Campaign Cartographer will run just fine on older computers under Win XP. Where you'll run into problems is using a lot of nodes and bitmap graphics, especially if you don't have a lot of memory. Up until I got my new laptop recently, my primary mapping computer was a 7 yr old HP Pentium 4 running at 2 Ghz w/ 1 Gb of memory and running Win XP. Running IE8 and accessing a Flash based site will slow things down even more than running CC does.
Vista and CC do have some clashes. However, I ran into a similar (and yet more fatal) problem with a couple of completely different programs at work. What I found was that under Vista you need to make sure that programs don't install into the default Windows programs directory. I now make it a habit to create a directory called My Programs on my root drives and install all of my software there. Haven't seen any issues with Vista and oder software since I started doing this. I tested CC on my wife's computer with Vista using this method and it seems to work, though I haven't done thorough usage testing. I did, however, use the same method to install CC and all it's add-ons on my laptop with Win7, and have had only one problem with CC, which I tracked down to a network issue.
On the CC mailing list people have reported various degrees of success running CC under various emulators. I think the most common successful one is on a Mac, while at least one of the Linux ones seems to be a no go, others are a mixed bag, but since I don't use an emulator, I can't give more specifics. It looks like the underlying FastCAD engine will be moving to a multi-platform format in the future, at which point CC is supposed to follow. No time table on that, though, so I wouldn't hold my breath. While I love CC, and think it's a great program, IMO, the time spent to get CC running it under an emulator seems like it would be better used learning how to coax similar results from a native OS high end graphics or CAD program.
The initial entry cost for CC can be high, especially if you're buying the core program and several add-ons at once. However, once you've bought in, ProFantasy does a pretty decent job of keeping the upgrades affordable. I think I've updated the core program 3 times in the last 12 years, and the upgrade has been no more than $20 each time. My recommendation to prospective purchasers is to buy no more than the core program and one add-on at first, and do so when they can and will dedicate a little bit of time to doing the tutorials and learning the program.
