Vista sp1 improvements after a few months - a better option than XP

Hi everyone, this is my first post and I am very impressed by the site so far. I am a lifetime desktop user who is starting grad school next week and it is finally time to purchase a laptop. Since I have a powerful desktop computer, my main laptop priorities are durability and battery life. I landed on the Thinkpad because of its reputation for reliability (this laptop needs to last 4 years).
I was very interested by the x61 with that 20% coupon but I am too afraid to buy a computer without an optical drive (I am not willing to pay for/deal with a docking station). Anyway, I decided on this:
t61 t8100 (2.1ghz)
Intel integrated graphics
WXGA+ tft
2gig ram (1 dimm)
160gb HDD 7200 rpm
Thinkpad wireless card
9 cell battery.

My main question/concern comes down to operating system. I have done a lot of searching and although people complained about battery life and performance hits with Vista initially I have seen very little chatter since SP1 was released a few months back.

Can anyone comment on any improvements that SP1 has provided for battery life? I have never used Vista before, but I am very comfortable with XP and I would be more than willing to pay the downgrade charge if I can gain 30 or 60 minutes of battery life with the 9 cell running XP.

Also, I assume that sleeping/hibernating issue with SP1 has since been fixed?

 

Honestly, I have always had better battery life on Vista compared to XP. I could reach up to 5-6 hours, which I couldn't do on XP. What sleeping/hibernating issue are you referring to? I've never had a problem with sleep, but sometimes I've had hibernating issues where I wake up the next morning and it restarted for some reason.

 

Interesting to hear smoothtofu, that is definitely encouraging as Vista is les expensive (which version of Vista do you use?)

One example of the sleep/hibernating issue is here, but it appears that a Bios updated fixed it for a couple, I just want to make sure it is has been fixed for all:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=248973

 

I am also one of those people that don't think Vista is too bad. I haven't had any major problems with it. If it's cheaper I would just go with Vista Premium or maybe Business. However, you won't need Ultimate. There really aren't any extra features that I have used from ultimate.
Tim

 

just wondering, is there a difference in power management efficiency between vista ultimate and the other versions. Since ultimate has everything enabled, I'm thinking it would use more resources and cut battery life. It probably doesn't matter, but have anybody notice a difference?

 

From day one I have asserted that Vista is a superior operating system. I know that not everyone agrees. In my experience on 3 x-series notebooks running a combination of XP and Vista, I far prefer Vista. It has been more stable, provided slightly better battery life, and a much improved UI. The addition of SP1 has made Vista battery life improve every so slightly more but took care of the few bugs that held it back from being as good as it could be (like file copy performance).

IMO, go with Vista. Load it with memory (so cheap nowadays) and it will really fly! I've been running Vista Home Premium X64 with 4GB of RAM on an X61s and the performance is astounding.

 

IMO go with Vista. Look forward instead of back. Its really a great OS. Windows 7 is based on Vista, so no matter what the haters say, its here to stay. Like was said above, lots of Ram and X64 OS is great.

 

I agree that Vista is a good OS, however better life is better in XP, not sure how you guys get it to be better in vista. It uses more resources compared to XP, therefor battery life is shorter. I did the test with my 2 laptops.

 

I noticed no difference in battery life between Vista and XP. Vista has in my opinion gotten a lot better since service pack one was released. It boots a little slower and everyone in a while it hangs on something, but for the most part runs pretty decently.

 

Go with the 64-bit version for future proof like upgrading RAM to 4GB and being able to have a full access to the 4GB...If I pay more to get VISTA....I go with XP....If I pay more to get XP....I go with VISTA.

 

Vista is really a memory hog. I had 1 GB DDR2 667 and Vista Ult. 64bit, Firefox would refuse to load most of the time and idle memory usage was redlining. I put 2 more GB in there and now it's fine, but I still don't see where the big advantage over XP Pro lies. XP is probably the best OS ever made.

 

I don't think it is fair to call Vista a memory hog when 2GB modules cost less than $30. Why anyone would suffer with less than 2GB on any machine, XP or Vista, doesn't make sense to me one bit.

IMO, XP is a great OS. Vista has all the advantages of XP and numerous new features and enhancements. The only thing that XP has on Vista is system requirements. If you have an old system, run XP. If you have descent hardware, use Vista.

 

This is a bit like saying your two-legged dog can't sprint. Of course an OS will perform poorly if you starve it to death.

 

I have been vista ever since it was released.. I have gone through a full generation of problems... i have always found it much better than, Xp.... now its at a much higher level..

 

Did you want to say: XP SP2?

 

my favorite thing about vista is the popups asking me if I trust programs signed by Microsoft(ex- Zune setup). only practical vista improvement i've seen is it has a faster search feature. if i'm missing another advantage over xp let me know.

 

the search was terribly slower till a few weeks back (when they released the new search )

I like the networking options that come with vista and the newer included drivers..they seem to work better for me.. and i find vista has been getting more faster as time goes... but it has been like ever... hopefully they improve a lot more..

And finally i wish windows 7, when released should have more optimization for tablet.... or else if apple plans to release a tablet , it could be a killer

 

I have had no problems with Vista. I don't know what all the complaining is about.

This is true, of course. Vista requires more memory. And its Aero interface requires adequate graphics.

But since you are purchasing a new computer, as opposed to attempting to run Vista on a four year old machine, neither will be a problem.