is a great and low-cost development board. You did not mention in your post if you are a beginner to microcontroller programming of just to the Basic Stamp. If you're new to microcontroller programming in general I would suggest Myke Predko's 123 Robotics Experiments for the Evil Genius. It takes you from the simplest application to robot building toward the end of the book. The book comes with a PCB you can use to create your own programmer board. A few simple parts are required (a push button, capacitors, a RS232 DB9 connector, resistors, breadboard, etc). Again, this is only recommended if you are a beginner.
Have fun and let us know what your are creating.

~Natalia.