XP Pro w/ Vista Business license- who has actually "upgraded" to Vista?

Most business-oriented notebooks, and some consumer models, continue to offer Windows XP. The most common way they do this is by selling it as Windows Vista Business with a "Downgrade" to XP Professional. Systems so equipped are shipped with XP Pro pre-installed. They include the installation media (CD) and product key/license for both XP Pro as well as Vista Business, for upgrading if/when you decide to do so.

I have a new DELL Latitude E6400 with XP Professional installed and with Vista Business upgrade rights. I'm curious to know how many folks with a Vista Business license have actually "upgraded" from XP Pro? If yes, are you glad you upgraded? If no, do you anticipate that you ever will install Vista?

 

Do you lose the XP license once you upgrade to Vista?

I use both xp pro and vista business, do you have a specific question? I would keep Xp if you lose the license once upgraded just because Vista is on it's way out. I think both of them perform the same, Vista looks better. My uncle who is a computer engineer says that vista is faster in downloading files. I think the only real reason to choose vista is if you use media center, other than that it's a toss up to me. Vista should be more user friendly. I keep vista on my play machines and xp on my business machines. All business applications should still support xp while you can't say the same for vista. At this time, I would bypass Vista because of windows 7.

 

XP is on its way out too.

At least Vista will have a much higher degree of compatibility with Windows 7 -- using the same drivers and stuff. The guts of Windows 7 will be coming to Vista in the form of Vista SP2... so the only major differences will be in the desktop UI.

Neither XP Pro nor Vista Business has media center.

I would use Vista for business machines because the security is better. It's true that a few obscure business apps may still not be Vista-compatible, but... I doubt that many people use one of these on their personal machines. And if you (the OP) rely on a program like that, you're probably already aware of the fact so you wouldn't be asking about upgrading.

Every current program from a major vendor (Microsoft, Intuit, OpenOffice.org...) has been Vista-compatible for quite some time now.

IMO, skipping Vista due to Windows 7 is reasonable ONLY if you are not yet familiar with Vista (and don't wish to learn an extra OS) AND you plan to upgrade to 7 later this year.

There could still be other reasons to skip Vista though... if you know that you don't like it or that some of your hardware/software is incompatible. Or if you have everything you need working now and just don't want to mess around with it.

If it were my machine, I'd upgrade to Vista due to the better security and better (IMO) user interface. When 7 comes out you can upgrade to that at your leisure, if you want to, to get the UI improvements... or just install SP2 for Vista and know that you'll be able to run almost everything that runs on 7 anyway.

 

Well, technically my notebook didn't come with upgrade rights, but I did manage to score several free copies of Vista Business and Office 2007 when they were first released in 2007, one of which is running on my R60.

There are some things I like about Vista like the sidebar and it looks better than XP. My screen looks better in Vista, like the fonts seem easier to read than in XP, but it's still the same resolution. Linux is much better in this regard as well.

Vista runs pretty well on my R60, about the same as XP, performance and battery life. Interestingly enough, both of my AMD desktops, which have faster CPUs, better GPUs and more memory, seem to be more sluggish when running Vista. I'm not really sure why. I also find, at least on my machines, Office 2007 runs better in Vista than XP on the same hardware. I run OpenOffice on those machines and Office in Vista on my R60.

There are a few downsides too like the whole mapped network drives slowing explorer down to a crawl, but on the whole I'd say it's been positive on my R60. I got images of both XP and Vista so I can switch back and forth as I please. I guess I'd say try it and if you don't like it, you can always go back.

 

I don't know how to do that quote thingy...

XP is still hanging around when the next OS is around the corner, computers/laptops on ebay with XP has no problems finding new owners. I'm not sure the samething can be said for Vista once windows 7 comes out.

I know that Vista Business doesn't have MC, I'm just stating that Vista MC is a strong reason to use Vista over XP.

Yes, every major program is Vista-compatible. But it only takes one of the older programs to send you scrambling for an XP machine. Not all business programs need to be upgraded yearly. If you own a business, you can't really depend on Microsoft to fix compatibility problems promptly if you happen to run into one with Vista.

Those are just my opinions of course. Like I said, I run Vista every where else but my business machines. Every business program would support XP by now, and I can't really say the same for Vista because you'd never really know. If I'm to convert all my machines to Vista, I would keep at least one dual boot with XP. It's better to have it and not need it.

 

Some businesses have noted that they have been waiting until Windows 7 to upgrade, and it seems like the market is ramping up and making sure all their stuff works for it

 

a buddy of mine bought a new Dell inspiron desktop about a week ago with XP pro installed and the option to upgrade to Vista Business. he upgraded to Vista earlier tonight and has been enjoying getting used to it for about 6 hours lol. i get the feeling he wont switch back.

 

Strange way your laptop was sold.
The Sony SZ was the other way round - Vista Business installed (make your own recovery discs) and XP as a downgrade on CD/DVD (DVD?).

 

In all DELL models sold with Vista Business w/ XP Pro Downgrade, the system ships with XP Professional pre-installed. Both XP Pro and Vista Business discs are included for reinstall/upgrading.

 

I posted this topic a week ago and didn't make it back to read the responses until now.

I've now been using the pre-installed XP Professional for about three weeks. Let me preface the following statement by saying that I can't believe I'm going to write it...but after using Vista Home Premium almost exclusively for the past 18 months, I actually MISS Vista!!!

I was an early Vista adopter out of ignorance and naivety. It was the only retail option when I bought a new HP Pavilion in early 2007. I suffered through the lack of support for peripherals, countless driver issues, daily updates and patches, SLOOOOW startup times and endured countless ERRORS and BSoDs. Re-learning how to use Windows was painful for the first six months or so. But as the issues and bugs with Vista were ironed out (and I traded up to a much more powerful system), Vista is now "the norm".

I find myself having to pause and think of how to do certain things in XP because my brain is accustomed to how I would do the same task in Vista. However, the most surprising part of this experience is that I now realize that Vista actually offers numerous enhancements and additional functionity compared to XP!

I'm definitely ready to use my Vista Business upgrade disc. The only reason I haven't already is because my E6400 currently has only 2GB of RAM installed. I ordered a 2GB DDR2-800 module yesterday to replace one of the 1GB modules, for a total of 3GB. I figured I'd wait until it arrives in a day or two before upgrading to Vista. I'm sure it'd be fine with the current 2GB, especially since I have a dedicated graphics card...maybe if the mood strikes me later this evening, I'll go for it.