Thinkpad W500: Which Operating System?

I have ordered a Lenovo W500 (Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.53 GHz, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD) for personal use, and I want to install an operating system on it (it is shipped without OS). Which Windows OS do you recommend regarding the system specs (especially the 4GB of RAM issue, which needs an X64 OS to be fully used)? Shall I use Vista 64-bit, or XP/Vista 32-bits? I've been a XP user until now, and have heard many complains about Vista. I need my laptop for home/personal use. If you vote for Vista 64-bit, do all softwares that run on 32-bit OS run on X64 as well?

Thanks a lot for your help.
Pedram

 

If you want to go 64-bit, go Vista. Otherwise, toss a coin. Most 32-bit software will work in Vista x64, but not all.

 

vista ultimate x64

 

If you want to go Vista and want to utilize all 4GB of ram do some flavor of Vista 64. If you don't care about using all 4GB of ram just do vista basic. I did Vista 64 because I wanted to use all 4GB of my ram, but otherwise I would have done Vista basic, since I use Linux most of the time any ways.

 

Yes, most x86 applications will work with x64 Windows.

Remember that there is also a x64 version of XP. Don't know how good it is, though...

 

Get 32-bit Home Basic. Upgrading's a waste of money.

 

Short answer: it's a curiosity. It's pefectly stable and I used it on my Ferrari for over 2 years. It's based off of Windows Server 2003 (like Vista). Would I use it again? Probably not. Driver support is utterly random. I will say this, "handling" XPx64 (hacking software that goes haywire when it identifies the OS as something exotic, iTunes utter hatred of 64 bit XP, iPod Touch and iPhone physically unable to interact with computer, seacrhing for drivers, troubleshooting, etc) made me a more knowledgeable and adept computer user.

 

Thanks. Actually I do not know if I better go for 64-bit or not, that's the main problem! Will it be too much pain, or will everything run smoothly and better than 32-bit?

 

I refused to switch to Vista for the longest time, and relied on XP64 on all recent iterations of gaming systems until now. Spanning from an Athlon64 3200+, to Opteron 165, to a Core2Duo E6600 to a Q6600. I eventually moved to Vista Business 64, but only because I wanted to finally check out DirectX 10. My 8800 GTX, caused quite a bit of problems I never had before in XP64. Right up until I upgraded to a 4870x2, I had blue screens. Two RMA to EVGA for that 8800 GTX, and the problem still persisted. It's now running along fine wasting electricity with a GPU folding client in my old Opteron 165. nVidia really sucks for drivers on Vista I guess. I never had issues with driver compatibility on any products I purchased with XP64, including a Logitech Momo steering wheel. I pretty much used Foobar2000 for FLAC playback (later XMPlay) and relied heavily on FFDShow for video. I also used nVidia PureVideo and TheaterTek right out of the box, and their 32-bit software worked with no problems. Heck, even Microsoft ActiveSync with a HTC PPC6700 works wonderfully compared to XP SP3, which gives you grief over serial ports not connected via Bluetooth from time to time.

For a W500 though, I'd probably go with Windows 2008. It offers incredible stability, the same battery management as Vista, and it can even use Vista drivers (same kernel, slightly differing code base.) Vista 64, has silly driver certification restrictions that on start-up require you to disable the driver checking to run or simply not use that device (non-WHQL certified video drivers, bleeding edge Intel chipset drivers) If you disable the group policy for Vista to try to bypass it, it absolutely ignores it on startup and won't let you boot until you disable that device (PeerGuardian is an example.) With 2008, there is no such issue. You can run unsigned drivers all day without it complaining once you have your security policy set to ignore it. Check out Win2008workstation.com for information on breaking Windows 2008 server into basically, Vista with more features. Windows 2008 Server also has a 90 day trial (240 day extendable) license available to anyone. And if this machine really is for just home use like you say, you could always get a Technet account and get an unlimited evaluation license for non-business/personal use for any of the Microsoft operating systems. That's the route I'd go, if I didn't already have an enterprise license for 2008.