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hoffy
21-05-2009, 2:00pm
I've decided to get a new laptop this year (Thanks Kev!) and have been looking around. At the moment one of the better buys appears to be the DELL Vostro (17 inch, 2.5 Duo Processor, 4GB ram, massive screen resolution). The interesting thing is that they are bannered under "Small Business" and come with XP pre installed, but are bundled with Vista as well.

So, considering I probably will run CS3 with CS4 a possibility in the future, should I bite the bullet and do the Vista thing, or should I stick to a stable XP platform until something reliable comes out? What are the downsides to XP?

Tannin
21-05-2009, 3:00pm
Pretty much the entire industry has switched to supplying XP on business machines now.

Vista is dead.

It had a 9% takeup rate in industry - i.e., 91% of busineses around the world decided that Visa was not worth having. Vista or XP? Well, it depends on if you want it to work properly, and if you want it to work at an acceptable speed, and if you want it to provide a decent (i.e., non-annoying) interface. A YES to any one of the three is a NO to Vista.

charton
21-05-2009, 3:03pm
I have vista on my laptop at home but XP at work. So I guess I have adjusted myself to changing interfaces on a daily basis. You get used to it, but it does take time.

brett237
21-05-2009, 3:15pm
I have the exact same beast that you mentioned complete with the high resolution screen plus for the extra $250.00 for the 22" external screen. Um? the laptop screen is actually "bigger" meaning higher pixel count rather than size so it is a bit of a mismatch between the two.

Processing speed is good and battery life is around two to three hours. Downside, it has a rather plastic feel.

I am running XP simply because it is work's standard operating system. Vista is prettier looking but until I am forced to I will stick with XP. Basically businesses tend to skip every second version of MS products due to the pain and suffering of swapping so must went NT to XP and dodged Windows 2000 with much the same thing happening with Vista. Heck Office 2007 is a retrograde step for the interface compared to the previous version as I hunt and peck around for things that I knew once were. MS needs to consider long an hard what it is costing business for change for change sake. At least Dell is aware of this.:p

Cheers Brett

Charmed
21-05-2009, 3:21pm
I still say get a Mac

oldfart
21-05-2009, 3:39pm
XP, Vista really struggles on a laptop.

Kym
21-05-2009, 3:41pm
With the latest SP and patches Vista is ok and stable. (Did I say that?) With 4GB it will be fine.
The UI is different and its a bugga to tame if your used to XP.
I have both joy :(

If you don't want to use it and you are comfortable with XP go that way; especially if you use XP at work.

You can always upgrade later (at no cost as it is licensed to your box).

Notebook battery life will be less under Vista.


XP, Vista really struggles on a laptop.

Not with the spec machine Ash is looking at.

IanB
21-05-2009, 3:46pm
I still say get a Mac

Snob :D

:) :)

hoffy
21-05-2009, 3:47pm
I still say get a Mac

Buy my Cinema display then! ;)

Charmed
21-05-2009, 4:16pm
Says she who would love a mac but couldn't afford the extra $ outlay @ the time when I got my laptop last year.

Andrew.S
21-05-2009, 5:19pm
Windows 7
Looks like vista crossed with a mac runs like xp. "Touch wood" no bugs I have have seen in PR7100. Before I installed it on my lap top I would get a driver related BSD once a day. Not any more.

IanB
22-05-2009, 10:26am
Thought this thread would have received more posts; well I was hoping it would as I'm thinking about going to a big laptop also. Any more comments; anyone gone from desk top to LT. LT have come so far in the past few years; while always dropping in price.

One thing I'll want will be external screen controls for brightness/contrast/colour: any suggestions. How about screens; what's good on a Lt

:)

hoffy
22-05-2009, 10:32am
From what I have seen, the DELLS appear to have the highest screen resolution. They are even doing 15.4 inch screens with 1920x1200 res(the 17 standard has a smaller res, but you can upgrade to the same resolution).

In relation to controls, I am not sure on how they work.

I had a look at Hardly Normals yesterday (aparently they have a Laptop special on at the moment) and the closest I could get was the Sony & around 1600 on the longest side.

ricktas
22-05-2009, 10:59am
I have 2 laptops, one with xp and one with vista. I tend to find I am on the XP one more, but if you asked me why, and answer would be, I don't really know, but i just naturally gravitate to the XP one.

rappleby
22-05-2009, 12:24pm
I run a HP dv9815TX with Vista 64 Ultimate, 4GB RAM and have had no problems apart from a dodgy Audio interface that produced a slight hum when plugged into an amplifier, but other than that, smooth sailing for me. $3,000+ but you get what you pay for in laptops.

I heavily use Adobe CS4 Master Collection on it, and things like NetBeans, webservers, MySQL DB's, Cubase and never slows down for me. Graphics are also sensational.

For Vista to work effectivley, you need a high end laptop (top of the line processor/graphics card/maxed out RAM). We don't use it at work but are lining up Windows 7 in the near future.

