NP5793 - What operating system?

I have ordered the Sager NP5793 without any operating system and would like to enquire what operating system I should install on it. Should I go for Windows XP or Windows Vista? It has 4GB RAM, so whichever I install will, of course, be a 64-bit version.

 

I should probably mention that I have hitherto been using Windows XP on my 3-year old notebook, so that's what I am used to, but this is a new computer I am getting, so if there are compelling reasons to either upgradet to Windows Vista or Windows XP, I would love to hear them.

 

If its a 64bit OS you are installing, Vista is the clear winner. Its much more supported than XP 64bit. What exactly will you be doing with the laptop though? If you are video editing, word of caution, many video cameras have not gotten support for 64bit and for that reason I have vista 32bit dual booted and I digitize there and edit in 64bit. I love 64bit still though, I can feel the power as I do my editing.

 

I used to have a dual boot system with XP and Vista. Once I learned my way around Vista, I never looked back at XP. I now have Vista Premium 64bit installed on all my systems. The most difficulty I have experienced yet was networking them together and sharing certain drives. Sharing a whole drive can be a bit tricky as opposed to sharing a folder which is quite easy. Anyways, I say go with Vista.

 

Alright - thanks for the advice guys! Based on your feedback, I will go with Vista (I will probably not have a dual boot and keep the 500GB HDD as a single partition).

One thing I have noticed in Vista, though, is the fact that mouse 'locks in/stickies' after a click. For example, if you click on the scrollbar, it will remain stickied to the scrollbar until you unclick it again. This caused me a great deal of frustration when helping my sister with her computer, as I am not used to it at all. Is there any way to turn this 'feature' off? I will also definitely have to switch off UAC on Vista - that just annoyed me incredibly when I was trying to help my sister on her computer until I switched it off.

Are there any other 'tweaks' you would recommend I do with the Windows Vista settings?

 

Uh, oh, now I have found out that I don't actually have Windows Vista 64-bit version!

I have:

Windows Vista 32-bit
Windows XP 32-bit
Windows XP 64-bit

With this in mind, and given that the NP5793 has 4GB of RAM, which one of the above three operating systems would you recommend I install? I did hear somewhere that 32-bit can actually support more than 2GB of RAM, so maybe I should go for a 32-bit operating system after all, no?

 

vista 32-bit only reconizes up to about 3-3.5 gb of ram.

 

Hmm, so do you think I should go with Windows XP 64-bit instead? Or is the loss of RAM too small to bother about in practice and I should go with Windows Vista 32-bit or even Windows P 32-bit instead?

 

64 bit vista IMO

 

if you donwload a vista 64 bit disc, then your vista 32bit key will work for it (and is legal)

 

Ok, that sounds like the best plan, but... where do I download 64-bit Vista to use with my key?

 

Note: I have the Windows Vista Ultimate version (if it makes a difference).

 

are you familiar with bittorrent?

 

OK, but wouldn't that be illegal?

 

Hmm, on second thoughts, perhaps it would not. After all, I do have the serial key...

 

Its only illegal if you are putting in a key that does not belong to you and you did not pay for. I use my key for the vista 32 ultimate that I downloaded and it works perfectly.

 

as deathwinger said, as long as you use your legal cd key, all is good

 

Ok, great, thanks guys!

 

I personally like using Ubuntu 8.10 (the 64 bit version).... For things that need to use Windows XP (some software for work) I have installed VMWare. System runs great (and I only have 2 GB of RAM).

 

I will stick to Windows for sure. I don't want to have to learn an entirely new operating system and most programs and especially games are made for Windows.