I'm gonna get a lapttop, 1 question- XP or Vista? I heard Vista sucks, doesn't really effect the price to me.

uh leopard

I don't know what that means

He means get a Mac.

haha...it's the Mac OS.

i've heard that vista really sucks for what it's worth. I'm sure all of the PC stalwarts will come out and let you know though

Aahhhhhhhh, yeah I had one, not 100% my thing.

I heard Vista sucked too, just wanted some opinions.

got me a little sony noteboock,
only saying its a sony because it might matter,
as a lot of specific software preinstalled by sony that is hard to remove.
and it comes with vista ...and i never had so many problems before,
maybe this is because im dumb or maybe because of vista -
who knows???

...had to take out batteries couple times because
system was down - on/off buttons didnt respond.

i dont have the feeling vista works well, but it looks quite nice.

personally, I'm really creeped out by the fact that Apple names all their OS's after big cats.

I love cougars.

Vista is so bad, one of the marketing directors doesn't even like talking about it (and I've known the guy all my life)...but it's getting better. It really depends on what you're going to be using the laptop for. Any kind of heavy cpu/memory usage like photoshop, gaming or anything along those lines, you'll need to bump the RAM up to about 2GB. If you're just using it for spreadsheets the like, 1GB of RAM should be fine although more RAM never hurts. My dad has a laptop with Vista and 1GB of RAM. He says he does notice a bit of slowness versus his old XP laptop but nothing too drastic. I use a hefty 2GB machine at work with pretty high-end parts and there are times when it chugs. Eventually, all machines you buy...laptop or desktop (unless you build your own frankenstein)...will come with Vista.
-Vista does suck, but Microsoft is constantly updating it. If you go with Vista, be sure up udate it the moment you get it since there were some memory issues with the OS a while back. Buy more RAM. It is a bit slower compared to XP.
-XP has been around a long time and is a bit faster. Eventually, Microsoft will stop making updates for XP. I'd say 5 years. The question is, will you own your laptop longer than Microsoft making updates for XP. That's a big variable so you could easily gamble on that.

The bottom line is, buy the laptop that has a reputable customer service and don't base it on what OS it comes with. Buy a laptop based on what you're going to use it for. You can change the OS, you can upgrade the RAM. If anything else goes wrong, CS better be damn good at helping you out.

Dude, get with the program. They're named after WWII German tanks.

like anything else, there are pros and cons to Vista vs XP SP2.....

there are many features that I prefer in Vista. Things are more stable, easier to set up (more mac like...).

But....................

you gotta have the hardware to back it up which may affect the price of your machine. You should have at least 2gb of RAM and 256mb Video Card....

yes, essentially i'm recommending twice what the website says....

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/produc ... =10042VHb1

been using Vista on both home and work machines for almost a year and I would probably still choose Vista for a new machine.... :

get a new mac ibook and w/bootcamp software - you can have the best of both worlds with a reboot. you can operate using the windows operating system or mac os. plus, the quality of a mac is much higher (imo) then pc's.

I don't need anything fancy, sounds like it's XP than for me. I keep reading crap about Vista crashing systems, I totally don't need that!

I'd kinda recommend this route as well... Consistently, the Apple laptops are getting fantastic reviews for running both operating systems as well (if not better) than hardware solely dedicated to windows.

Will this cost me $400 or less? If not, pass. I just need a cheap piece of crap for some basic junk, nothing flashy, nothing fancy BUT something, in the case I feel I'd like to, I can upgrade in the future to be better than a $400 piece of junk.

I just wanted to know if it's worth it to put up with a new OS or keep on trucking with "ol faithful."

You don't even need to reboot with Parallels - you can run both simultaneously!

Oh... no, it would cost more than that...

If I had a choice I would use Apple only but I have to use Windows here at work. Bootcamp on the new Apples works like a dream. Anyway back to your question. We used Vista for a short while and it was god awful. I have never had as many problems as when I was running that os. We went back to XP and sure it doesn't have the bells and whistles or good looks (they ripped off Apple's "look & feel") that Vista has but it is much more stable and usable. I would say def. go XP.

why ruin a mac with a microsoft product?

actually, our desktop does have xp on it to run the netflix movie program but that's all it is used for

Figured

This isn't me buying a new computer to replace an old one, in which I'd take much more effort into research. This is me buying a budy for my existing computer, and I just need my budy to do a few basic things and cost me like $450 or less (which I've found a pretty good pre-black friday deal on.)

I just have the option of going XP or Vista and kinda don't know jack about Vista. I hear it crashes, won't run programs etc. BUT I don't want to have to re-0buy an all new OS in a year or 2 on a new maching, will XP be obsolete?

My thoughts exactly! But my director likes new "toys" so he bought new iMacs so that we could run MS. I hardly ever run Parallels, but a couple people in our office do. I think it's pretty nifty how you can shift back and forth between Mac and "PC".

Hey hey hey... some of us here are employed by Microsoft...

if you are spending less than 400 bucks on a computer, my guess is the computer itself will be obsolete before XP will

I use OSX and XP pretty much daily.

Given your budget, your choice is quite clear.