im getting ready to buy a laptop insiron 1520 from dell, vista or xp?

absolutely nothing to panic as far as windows xp is concerned

... it's a tried and tested system

vista is also done with all the issues and hangup's of old

feel free to choose whichever way

vista is about the future

but if you are cash strapped, xp might just save you some bucks > being less of a resource hog

"dell says microsoft will be descontinuting support for xp, so what do i do??? "

Well, first off, that's a load of crap. Microsoft will NOT be discontinuing support for windows xp for many years to come. They are still supporting older versions of windows than XP.

Vista, while newer, still does have some problems, but nothing major. Some people dont like vista for other things, such as the more restrictive licensing agreements.

*WINDOWS VISTA: We know where you are, what you've been doing, what you installed on your computer, and all the illegal copying your doing and have.*

XP can be considered more reliable still, and is better for gaming, if your going to be playing games on your laptop, i would -recommend- xp over vista, but it's not a requirement. Vista uses alot more power, so installing it on a laptop is going to take away alot bigger % of your computers resources than it would on a desktop, requiring you to do some serious upgrades if you put vista on your computer.

My new inspiron 1520 has a 2.2 GHz processor, 2 Gigs of ram, and a 256MB video card. If you are getting Vista...get those 3 upgrades on your computer if you plan to play any games whatsoever (minus games like solitare or checkers ...you know, pre-installed 2-D games)

a further note if you do get vista:

If you get vista home premium (a must if you get vista :p)

You get 2 GIGs of ram. Either installed from them online, or by somebody you know that can work on desktops. If you only get 1 GB of ram with vista...you're gonna hate your laptop.

i became interior an identical difficulty and asked this same question earlier. The critiques that I usually won (from Yahoo customers, IT adult men, or perhaps salesmen from computer shops) have been to stay removed from VISTA for no less than a 12 months. There are nevertheless too many bugs to paintings out, and a few courses/utility which you presently have put in in XP won't paintings in a Vista computer. With all that for the time of strategies, i offered a clean computer online that still has XP, and that i think of I made the acceptable decision. via the time i'm waiting for yet another computer, Vista would have all the needed service packs/patches out, and it would be much less no longer elementary. good success.

If Microsoft are discontinuing support for XP then your best bet would to get Windows Vista. Vista has a lot of bugs at the moment and, to be honest, is the worst OS from Microsoft I've seen so far except for the Aero Glass and Flip3D features. Anyway, whatever the consequences you should get Vista buggy or not.

Dont worry about Vista.

here's the deal.

I have the same laptop you are looking at. Dell Inspiron 1520, black lid, 2.0 ghz processor, it came with 1 gig ram that I upgraded to 2. It has the 8600GT card and 120 gigs harddrive. My girlfriend has the 1521 which has the AMD processor running at 1.8 ghz. Same amount of ram (2 gigs).

And both of our laptops run perfectly fine, boot up fast, and no issues with Vista, other than finding drivers for web cams and stuff, which she found right away, but for me I had to buy a new webcam, which was fine because mine wasnt the laptop kind.

Conclusion is, Vista on new laptops and computers even with 1 gig of ram works just fine. I have vista premium too, and with my high res monitor, im enjoying my HD video clips from my PC better than ever now.

Unfortunately, since Mircosoft is disconintuing support for XP there is really no sense in getting it. SP1 should fix many of the bugs that were associated with the early version of Vista. Even though I am a firm supporter of XP I don't think we have much of a choice anymore since all new computers are coming pre-setup with Vista.

Hope this helps

stick with xp for as long as you can, vista is still not up to par, there are so many problems with it and incompatibilities with other programs. At the very least make sure all the applications that you want to run will be compatible with Vista. Good luck with whatever you decide!

First, all depends on what you use for. Go to MS web site and ask when yje are discont. support for xp. They will always say sooner than actual to get you to buy.

You are fine to run XP Pro with less comp resources.

I bought a copy of XP Pro and use it for all my home computers (2). The second service pack really bogged things down tho. Tell me what you use for mainly?