should i get a laptop with XP or vista ?Why microsoft is giving vista upgrade for free ?

Answer 1

If it's got at least 1 GB of RAM, go for Vista. Besides, it's fairly difficult to find a laptop with XP at retail now that Vista has been released. Microsoft partnered with the manufacturers to offer a free upgrade to anyone who purchased their computer between October 26, 2006 and March 15, 2007 with a Vista Capable logo on it. However, that offer is no longer valid as of yesterday, which isn't really a problem for you, as, like I said, almost all laptops being sold now are running Windows Vista.

Oh, and as for the comments about the continuous requests for action confirmation, that's called User Account Control (UAC) and can easily be disabled by going to your user account settings. It's just an optional security feature.

Answer 2

Microsoft is only giving the free upgrade to people who purchased a computer between last October and now. I have Windows Vista , and if you ask me, it has some incredibly frustrating and unecessary features.
If you don't know much at all about computers, then Vista should be fine, but if you know what you are doing you might like Xp much better because Vista has all these unecessary security features that make using it a bit of a headache. Every time you want to run a program it asks you for comfirmation, and half the software and peripherals - like tv tuner cards and graphics cards - are a major pain to install with Vista. I had to get homebrewed software from a Shareware site to be able to run some of the peripherals that I have. When I had Xp, all of the factory software that came with the peripherals worked perfect. That new Apple Macintosh commercial about VIsta hits the nail on the head.

Answer 3

I'd recommend XP for now -- Vista is still new and the problems are still shaking out -- wait at least until Vista SP1 later this year. XP Pro is a good, stable OS.

Answer 4

Get a MacBook.