I'd suggest that you Go for Windows Ultimate or else stick with Windows XP SP2.

Microsoft recently announced a scheme so that all Vista Enterprise and Ultimate users can dwongrade to Windows XP SP2 with a downgrade CD provided by Microsoft.

I'd say that Windows XP Pro SP2 is the best platform and the most stable one to develope applications and play games, even better than Windows Vista. If you go for Windows XP Pro SP2 you can use the amount saved to upgrade your system hardware.

Windows XP SP3 will be soon available so you can get more features and make Win XP more stable and secure.

I'd also say - go with Vista! I am using it for about half a year now and am positively impressed. It is the best and the most up-to-date windows system and there are many improvements since XP version. Well there are how much, five years between them! Vista also has a lot of interesting new features, which are very useful and come very handy if you work with pictures, search for any file, shortcut and all that stuff...it is good!

As for the games - Vista runs a completely seperate hm "process" for games, so windows and games are two different things and Vista only takes as much as it needs and leaves the rest of the computer to games. If anything goes bad with games, Vista is untouched and you can ctrl+alt+delete out of game, having everything you worked on earlier left just as it was on you desktop...

Of course there is also directx10, which is going to be used more and more from now on, so this is also one of the reasons to use Vista instead of XP...

You have to decide for yourself, but in my opinion you should not buy an old laptop. Invest and I'm sure it will return as long hours of happy games-playing.

Best whishes

XP is still good for me.......

yea of course Windows xp , for me Vista sucks , and no offence but its real .

Windows Xp it and will be the most stable microsoft product , Vista is like more entertaiment program . my opinion

Vista is simply terrible. They butchered the interface, they added an annoying security feature which can only protect the stupid, they butchered the directory structure, and worst of all added all that bloat. I'd stick with XP any day, but I'd rather even work on 2000 so I don't even have all those fancy effects but all the stability and features that I like - namely the lack of bloat and useless effects, the decent security, and the interface which I like to use.

If this is the future of Microsoft I'm going to migrate to Linux just as soon as I can get a 64-bit flash player. Of course, there's always Server Edition which they haven't messed up too bad and actually seems pretty great compared to Vista, since it seems to be a more modern 2000.

Plus, at this point Vista at this point lacks the consumer product testing. It has had serious problems, like the WGA server reset which cost Vista users several features for a day or two. When the service pack comes out it might be a good time to buy.

This post has been edited by Tetraca: Oct 10 2007, 11:30 AM

X2, buddy. X2. I feel the same way about the Vista/ME relation.

In my opinion, Windows XP Professional is the most stable and most functional Windows platform out there. The only problem with sticking to what works is that there is no future for it... Vista is Microsoft's flagship and they're running the show from there. You will need Vista to run Halo 2 as well as any games that have DirectX10 support, as I don't see any economic sense for Microsoft to enable Direct10 support for Windows XP.

The service pack for Vista is slowly approaching... I believe its release will be in January 2008, if I've read and heard correctly. Maybe then Vista will be viable for actual use... and only the Ultimate or Home Premium versions are worth getting. And as usual, Microsoft sucks consumers into throwing even more money into an operating system to snag the essentials and utilities that should be in every one of the variants.

If you look at the Vista variant comparison chart on the Microsoft site, you'll know what I mean.

Do tell me about these improvements in Vista over XP.


Right, but 3rd parties have already started working on DX10 for non-Vista operating systems. Therefore Vista probably isn't required in the future, and I foreseen this ever since M$ was trying to convince everybody that Vista was soon to be required (for gaming).

And who's says that Wine and Cedega for Linux won't be able to support DX10 games in the future?

This post has been edited by dre: Oct 10 2007, 10:37 PM

Well, I need a semi-cheap laptop since I don't have a job nor could I get one. I must rely off my upcoming birthday and following Christmas to pay for the laptop. I was thinking of getting one off Ebay or a used store instead of a new one specifically because of Vista's high need for RAM and it's infamy. It used to not be able to run Guild Wars, but I do not know if currently does. My Halo playing will mostly be online, but I will be doing campaign also. Note that I have Halo 1 not 2 on PC. Well, I also plan on using graphics editing programs like GIMP and most likely a compiler for C and C++. I think I will get XP and upgrade to Vista once it is all fixed up. I know Bill Gates is trying to give himself a monopoly so Vista might become worse. I myself am not a particuraly "advanced" user, but I'm not a beginner either. Well, there is a little more background info on my OS needs.

Lol, I also agree that vista will most probably end up as windows ME. I mean, windows xp works perfectly fine in most computers, and if you really want to upgrade just because of the visual appearance then go buy yourself aston shell or windows blinds. It will be healthier for your pc since you will require less ram for the OS and it would also leave your wallet happier. All I have heard about vista are problems at the moment, it will probably take a couple of months for everything to be worked out for it. Not many programs have been upgraded to vista yet.

It's all down to your preference as far as GUI goes. I prefer something basic but nice (E.G XP with a nice desktop image and maybe a skin or something)

I have heard to run games vista sort of 'unloads' alot of itself from the memory to make room for the games (provided you have enough)