Personally, if you have the money, get the best available with Vista and then upgrade to windows 7 when it comes out. Make sure you get a 64bit Ultimate though, all the other versions (Business, Home, etc...) are rubbish. Just my opinion though.

Slide
22-05-2009, 5:54pm
Get XP. I've got a Dell inspiron 1525 which came with vista on it unfortunately. CS3 and Adobe bridge seem to take turns a crashing every second time I open them, also most games seem to crash right when you don't want it to, not to mention IE will run fine for hours and then just crash. If you want a nice looking OS the crashes all the time and uses heaps of system resources get Vista, if you want something that works and isn't a big drain on the system get XP or Mac.

perfectdistance
25-05-2009, 9:26pm
Vista certainly likes to have more power ... given the choice I'd go with XP for a laptop. I have vista on my desktop and it really doesn't add anything.

lloydy
25-05-2009, 10:28pm
XP... Vista doesn't add anything unless you want to run Media Center.. VMC is a better product than MCE.

On my laptops I run TinyXP.. its a cutdown version of XP without all the junk.. takes about 4GB disk space instead of 12Gb

Why a laptop? if its your main M/C why not go with a desktop.. bump up the CPU with a quad core, put a pixel shifting monster of a video card in and a couple of TB of disk and you won't have to wait for CS4, image stitchers etc when post processing your photo's.

IMHO a laptop is only useful if you are on the move.. but you still need a beast at home!
BTW.. Dell is a pretty good brand.. I have 2 of them

milspec
27-05-2009, 6:23pm
Windows 7 works a treat otherwise go with Ubuntu :)

phild
27-05-2009, 6:58pm
XP can only address 4Gb of RAM, I used to hate Vista but since building a quad core desktop with 8Gb Ram I have come to appreciate the capabilities of Vista Ultimate 64 bit. CS4 has 64 bit support and really flies on Vista 64 bit.

latino
12-06-2009, 10:15am
I have been looking at the dell website for a decently priced laptop (Inspiron 15) to use while I am on the road mainly for sorting out the pics and deleted the crap ones and maybe some minor PP work.

The laptops come with Vista premium, will this be good enough for my purpose of is vista a complete dog?? I've always used XP but they are not available anymore only on business laptops.

Cheers

pgbphotographytas
12-06-2009, 10:27am
I have been looking at the dell website for a decently priced laptop (Inspiron 15) to use while I am on the road mainly for sorting out the pics and deleted the crap ones and maybe some minor PP work.

The laptops come with Vista premium, will this be good enough for my purpose of is vista a complete dog?? I've always used XP but they are not available anymore only on business laptops.

Cheers

Vista should be fine as long as you turn off most of the "eye candy"

latino
12-06-2009, 11:08am
Vista should be fine as long as you turn off most of the "eye candy"

Pardon my ignorance but could you explain the eye candy your talking about?

Cheers:food04:

pgbphotographytas
12-06-2009, 11:49am
Pardon my ignorance but could you explain the eye candy your talking about?

Cheers:food04:

Sorry, basically you can turn off the nice effects that look cool but slow down Vista very badly.
If you right click on my computer, properties, advanced system settings, performance and then select "Adjust for best performance" that will make a difference.

hoffy
12-06-2009, 12:25pm
I also believe that there is no reason why you can't buy the small business laptops. They tend to come with less bloatware (I.E., the trial versions of software that you probably don't want anyway)

Kym
12-06-2009, 3:15pm
Pardon my ignorance but could you explain the eye candy your talking about?
Cheers:food04:

Aero I think.

Kym
12-06-2009, 3:18pm
For reasons that are complex I've switched to Vista (Enterprise) at work on my notebook.
Running ok, some things better than XP some slower.
I will be going to Win7 ASAP via MSDN (hopefully in the next few weeks).
MSDN get Win7 soon after RTM; but the rest must wait till october 22nd.

ch00su
12-06-2009, 3:57pm
G'day everyone. First post...


Windows 7 works a treat otherwise go with Ubuntu :)

My first choice would be OS X, however, Windows 7, I dare say, is equally as good in terms of stability and speed. I think MS did a pretty good job this time.
You can download it for free from MS site and use it until March or May next year and when it expires pay for the upgrade which, rumour has it, will be around U$50.
Just get a laptop with dedicated graphics card if you wanna use CS4 and video processing.

Cheers,

Young.

Kym
12-06-2009, 4:31pm
G'day everyone. First post...
My first choice would be OS X, however, Windows 7, I dare say, is equally as good in terms of stability and speed. I think MS did a pretty good job this time.
You can download it for free from MS site and use it until March or May next year and when it expires pay for the upgrade which, rumour has it, will be around U$50.
Just get a laptop with dedicated graphics card if you wanna use CS4 and video processing.
Cheers,
Young.

Welcome... Maybe a post in Introductions ;)