XP Pro vs. Vista Premium for new Laptop (Lenovo T61)

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Limp Gawd
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Oct 19, 2007
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I am about to purchase my wife a new laptop to use for general business application and movie watching and can not decide between XP Pro and Vista Premium.

I have 4 computers in my house and have not upgraded (is this really the right word) to Vista yet. Is there any reason to do it now?

What do you all think???
 
Well, it's all going to come down to your personal preference. I have Vista on my desktop machine, and with SP1 it is quite stable and gives me no issues. On my laptop I have XP MCE and have no intention of "upgrading" it. If it were me, it would largely depend on the specs of the laptop you were going to get. If it runs Vista smoothly (2 GB RAM, decent amount of video power) and your wife is familiar with Vista or wouldn't mind learning it, you may want to consider it. If no to any of those, stay with XP. I can only speak for myself, but if a machine doesn't have the video capability to run Aero, I really can't stand the Vista basic interface. Software compatibility is still better for XP. I am told Vista gets more battery life, but I haven't run it to verify that on a laptop.
 
Like already said: depends on your personal situation.

What kind of apps do you run? Do they all work on Vista? Any external devices (printers, etc), and if so, do they all work on Vista?
The majority of stuff works on Vista now.

I'd recommend to anyone buying a PC right now to get at LEAST 2GB of RAM. Not just for Vista, but even if running XP. Simple fact is apps require more RAM as they progress as well, it's not just the operating system.

2GB will probably carry you in the "good amount of RAM" category for the next year. Past that, 3GB would work. In two years, we'll probably be at 4GB (Which puts us into 64 bit operating systems to support more RAM, and Windows 7. Which is why many think there won't be a 32 bit version of Windows 7).
Of course these things change so fast and unpredictable what will surface between now and two years down the road, I COULD be wrong...
 
Well, I have the R61 and I haven't found a consumer OS that doesn't work on it pretty much out of the box - I'd recommend Vista if you must use Windows...unless you have a pressing need for the additional features of Vista 64, don't bother. That The x61 series have a max memory limit of 3GB, so you're never going to push the limits of what's available in a 32-bit OS.

In case you're curious about trying it, all flavours of Ubuntu 7.10 work flawlessly on these laptops....there's even less pain than installing Windows.
 
Another vote for Vista Home Premium. That version comes with a built-in DVD decoder, so it will play her movies right away, without loading extra software.
 
Something that most people forget to mention is that if the aero interface is too slow... why not just disable it. Won't that just solve the problem. The you have have all the other benefits of Vista without the Aero slowdown. You can pet the feature back at anytime.
 
Gigamo said:
You forget about DRM.
Click to expand...

You mean the DRM that only exists with HDDVD and BluRay, allowing you to play them, which you can't on XP? You mean the nonexistant DRM for every other media and file type? Where do you even get this stuff from?
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
Well, it's all going to come down to your personal preference.
Click to expand...
This is false. As the OP obviously knows, the opinions of strangers on the internet are absolute, and if someone who doesn't know me and doesn't know my setup or what I like tells me I must use a particular product because they like it, then I must use it. The OP doesn't know what they need. *I* know what they need.

(sorry, these "WHICH SHOULD I USE" threads are wearing on me)
 
Gigamo said:
You forget about DRM.
Click to expand...
What did I forget about? DRM is only present in High Definition movies, which probably won't factor in at this point, unless the OP is going to drop a fortune on a Blu-Ray or HD DVD drive for the laptop. DRM doesn't factor in for regular DVDs, as pointed out above this post.
 
DeaconFrost said:
What did I forget about? DRM is only present in High Definition movies, which probably won't factor in at this point, unless the OP is going to drop a fortune on a Blu-Ray or HD DVD drive for the laptop. DRM doesn't factor in for regular DVDs, as pointed out above this post.
Click to expand...

That, and the fact that Blue-Ray or HD-DVD drives in notebooks is a very selective few that actually have the option for it...

Edit- FWIW PC Mag had interesting muse on DRM this month
 
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