Latest thinking... "downgrade" to XP or not?
 

It is almost time to replace my T43 and right now the most likely candidate is a Lenovo T400.

The Lenovo site still offers XP as a replacement for Vista. So I'm curious about the latest opinion from Vista users. Has the system improved enough to go with what Microsoft will spend more time supporting? Or should I stay with the tried and true for now? Indeed, if I start with XP I'm not likely to upgrade until another 3 years pass and I get another laptop.

If it matters, I will order this with Office 2007 business edition installed.

Any other configuration tips for what is my primary business computer are appreciated. A plethora of possibilities.

I've been quite happy with the T43 (has only lost one keyboard cap in 3 years and survived two falls from my desk) and place special value on the keyboard as I about make my living typing consulting reports and creating PowerPoint presentations on these things.

Thanks for sharing thoughts.

get Vista. it's pretty good, better than xp.

get decrapifire and run it.

http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

Vista will run fine on any modern Core 2 Duo laptop or higher. I run it on occasion on my 2.4 ghz MacBookPro and it runs fine. I would only imagine it is smoother on a system actually configured for Vista. Sure if you have never used Vista before there may be some growing pains, though my guess is that being a business user you will more cringe at some of the changes to Office.

Cringe changes in Office?
 

You do make me curious... if it won't take a book, what changes in Office will most likely make me cringe?

I will dissent here. An absolute prerequisite for buying a laptop for me is the ability to downgrade to XP. My Intel Core 2 Duo Vista media center runs slower than my four year old P4 on XP. The "improvements" to vista are largely like the "improvements" to your frequent flyer programs.... Which is to say, with improvements like these who needs bugs! Almost every single "improvement" goes into the annoying column instead of the useful column.

Just one cheapo's 2 cents.

The ribbon?

The ribbon, mainly. Overall I became eventually pleased with the switch though it is like going on vacation only to have someone come into your kitchen and rearrange everything in all your cupboards and drawers. Everything is still there for the most part and there is some logic to it though it just takes some time to get used to. The one except to that is if you are a big big power user of Excel I hear there are some things that they really changed that ticked off heavy users. Compared to Vista everything seems to look a little bit nicer though underneath everything is pretty much where it used to be.

I've got a T61 from Lenovo. (I was pretty happy to get the the last non-widescreen laptop on the market.) It came with Vista Home Premium. I gave it a try and switched back to XP after a week. The bottom line was that Vista was slower and less compatible, and didn't offer any material advantages over XP.

Given that there were no real advnatages to Vista over an up-to-date XP installation, I didn't really see much need to stick with it when it would have required coming up a learning curve.

At the end of the day, I use my computer as a tool, not a hobby, and while there were a few nice new features Vista, they were primarily cosmetic, and they didn't to a lot to improve my productivity....so XP it is.

Vista Home vs. Vista Business
 

From what I'm reading, there seems a huge difference in how people react to Vista Home (major dislike) and the Business edition... comments for the latter are much more favorable although not universally so.

[QUOTE=sculler1x;10805663]I've got a T61 from Lenovo. (I was pretty happy to get the the last non-widescreen laptop on the market.) It came with Vista Home Premium. I gave it a try and switched back to XP after a week. The bottom line was that Vista was slower and less compatible, and didn't offer any material advantages over XP.[/INDENT]

I find Vista painful to use on a 3ghz Core 2 Duo with 2gb of RAM and a 256MB GeForce 7600GT videocard.

XP all the way,

I run a tweaked Vista Ultimate on my personal T43 and it beats the pants off XP running on my X61 at work.

I'm too lazy to retype my response to the last time you posted that link, so here's a link to my last post about it. ;)

To the OP, I'd stick with Vista at this point unless you've got a printer that is 2+ years old or other peripherals that will have driver compatability issues. I would consider turning off Aero and most of the other junk that comes as part of Vista for performance reasons, but the base OS seems to run at reasonable levels, and you never know when you might want to take advantage of one of the benefits it adds.

Thanks for the note about printers... I have 2 that are more than 2 years old. One is in imminent need of replacement so that's not a problem. The other (the least expensive HP I've ever bought) just hums along with nary a problem. But it too can be replaced if HP does not have new software to make it work with Vista.


To the OP, I'd stick with Vista at this point unless you've got a printer that is 2+ years old or other peripherals that will have driver compatability issues. I would consider turning off Aero and most of the other junk that comes as part of Vista for performance reasons, but the base OS seems to run at reasonable levels, and you never know when you might want to take advantage of one of the benefits it adds.[/QUOTE]

Didn't see that post before. I wouldn't overclock either...but I did pick and choose among that list as it suited me and some of them worked great.

When I bought a new laptop last summer, I insisted on XP. My computer consultant, who builds, installs, and repairs all kinds of computers, advised me to avoid Vista. (He said it stronger than that, but I can't use those words.)

The new one came with Vista CDs if I ever decide to upgrade, but I won't. There is nothing Vista offers that I want, and XP does everything I need. My printers and scanner work fine and are too old for Vista drivers. Plus I have several software programs I use all the time that will not run under Vista. (They are so old that I lost a few features with XP, but they are still better than today's alternatives--at least for my needs.)