XP or Vista on a laptop?

[hoffy]

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]

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]

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]

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.

Cheers Brett

[Charmed]

I still say get a Mac

[oldfart]

XP, Vista really struggles on a laptop.

[Kym]

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]

I still say get a Mac

Snob

[hoffy]

I still say get a Mac

Buy my Cinema display then!

[Charmed]

Says she who would love a mac but couldn't afford the extra $ outlay @ the time when I got my laptop last year.