Vista - Advice on best time to buy

beancounter1968

My girlfriend is wondering on the best time to buy a new laptop.

Should she buy a vista compatible product now and upgrade at some point in the future or should she wait till the end of January and buy a laptop preloaded with the software? Do you think that laptop prices will show an increase with this new operating system and will XP models still be available after the release of vista?

Any advice will be appreciated - thank you in advance

Phil

Rex_Mundi

Most of the big PC retailers (Dell, PC World etc) are offering a free upgrade to Vista Basic if you buy a new computer between now and March 2007.

joemardo1

Well I know that a few are giving a free upgrade to vista shoudl you buy now but with an admin charge of £15 I think Mesh computers to name but one. This isn't bad you know for I understand that you can then have 2 os on your computer both xp and vista. Obviously after vista is released then you will only get vista itself, not xp as well.

Joe

sco0ter

joemardo1 wrote:

Well I know that a few are giving a free upgrade to vista shoudl you buy now but with an admin charge of £15 I think Mesh computers to name but one. This isn't bad you know for I understand that you can then have 2 os on your computer both xp and vista. Obviously after vista is released then you will only get vista itself, not xp as well.

Joe

Not true... From what I believe it is an UPGRADE disk and not a full version which means it will UPGRADE the computer not clean install..

timread

Think of it a slightly different way - PC manufacturers and OEMs are going to be desperate to sell units this Christmas - it's the biggest sales time of the year. But Vista doesn't appear until Jan 30th 2007. Prices will be low to tempt customers.

Come end of Jan 07, the pent-up demand to go straight for Vista will be there... but the downwards pressure on sales prices won't be the same. I think prices will be higher. So that's a plus point of buying now, as long as you make sure you get a 'free' Vista upgrade voucher.

Since your GF is looking at a laptop, it's worth reading this article: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35176

The gist of it is that Vista has much greater graphics demands than XP, to display its prettier desktop. Battery life on notebooks is likely to be poor relative to XP to start with, until manufacturers have had some time to optimise their notebook graphics and batteries to cope better with the higher graphics Windows Vista.

Also - the more processing cores your CPU has, the better, going into 2007. That means going for laptops with Intel Core 2 Duo, or AMD Turion64 X2 CPUs. I don't think the cheaper laptops with Celeron D processors will cope well with Vista. And make sure you get AT LEAST 1GB of RAM if you're going to run Vista. You will need it.

Sorry for long post

sco0ter

timread wrote:

The gist of it is that Vista has much greater graphics demands than XP, to display its prettier desktop. Battery life on notebooks is likely to be poor relative to XP to start with, until manufacturers have had some time to optimise their notebook graphics and batteries to cope better with the higher graphics Windows Vista.

Also - the more processing cores your CPU has, the better, going into 2007. That means going for laptops with Intel Core 2 Duo, or AMD Turion64 X2 CPUs. I don't think the cheaper laptops with Celeron D processors will cope well with Vista. And make sure you get AT LEAST 1GB of RAM if you're going to run Vista. You will need it.

Sorry for long post

Doesnt apply to the Basic version of vista.... This comes without the AERO interface and other high end machine stuff so will just be about the same (or very slightly more) demanding than XP.

(Not according to the RC2 notes anyway)

sco0ter

Heres a list of the differences between some of the editions..... Looks like the "Free Upgrade" to Vista Basic could be a bit of a con

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/editions/default.mspx

Poppycat

Vista on a laptop takes about 30% more resources compard with XP, and battery life sucks even on the lastest top of the range laptops with Intel dual core processors.

jmarko

timread wrote:

But Vista doesn't appear until Jan 30th 2007.

You'll be lucky! :rotfl: Aren't we about due for another delay announcement?

timread wrote:

Come end of Jan 07, the pent-up demand to go straight for Vista will be there

Come the end of Jan 07, there will be another delay and the pent-up anger will lead to people saying 's*d it!'.

Just my view!

jmarko

sco0ter

jmarko wrote:

You'll be lucky! :rotfl: Aren't we about due for another delay announcement?

Windows Vista has RTM'd so no more delays

jmarko wrote:

Come the end of Jan 07, there will be another delay and the pent-up anger will lead to people saying 's*d it!'.

Just my view!

jmarko

Come end of Jan 07 Vista will be shipping with new computers

sco0ter

Poppycat wrote:

Vista on a laptop takes about 30% more resources compard with XP, and battery life sucks even on the lastest top of the range laptops with Intel dual core processors.

Where did you here that???? Could you show me the page please... I have Vista Ultimate installed on my laptop and it doesnt seem to put much more of a strain on it never mind the basic version...