Windows XP or Vista Home Premium?

I'm about to purchase a thinkpad T61 (hopefully I can get it in time...with the availability issues) and am trying to decide between XP or Vista.

Should I get XP and wait to upgrade to Vista or should I go ahead and get Vista?

Thanks for advice in advance!

 

depends what you need... the former has remote desktop and more networking stuff, the latter has media center

vista home is NOT un "upgrade". they're different. press the "help me decide" when you customize your latpot

 

Vista is a mess

 

When I was speaking to the Lenovo rep this morning he told me that 60% of the orders were for XP. With what I read about needing a minimum of 2 GB for Vista and because I've been using XP on my work laptop for 2+ years, I figured I'd go with XP instead of Vista. Heck, I have an old desktop at home running Win2000 and its fine for me.

 

Vista is slower than XP, but it has a lot of really nice features:

1) Loads more secure (ie, less opportunity for spyware and virus's)
2) Instant search functionality (really handy for me)
3) Many new features for programmers (this will likely be what new applications require)

If I were you I would go with Vista.

 

I agree with cayden... XP has the benefit of familiarity and lower hardware requirements, but if you're buying a new system now you'd certainly plan to meet those requirements. Vista isn't without its quirks, obviously (my most frustrating actually comes from other manufacters who have delayed their drivers for some devices) but overall it is a nice evolutionary improvement over XP.

When I use an XP machine now, I miss the UI improvements (such as instant search) Vista offers.

 

Well, it mostly depends on what your current needs are, what you're comfortable with, and how willing you are to deal with possible driver issues. Being that the T6x series are all modern notebooks, I don't think you would have any driver trouble, but it *can* happen. I haven't personally had any issues on my T60 with Vista (except for having to figure out some of the differences in how Vista does some things), so just some food for thought.

As a bit of backround, when I ordered my T60 I chose Vista for a couple reasons, one being that I would own a copy of both OS's (I already had a copy of XP Pro sitting around) so I figured "what the heck, might as well have both handy if not now then for the future". The second reason was that I did actually want to give Vista a look and see if the current version was worth my time and also so I could get some first-hand experience running it.

So far I'm glad I did, currently I'm running Vista Home Premium with the specs in my sig and after doing a fesh install (from the Vista Anytime Upgrade DVD, which is actually a full install disc for anyone wondering ) it runs pretty darned quick. Those rumors that "you need 2GB of ram to run Vista" are really not true, as long as you're not running a bunch of crap on your install (this same thing was true of XP as well). Granted, Vista *will* make use of that 2GB's of RAM if you have it, and it does do a pretty good job of it while still getting out of the way quickly when you start an application or game that needs the memory. By and large though, I don't personally notice much if any difference in responsiveness compared to XP.

Really, I've seen this kind of talk before about needing so much more of this or that with a new version of Windows being released; and while some of it did have its foundation in truth, it usually turns out to not be as big of a deal as people initially make it. Just make sure if you do decide to try Vista, to remember to turn UAC off as the first thing you do; it'll bug the crap out of you otherwise.

My $0.02

 

i disagree, 1GB will run vista, but it struggles,
upon bootup, with nothing extra running, vista claims it's using about 600mb of ram.
imagine once you start playing dvd's, browsing the web and chatting, while downloading music

stick with 2gb for vista

heck, that's why i switched to linux.
runs great with 256mb, and it looks modern too!

 

Vista Business and Ultimate include the right to downgrade to XP Pro if you can can a disc. Home Premium does not.

 

Not to start a flame war here but vista run's just fine with 1 gig... sure 2 gigs is better but what often gets looked over about Vista is that the memory management has been radically revamped, Vista actually tries to take advantage of any memory that is available.. this is a plus in my book. And as UltraCow said, it does a pretty good job of getting out of the way when an application needs the memory.

Regarding linux I use it on a regular basis, but I would strongly disagree that it looks modern... it still feels like a cross between 98 and 2000. Not that it matters all that much because I spend most of my time at the terminal anyway. The other funny thing is linux gets this huge reputation for being stable; but I can make linux puke pretty regularly, it's been quite sometime since I've seen the blue screen of death though.

 

Do xp if you value your speed, and you're a professional. Most companies will not be switching over for at least a year to two. Do vista if you want to get on figuring out this new fangled operating system that screwed up its right click properties display settings.