Vista Ultimate or XP Pro on my new Dell XPS M1330?

[*John*]

I was wondering whether I could get everyone's opinions on this?

For Christmas I has a Red Dell XPS M1330:

13" LED Widescreen

Dual Core 2.2 Ghz

2GB Ram

250GB HD

128 Nvidia Graphics Card

9 Cell battery

It came pre-installed with Vista Home Premium, but we all know how terrible default installs are, so i'm looking to reformat. The question is, should I install XP Pro, or Vista Ultimate?

I currently have Vista Ultimate on my desktop, and have had since february, and it's run well, with ZERO problems. I am concerned about how Vista will run on a laptop though, and whether i'd be better off with XP for both longer battery life, and faster more productive computing?

What are your thoughts on this? Does Vista run excellently on Laptops, or should I stick with XP?

Thanks

[falloutboymissunderstood]

I was wondering whether I could get everyone's opinions on this?

For Christmas I has a Red Dell XPS M1330:

13" LED Widescreen

Dual Core 2.2 Ghz

2GB Ram

250GB HD

128 Nvidia Graphics Card

9 Cell battery

It came pre-installed with Vista Home Premium, but we all know how terrible default installs are, so i'm looking to reformat. The question is, should I install XP Pro, or Vista Ultimate?

I currently have Vista Ultimate on my desktop, and have had since february, and it's run well, with ZERO problems. I am concerned about how Vista will run on a laptop though, and whether i'd be better off with XP for both longer battery life, and faster more productive computing?

What are your thoughts on this? Does Vista run excellently on Laptops, or should I stick with XP?

Thanks

Hi Windows XP Works best with anything because if you use Windows Vista it will be reallllllllllllllllllly slow see ya!

[Idontwantspam]

I'd like to see that LED screen....

You WILL get better battery life with XP than with vista. Do note that there's no need to buy ultimate when premium works just fine and you don't need another expensive license.

In my opinion, XP is much better than Vista at this point.

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

yeah I loves me some Vista but my experience with it on laptops havent been the best so far. Unless they fix the power management issues with Vista I fear my laptop will never work properly with Windows Shiny Edition.

P.S. dont hold out for SP1 to fix it either. My Dell D820 is running SP1 and I just bumped it and its in PermaSleep™ Mode (Locked up in Hibernate)

[neo]

Go 4 Vista

[Idontwantspam]

Go 4 Vista

Wow, um, that's sure a good argument...

I agree with geek, power management on vista isn't ready for laptops. Also, aero means your GPU will be chompin' away all the time, instead of just when you play games, etc. In other words, you're going to be using the power it would take to power a game all day in XP... or not all day, since that battery doesn't last all day with XP even.

[Grake]

Just don't call in for support and you'll be fine lol. Although I have no doubt, you will with a 1330 =/

Edited December 30, 2007 by Grake

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

Just don't call in for support and you'll be fine lol.

When it comes to Dell, thats usually a good rule of thumb regardless of the issue. Except on the rare occasion that you get someone that speaks the same language as you but usually when that happens your in the wrong department.

the Corp/Gold line is slightly better but not much.

But seriously, Id use whatever it comes loaded with for a while before id look into changing it

[DonDamm]

Well, my first thought would be to say stay with Vista for now and just clean up and tweak the current install. the reason has more to do with the drivers. Do some research and see if you can locate all the necessary drivers for your particular model of laptop for XP. this is important because I know of some folks who tried to do the same thing with a Sony and ended up failing to find appropriate drivers for the hardware!!!

Once you locate any necessary drivers, then you could switch to XP if you wanted to or feel you need to. In the meantime, you have enough RAM to run Vista quite well. Go through all the running services and shutdown those which are irrelevant to you. I'll bet you mostly are near a power source when running the laptop anyway, so the battery power time won't be a big issue. Just remember that in Vista it doesn't show a progress bar when it goes to Hibernate (apparently a feature - not a bug - haha).

You'll probably find that it is easier having the same OS on both machines. One thing you can do is to buy yourself one of the new bigger laptop harddisks that run at 7,200rpm (most notebook disks run at 5400 or less), - Hitachi, Samsung, and Seagate have them - and clone the installation to it. Now, that will speed up your laptop and make it behave more like a destop, but it will have an effect on your battery life. I've found I prefer the faster disk in mine so I do that, but your mileage may differ... :^)

[Grake]

Just don't call in for support and you'll be fine lol.

When it comes to Dell, thats usually a good rule of thumb regardless of the issue. Except on the rare occasion that you get someone that speaks the same language as you but usually when that happens your in the wrong department.

the Corp/Gold line is slightly better but not much.

But seriously, Id use whatever it comes loaded with for a while before id look into changing it

I don't know about that, but they won't support it when you change the OS.

this is important because I know of some folks who tried to do the same thing with a Sony and ended up failing to find appropriate drivers for the hardware!!!

lol I did this with a Toshiba, then found out they don't even have the model on their site, and they're too cheap to give out the driver & and the OS CD, even though it would've been for Vista. That's what I like about Dell, they actually have all the drivers for XP.

Do any manufacturers ship with XP these days?

[fizban2]

the big question is what are you going to do with this computer? is it for school? for games? for just surfing the web? I would have to say stick with vista, the power management is not that bad, i run a dell D630 with Vista x64 and have little issue, the battery is fine since i rarely need to use it for then 2 hours of a charger. most games and software coming out run well with vista so unless there is some software that you desperately need for years past you would probably be better off with vista.

@grake

manufacturers are not selling machines with XP anymore (or at least not without you asking for it)

[spacesurfer]

Drivers will definitely be a problem. Almost all new systems with Vista preinstalled do not have XP drivers.

You'd have to buy a laptop with XP preinstalled to assure driver compatibility.

Anyway, XP is best right now. Vista is a hog.

My sister bought an hp with Vista Home premium preinstalled (AMD processor) and it's painfully SLOOOOOW. Although I think the processor has a little to do with it, I just can imagine why it would so so painfully sloow.

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

you can make XP run on 99% of the machines that vista runs on but you're gonna have to do the driver legwork yourself. The OEMs arent doing it for you anymore. I cant believe i actually have t say this here at MSFN (where we still have people clinging to a 13 year old OS) but buy whatever hardware you want then worry about what software your gonna run on it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying doing your research wont help you in the long run, I'm just saying if you toss out every OEM that isnt XP friendly, your gonna end up with a very limited set of choices

[Idontwantspam]

Um???? XP is NOT 13 years old...

Anyhow. Dell has been very, very good about providing both XP and Vista drivers. Many of their computers you can still get XP on, pre-installed. I've had a few issues with going from Vista to XP on dells, but overall it's been quite easy. Dell kept XP all along in the business section, and within months of going to vista-only in the home section, brought back XP because their customers demanded it. Just my 2 cents.

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

Um???? XP is NOT 13 years old...

Didn't say it was. 2008 - 13 = 1995