age old question... Keep XP or upgrade to Vista on a E6500

I just got a nicely loaded E6500 from the Dell Outlet. It has XP installed but came with a Vista Business licence and I am just not sure whether to or if vista is an "upgrade" or not. I've read a bunch of reviews comparing the two systems but they were all done on Vista's release and did not account for the SP1 and other fixes, those reviews seemed to give Vista a slight edge but by no means was it overwhelming. So I was wondering what peoples opinion of Vista was now that its been on the market for a while and has had some fixes applied.

Brief specs on the laptop:
2.5ghz, 3m L2C, 1066FSB
2gb ram (1 dimm) have a second 2gb dimm on order.
250gb 7200rpm HD
Nvidia Quadro 256mb vid card.

my usage:
I am not a gamer. I do some limited video, Photoshop and audio arranging. For the most part it will be a general usage computer mainly using MS Office apps, web apps and multimedia playback.

thanks for any advice

 

There's nothing wrong with Vista. If it works and installs well, then you can go with that.

To be honest, Vista is a much better interface than XP (once you get rid of UAC and those 'simple' menus like the Control Panel). Options are more logical and alerts are more transparent.

Either way, for what you're doing it doesn't really matter. However, if you use specialized programs for what you do (video & audio), it might be better to stick with XP for a little longer as XP has slightly better application support than Vista.

 

xp would be ending its life sooonnnnn
i suggest you migrate and get that learning curve going

 

I would keep XP and get Windows 7 when it comes out.

 

why spend money to get windows 7 when you have a perfectly good vista license to use.

 

I've heard from a few tech friends that Windows 7 is essentially a re-branded Vista and not much more.

 

Not quite. It fixes all the major problems present in Vista, so it's basically what Vista should've been at launch.

For example, file transfers are back to XP speeds.

They reworked the Aero interface so it actually works all the time (maximizing a window in Vista kills Aero).

Windows 7 is a very, very good OS (at least from the beta I've used). I wanna see how the final product will turn out.

Also, I think if you have a Vista license you get an upgrade to 7, not sure about that.

 

XP ALL THE WAY!!!

/troll

But in all seriousness, Vista is a perfectly fine operating system. Save for the occasional junk Nvidia driver, I've never really had a problem with it on the few occasions that I've used it; I just prefer XP. You should have a pleasant experience with both in this day and age.

Windows 7 is largely based on Vista, but there are a substantial amount of tweaks. If I recall correctly, you only get the free upgrade if you buy a Vista system in 2H 2009. But someone will have to confirm or deny...

 

I had the same options, for me it was about my software. My CAD and Graphic software works much better on XP vs Vista. And my software cost a lot more than the laptop did.

 

Just what i thought.