Which operating system is best?

I am changing laptops and I bought them with xp already installed by someone so they are not really legit in that I don't have the actual program. Now that I'm transferring everything to the newer one I am wanting to actually buy the OS as I've had some system files corrupt and it won't accept my copies of the OS. Anyway, I am inclined to stick with xp and not trade up to vista as I have heard there are problems with vista, and that xp is the more stable of the 2. I know its a matter of personal choice in the main part but if I'm going to fork out $100 I feel I should get some advice. Does vista need a lot more memory?

 

You'd do best to run Vista on a computer with at least 1GB RAM. Vista doesn't have any problems... I recently upgraded my computer from XP to Vista (I have 1.5GB RAM), and it seems to work just fine. If you get Vista though, be sure to upgrade to SP1 before installing anything, to avoid any possible issues.

 

I like Vista, but then I am running with 3gigs, what are the specs of laptop can't really give much advice in the dark

 

Yeah I should have given my laptop specs... well its a deal and by any of your standards it would be considered ancient. Im transferring from a dell 610 latitude to an 810 latitude. So yes it is at least er... 2 years old (and lies about its age). Okay so I think Vista is out unless I win the lottery. I think its only got 512mb ram. Oh well ... I actually like xp anyway so its not totally bad news. So thanks. I wish it wasn't such a long tedious business. Heh! I read somewhere that operating systems are being overhauled anyway and the next new thing will be to have the operating system online so its always upgraded. Something tells me that that's a bad thing though. But I digress... Thank you all I really appreciate your expert knowledge.

 

I personally would not run Vista on a 2 year old laptop. On a desktop, maybe, with some upgrades. If you can spend some money on the laptop for more RAM (1gb minimum as stated above) and maybe a faster hard drive (most laptops are sold with 4200rpm or 5400rpm drives; a 7200rpm drive can provide surprising improvements in performance), then Vista Home Basic would probably be OK. Keep in mind, Microsoft is supposedly going to stop any and all support of XP in mid 2009....

 

According to http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9026940 , support for XP SP2 will continue to sometime in 2014. At the time the article was written, SP3 had not been released, so I suspect SP3 may now or soon be required for support to that date in 2014.