vista or vista w/xp?

[patsopinion]

so im about to do do a major system overhaul
(4gb ram 500gb hd on a mac book pro)
i want to have at least vista and osX
and was wondering what the concencous was on vista
can it stand alone as a windows os or should I install it with xp?

what do you think?

[Patient zer0]

I haven't had a problem with vista yet. everyone beats on it for their own reasons.

xp is very stable and simply works. it will use less ram and won't slow you down.

the only complaint I have with vista is that its very constricting with permissions. so you need to set and disable those if you like. other than that its pretty to look at and if you get vista aero its kinda like a linux beryl os. with the fancy animations etc..

[ToiletCrusher]

Nice call. My macbook pro loves vista, even though I rarely use it.

I did the same thing, I've got 4gb ram and a 400gb hdd.

I would recommend looking into a Lacie firewire or ethernet hard drive before the internal hard drive upgrade. I bought a 1TB for around 179. It has ehternet, USB 2.0, and both firewire 800 and 400 ports on it. Blazing fast.


If you do install vista, make sure you let it update windows right away before you use it for anything and make sure you use the OSX Leopard version of bootcamp.

If you use XP (though not as fancy) you can do the 64 bit version but you need to search for some of the drivers.

The only driver I had any problem with was the wireless ethernet card on my MBP. Vista recognized it but I use a program called netstumbler to find and connect to hidden networks and it couldn't find my wireless card until I updated the drivers.

All in all, Though XP technically is "safer", bootcamp makes Vista a great option for your MBP. Do it Do it Do it!!!

[biggestmexi]

so im about to do do a major system overhaul
(4gb ram 500gb hd on a mac book pro)
i want to have at least vista and osX
and was wondering what the concencous was on vista
can it stand alone as a windows os or should I install it with xp?

what do you think?

I would do both.

Vista for newer programs and games.

XP for reliability and work as such.

[KingGeno]

EDIT: Oh, I just noticed you wanted to dualboot with your MAC. I've never done that, so I can't help.

I'm running Vista 64 bit, which if you really need something right now I would go with. Works fantastic on my machine. I have 8GB RAM, two 500GB+ hdd's, etc. Works fantastic, no problems at all.

But remember that Windows 7 is coming out shortly, and is going in Beta today. You may wanna check that out. Make sure to get the 64 bit version when it is made available. If you have 4GB of RAM and a 64 Bit processor, then you kind of have to go with a 64 bit version. Otherwise all of that RAM and hardware you bought is a waste.

[mandog]

I don't even bother with dual booting my MBP, not to mention I've pre-partitioned my hard drive where i can't use bootcamp. Only thing I need windows for is Paltalk, so I just run it in VMWare.