Window XP or Vista for new laptop?

Thanks in advance. Well I'm configuring a Dell laptop tonight and wondering if I should go with Vista or go with Window XP? So which one is better in the long run. I'm using the laptop for just internet, paper, dvd, music, and maybe a game or two (but nothing too extreme).

 

Vista is really nice, personally. It looks real nice with Aero, while XP seems boring and drab.
Trust me, Vista is really cool and a lot nicer than XP. And with SP1 coming out and future updates, it should become better.

 

Go with Vista. It's way better imo. Using it since Beta 2 and never had any problems

 

If you're just doing basic tasks, Vista should be fine. If you're doing more intensive-multi-tasking, etc, and want Vista, you should make sure you have at least 2GB of RAM. If you're concerned with raw speed, run XP.

Vista does have nice features; that said, I run XP on my T60. (I have licenses to both and did run Vista for the better part of a year)

 

Vista; because even though it has some performance and driver issues right now, XP will become obsolete soon enough, and Vista will dominate.

 

Vista, fast, responsive, cool.

 

XP is still slightly faster than Vista out of the box, but Vista wins with its looks and security edge over XP.

If you're only getting 1 GB RAM, do yourself a favor and either get Vista Home Basic, or be sure to turn off Aero and other fancy stuff if you get any other edition of Vista. Or, XP will run fine with 1 GB.

 

On the other hand, Vista is an immature system, which needs an SP or two under it's belt before it's at the stage that XP is (Which will always be the case).

XP has SP2, and actually apparently has an SP3 coming soon (Which a bit of reading claims a performance increase over SP2), which suggests it's still got a bit of life in it.

It comes down to what you want.

Do you want to play with a new OS? Will you use the fancy new look, or just switch back to Classic? Do you want to squeeze that extra bit of HDD space from a smaller OS install? Do you want an OS that will work with pretty much everything of now, or one that works with most things, but some others are still broken? (But given time, will be fixed)

My personal opinion is that comfort wins. Hence why my desktop at home is still running Win98se (An install that's lasted 5 years at that, yes, I'm a tad crazy ;D), because it's the GUI I'm most comfortable and functional in, and almost everything I need works on it

 

Wow, thanks for the insight. I'm really into comfort and really don't care for the new gizmo that the Vista may have. But then again will i be missing out on anything. As of right now i'm leaning toward the XP because my desktop runs on XP and I just made the harddrive into an External Hardrive for my new laptop that i'll be ordering in the next few day. I guess it does come down to comfort. I was just worried if I did go with Vista that everything thats on my new External Harddrive will be a able to run smoothly without any problem which i'm hearing does sometime with some files but not sure which one. I guess i'll keep reading around the forum some more.

So thanks again to everyone that answer my question.

 

I don't quite understand what you are trying to do .... Are you trying to run programs installed on an external hard drive in your new notebook ? If that is the case, then it is not a simple matter of just plugging in the HDD and running those applications, most applications won’t work like that even if you have XP in the notebook.

 

Once SP1 is out, Vista will get much better, hopefully! Haha.

 

sorry, this is kinda off topic but can someone explain to me why my hard drive while in Vista makes a whining sound like its about to shut off and my computer hangs for like 2 sec then everything after is normal again? This is not the case when I'm using XP for the same computer though.

Thanks

 

Sorry about the misunderstanding. Most of my movie files are divx and the program that I was using was your typical office document that I use for work and school.

 

After months of trying to acclimate to Vista, I finally went thru the tedious and very frustrating process of "downgrading" to XP. I'm much happier now.

Vista is nice to look at, but I prefer function over form anyday! The performance gain just proves that it takes a lot (of resources) to look pretty.

 

i have dualboot now in my laptop, vista and xp..

i have to say that more the performance, and the way xp handles. Hibernations and standbys are faster, ocassional gaming works perfect, zero compatibility problems in programs....

i'm keeping both of them for now but as you can see if i had to choose one over another i'll go with XP