well, it is coming close to the time that i will be needing a laptop for college. my dad has told me the he can get a deal threw his work with dell so that will be the brand i will be getting. today, i was looking up computers and my dad told me that i would still be able to get a new computer but with xp on it. with all the bad talk about vista, i am wondering if i should get xp. even tho it is the "inferior" system nowadays, it seems alot more reliable. will it benefit me to get xp or should i just go with vista because its the new system, even though it seems to have problems. your thoughts please

Go with XP for now.

I wouldn't jump too far in to Vista yet. I like it, but I keep going back to XP to do a lot of stuff. I give it a good year before it really takes off. That'* what happened with XP back when it came out.

XP MCE is the best

Go with XP now until all the bugs are worked out, plus you can always upgrade later, much easier to upgrade then to go back.

how much would an upgrade cost(approximately) because i plan to keep this computer for hopefully 4 years

Depends on your hardware. I dumped Vista for XP because it didn't seem to want to use most of my hardware.

Most of what I saw of Vista seemed more like fluff over XP anyway. Not much more useful stuff.


Now all the AntiMS people will come in touting Linux...

Well at first I would be along with most of you, but as I am working with Vista more and more, I'm finding that it has some very nice features over XP. Its really quite stable, and the latest updates have it running quite nicely and new ones are released all the time.

I say go with Vista for sure. It has a ton of cool stuff that will reach much farther into the future than XP ever will.

XP for now. wait for SP1 for vista then i say go with it.

Vista has problems with some software that works just fine on XP.
also with vista you have to use the New MS Office 07...


Also vista is a REAL PITA to get working like XP where it doesn't ask you if you want to do things all the time and to get it to install software with out having to Run as Admin.

no you do NOT have to use the new office 07, I currently have my office 03 pro installed and its working with NO flaws.

and those stupid messages are actually pretty easy to work around and they pretty much go away after it starts learning your habits. ANOTHER one of Vista'* really cool features is that it learns what programs you use most often and it reorganizes the files on the disc so that those frequently used programs are always within quick reach of access.

Badnit is right on the money with this. I'd definitely avoid the initial product release (case in point: Win98SE and XP SP1/2 were much better!)

As wired as we are nowadays they might be able to patch up Vista and make it pretty stable pretty quickly, but on the other hand, Vista is a pretty complex software product.


Linux makes a great server product, but when it comes to application base, Windows is king. And you can run Firefox on Windows