Thread: Laptop Help--How Reliable is Vista and Dell Laptops

Okay I am being nice to my wife for Xmas and thinking of getting her a laptop. How reliable is Vista. I have heard pros and cons for each, but and most of the laptops I have seen (Costco, Best Buy, CompUsa, etc) only come configured with Vista where she is more comfortable with XP.

Also, how reliable are Dell laptops? They are cheap and have an educator discount and are not charging extra to have a laptop configured with XP. (Gateway is charging 50 or 150 with no educator discount)

Ya see this is why I like Macs

HP replaced my laptop with a newer, faster one complete with Vista Home Premium. I had heard rumors of conflicts with older programs, etc. A couple of my programs that I installed gave me warnings that they weren't compatible, but I have yet to have a problem with any of them.

I would steer clear of them.

Why not get her a chumby?

i have not had a problem with my Dell in two years. But I am on XP.

Love my Inspiron 1720. I've had it since July '07. I suggest max'ing out the RAM if you plan on getting Vista.

Need 2 GIG's of ram as a minimum for Vista. I would recommend Vista Ultimate since it seams to have the least amount of problems.

Dell is hit and mis for laptops.

Be careful what you buy. Some laptops that come with Vista say "vista ready" and i've heard that it will only run Vista and not XP if you choose to downgrade in the future.So you'd basically be stuck with Vista.

My wife has an HP with Vista Basic and it runs fine. The only real drawback with Vista is its a memory hog, so buy 2 gigs and its horrible for gamers, which i doubt your wife will be doing much of, so you should be ok.

I've got a Dell laptop that has been thrown around by the TSA on many occasions over its four-year life and it's still tickin' lick a Timex.

Wait...maybe that's why the TSA is so concerned with it all the time?

Seriously, though. Best thing you could do with a new one is to go to Fry's and get an OEM copy of XP Pro and install it on the new one straight out of the box. **** that Vista crapolagarbage****.

dell laptops used to be really good, but i've heard that they've dropped in quality recently. to be fair, this is what some of my friends have told me, so i could be wrong (i'm a mac guy personally). anyways, i've always had good experiences with hp's. if i had to buy a pc, i'd buy a hp. you should also consider getting her a new macbook and then installing a copy of xp on bootcamp. best of both worlds!!!