Looking for a laptop

[Bungleau]

For perspective, I got my work laptop with Vista because I expected my customers to be moving to Vista, and needed to be able to address their environments. What I've found...

• HP drivers worked only partially until I stumbled across someone from Microsoft who was handing out drivers on the sly. Don't know if he still is or not... but I've got his email.
• Some of the applications used by my company don't run or install on Vista. Yeah, we need to upgrade them... but there's no value-added reason to do that yet.
• Vista's error messages are occasionally misleading... such as "you don't have permission to access this" really meaning "this is actually stored somewhere else, and you have to access it there". Protection by obfuscation is hallucination.
• Sales don't lie... there's a reason that MS has decided to sell XP until 2010, and support it until 2014... And yes, *officially* you can't buy XP any more... unless, of course, you buy it from a smaller retailer (Asus, others).

What many corporate people are saying is that if they move to Vista, the return involved across the corporation does not justify the investment required. IOW, they're paying a lot to get not much in return... not much boost in performance or reliability. Hence the corporate decisions to upgrade slowly... when forced... while anticipating a better alternative along the way.

Doesn't mean Vista is bad. It means that Vista isn't yet more valuable than the cost to upgrade to it.

[AlphaAlex]

And they said the same thing when XP first came out, yet win98 and 2000 died off in no time.

[Bungleau]

True enough. I'm only speaking from my experiences over the past year. You are obviously seeing something quite a bit different than I am. Although you forgot to include Windows NT in there... NT4 SP6A was nice and stable.

For individuals, the choice of OS is related to the relatively standard programs they run - games, browser, email, office.

For corporations, the choice of OS is related to other applications as well - finance, manufacturing, planning, storefront, and more. If those aren't compatible, it's not worth the effort to move up until the infrastructure supports it. Duplex printing didn't work on my HP printer for six months after Vista was out. For me, it was an inconvenience. For a company with 250 PCs and 25 printers, it would be much more than that.

And since Cerek's original question was about a (mostly) personal laptop, many of my points will simply go away...

[Bokken]

*lurk mode off*

Not really sure on what price range you're looking at (unless I missed that part) but if you want a gaming laptop then you don't want to go further than a Dell XPS. I currently use the 1730 with the 8800M GTX's running in SLI and 4gb of dual channel 667mhz ram. It does run Vista but like most have said, I'd get rid of it in a heartbeat however there aren't any major issues apart from transfer speeds for me.
As far as gaming, well this will pretty much do you for just about anything. Still, I hope you don't mind the 5k or so price tag depending on what extra's you decide to have instaled in it and keep in mind that you can just get the single 8800M GTX model to cut the cost a bit if really need be.
Also keep in mind that I'm in Australia and got the thing completely decked out so it did end up costing me just over 5k at the time. I'm not entirely sure on the prices in the US but as far as laptop recommendations go, I give that one a 10 out of 10 rating.

*lurk mode on*

[AlphaAlex]

hehehe all im saying is, if you get a comp with vista dont fret. things will still work just make sure you have the latest version of games. anyway games these days are being made for vista. There are actually games out now that are Vista Only so there you go.
Plus many Vista users think vista is better, its only people who depend on XP that bash Vista.

[Yorick]

Originally Posted by AlphaAlex hehehe all im saying is, if you get a comp with vista dont fret. things will still work just make sure you have the latest version of games. anyway games these days are being made for vista. There are actually games out now that are Vista Only so there you go. Plus many Vista users think vista is better, its only people who depend on XP that bash Vista.

Like anyone who wants to use a PC to make music.
Vista is woeful just as Windows Millennium was woeful. One of the reasons I switched to, and keep using Macs. None of this "the new operating system doesn't work" bullcrap.

Honestly, would you buy a car that doesn't work?
Would you buy a book you had to download/print missing pages for and bind them in yourself?
Would you buy a song that was missing a kick drum you had to self-install?
Would you buy a house that needed window upgrades every year, but when they upgraded, most of the windows let cold air in?

It's a joke man, the whole idea of releasing half-arsed programs rushed out to fit into an unrealistic timeline just so everyone's OS can be manditorily made obsolete and forced into buying upgrades is pitiful. We the consumers need to make a stand and stop buying stuff that doesn't work!!!!!!!!