Is Tor compatible with Vista, and various other questions

[Registered]

I am very much concerned about protecting my online identity. More specifically I need to ensure that my online activities cannot be traced back to me or anywhere near my location, but at the same time I also need security with financial ***********s (Shopping).
From what I've read Tor appears to be the best around. My problem is that I have Vista. I've gone to the website and it said that there were problems with XP, but no mention of Vista. I also have a wireless network with * different PCs connected. Would I need to have Tor installed on all three PCs in order to retain the highest level of privacy?
I am also concerned about the 'hops' and losing security. I don't understand what the hops are exactly, being tech illiterate. I read about it in Wikipedia, and what I took from it was by using an onion proxy, the connection hops from different servers and some information could be left behind with each hop. Will that prevent the encription I need with my financial info, and if so what would be the best way to avoid that from happening, aside from not using a proxy?

I appreciate your consideration and will be grateful for any insights you can provide.
Thank you,
Registered

[Moonbat]

I haven't tested, but I'm very sure that TOR works with Vista. Also, I don't think you should have any problems of vital information getting left behind using TOR.

[coz]

You're not going to find much better than TOR. I mean who can just make up a network like that. It's awesome that it's free! You computer will connect to one of TOR's and it will "hop" through a chain of TOR's proxies. Hop just means send info through a computer to go to another computer. So a hop is just a computer in a chain of computers. When you connect to a web site the packets from your computer can't just jump across the world to another computer. They have to travel though other computers (routers really) to get there. A proxy is a computer used to send data through but the packets only go from your computer to the proxy, the proxy then looks at the packet header and changes your ip address to its own. Then it sends the packets to the destination computer. Tor does this but through many proxies with encryption so they cannot be read.

The only problems are that when that packets come out of the TOR network they become unencrypted, leaving them vulnerable. They can also be subject to timing analysis, and direct dns connects, etc. Very hard for an attacker to do these things. Therefor use privoxy with TOR to take care of the dns problem.

I'm sure by googling you'll find a lot more info. Hope this all helps.