Page 1 of New laptop...Vista or XP?

Hello

My new laptop is here; it`s an Acer 5735 with a Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 and 3gb of DDR2.

I have a Vista Enterprise upgrade disk (Vista upgrades are non-bootable) and I am toying with the idea of doing a fresh XP Pro install (deleting all the daft Acer partitions) and then upgrading to Vista.

What does everyone think? Also, if I do this any tips for how to get Vista running at its best? I have already found that I need to switch indexing off as the HDD will thrash like a kipper all the time.

As Enterprise doesn`t have built in DVD playback or burning I will have to stick PowerDVD and Nero 7 on. Those are the only two apps I can see me having issues with.

The laptop is going to be a secondary machine for web browsing, watching and downloading films and MS Office use, etc.

Cheers

Nick

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The laptop is going to be a secondary machine for web browsing, watching and downloading films and MS Office use, etc.If it`s just for that I see no reason whatsoever to put Vista on it..

Ste

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Vista upgrades are non-bootable

That`s what I thought, but a mate of mine at work bought a Vista upgrade disk and was able to make his machine dual-boot XP & Vista.

I personally hate Vista, but a lot of people love it so its all down to your personal preferences.
I switch off the disk indexing service on all my Windows based machines (XP included) since its a ridiculous performance overhead for anyone who keeps their documents in sensible locations anyway (and remembers their contents :D)!

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he`ll be warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett.

Sorry, I meant the disk itself won`t boot. You have to have another OS on their and upgrade from that OS, not from a reboot (if that makes sense).

Nick

As Enterprise doesn`t have built in DVD playback or burning I will have to stick PowerDVD and Nero 7 on. Those are the only two apps I can see me having issues with.

or just install media player classic via the klite codec pack, free & does the lot ;)

as for vista vs xp, i guess it`s more down to personal choice, i prefer XP, but if you can get along with Vista, you may as well use it, since Windows 7 is pretty much the exact same thing, & you may as well get used to it by choice rather than being eventually forced into it ;)

course, i`m a cynic tho :P

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you may as well get used to it by choice rather than being eventually forced into it..but this is just forQuote:
web browsing, watching and downloading films and MS Office use, etc. ..on a laptop, so why?

Ste

Hi Ste, in what circumstances would you go with Vista?

Nick

Well I can`t think of anything you can do in Vista better for any of those things but XP will probably run quicker and have more compatibility with other things (codecs etc.?) than Vista.
I would go Vista only when I got a new PC and not upgrade an existing one (unless it was very recent) unless there were specific things in Vista that I wanted/needed - which, in your list of requirements, there aren`t any... Things like the media centre capabilities etc.
But if it`s something you`re looking at as an `education` and just to have a look too then why not?..

Ste

This item was edited on Friday, 20th February 2009, 17:29

I`ve got all the XP drivers for the laptop just in case and as files will be saved on my NAS drive then I might just stick Vista on it and have a play to see how I get on.

Thanks guys.

Nick

If you use Vista, it will make migrating to Windows 7 easier ;)

that`s something I`ve read, and also from playing with Windows 7, a few times I`ve had trouble finding certain settings, as they moved in Vista, which I`ve hardly used at all.