Advice on Vista Business vs. XP Pro

I'll be buying a new laptop in the near future, and it seems to me that Vista is a poor OS choice for most laptops. Right now, I'm thinking of getting a Lenovo N200, specifically this model. It comes with Vista Business, but I'm thinking of installing XP Pro on it instead. Is that a good decision? I'm told it might cause some driver issues with some or most of the hardware. I'm not terribly savvy with computers, so doing a bunch of tinkering might prove problematic. Are the XP drivers readily available in one place (say, from Microsoft), or would I have to search for them?

That particular Lenovo seems to be the best bargain for my price range, but if there are better options available, I'm certainly all ears.

 

XP drivers are more likely to be available from Lenovo than MS. My advice would be to try Vista for a while before making the switch. A new copy of XP Pro will run you $140, so it's going to add a significant chunk to the top of the new laptop. On the other hand, it looks like Lenovo still offers a version of the N200 on their website with XP, so the drivers are probably available.

I personally don't care for Vista. Lots of people on here agree with me. There's also lots of people who really like Vista. There are good and bad things about the OS, if the laptop looks like it is what you want, I'd say go for it, and worry about the OS if you decide you really can't stand Vista or it runs REALLY slowly.

 

I snooped around a bit on Lenovo's site, and the drivers are, indeed, still available. Thanks for the direction.

I bought a copy with my student license (thanks, UNC!), so cost isn't an issue. I'm just after functionality. I do think I'll take your advice and try Vista out for awhile, though. I'm only going to be doing some low-level gaming and other mundane things like word processing and research with it, so the RAM drain might not be a big deal.

Thanks again. I can use all the help I can get.

 

You can try it with Vista, and if you don't like it you can install XP on it. If you end up liking Vista for some reason, you can always dual boot!

 

Vista is not as bad as some people claim it to be. Give it a try and decide for yourself. If you have the hardware to run it (2GB RAM, good enough processor and a decent graphics card) then it would be as fast as XP for ordinary tasks. Besides, XP will eventually be replaced by Vista.

 

If you already own a copy of XP, then get the laptop with Vista. This way you have both OS licenses and you can choose whichever you like better.

 

I don't think xp pro is better than vista business.

 

If your notebook is a recently released model, definitely check for availability of drivers for XP. Vista Business and Ultimate supposedly have downgrade rights to XP so that may be another thing you might want to look into. SP1 for Vista is right around the corner as well.

 

Recommend Vista. It has been 1 year and 1 month, and Microsoft + hardware partners would have written drivers for most of their products. Also, SP1 for Vista is now at RC, and right now it is pretty usable as they have fixed up most of the glitches and improved the compatibility and performance.

Microsoft wouldn't be that dumb to let their flagship OS sink any further .