I used to do some C++ programming in school and wanted to get back to programming as a hobby. In school we wrote programs to solve partial differential equations (chemical engineering). I was fairly new to OOP back then and was struggling to understand the newer standards. I was using Borland C++ 6 back then. By the end of the project I would rate my skills as a newbie in OOP.

Now I wanted to get back into OOP and do some programming to strengthen my OOP skills and also learn how to generate GUI and other stuff. I was wondering if Borland C++ 6 is still good or Visual Studio would be better for this.

I would also appreciate if someone can provide with some hardware system requirements. Would a netbook with 1.6 Ghz Atom processor, windows xp and 2 gig of ram be enough? (thinking Lenovo S10) Or would a dual core processor with 4 gig ram, a lite graphics card and windows7 be good? (Acer Ferrari One?)

Thanks for your time!