hello there. this summer i am planning on buying a new laptop, and i just wanted to get advice on wat laptop to get and whether or not to install Vista on it. i am looking to buy a Dell but dont know wat model i should get. any advice is appreciated. thank u

Depends on what you want to do with it - play games, surf the web, do work of different sorts, etc.

well, im in school, so most of my use will be school related or just surfing the web. not too much gaming tho, im not into computer gaming too much.

"school related"

Hmm...

if the programs they require won't run on Vista, that might help you decide real quick.

For school and surfing the web, almost any laptop will do. I'd suspect that you'll need an office suite for school. Try OpenOffice - it's free and v2.2 and above support Vista. http://www.openoffice.org

If you'll be listening to much music, or videos you may want to get a more substantial system tho'

the main thing i need to know about is whether or not i should get Vista on my new laptop.......... will it be worth it or should i stick with XP?

kmart812 -

In my opinion, it isn't a simple answer.

That's why I mentioned that if a software package that you will need to run won't run on Vista, it makes the decision easy.

Otherwise, we could, and some probably will, argue either way.

XP has been around for a while and is relatively stable.

Vista, while new, will only continue to improve (just as XP did in the beginning), and has some arguably superior security features - User Account Control and Internet Explorer 7 running in Protected Mode, for example.

Personally, unless you know of a software issue, I would go with Vista Premium as a minimum. (I agree with many others - Vista Basic isn't a good idea) Both XP and Vista are coming out with frequent security updates, so neither is being ignored in that area. You can get good, free, security programs for both, and, as mentioned, you can get a free office suite - OpenOffice, too. More and more "current" versions of other software will become Vista capable just as it did when XP first came out.

That's my 2 cents.