XP or Vista on My Notebook

[jhranicky]

I am sorry if this has been posted to death. I recently purchased a DELL Inspiron E1505 and it came pre-installed with Vista Home Premium. I am going off to college in the Fall (going for business) and I need a reliable notebook. I also need something that is going to be compatible with all the software I might have to use. The specifications of my notebook are a T7200 Core 2 Duo, ATI X1400, 2GB of RAM and a 160GB HDD. I'm sure this will probably be a matter of opinion but I am open to all comments. I am a pretty technology suave guy, so let me have it.

[jlreich]

Personally I would wipe it and install XP. After first backing up the vista install just to be sure. Or at least make sure you have a reinstall disc in case you decide to try vista later on or something goes wrong with the XP install.

Make sure you go to Dell's website and can get all the XP drivers for the system. Including any SATA drivers if needed. You shouldn't have any problems getting them.

If unsure about needing SATA drivers during XP install just boot from a XP CD and get to the point you can choose a partition to install it on. If it recognizes your drive at that point you are OK. Then you can cancel the install if you want.

Software compatibility is still a pretty big issue with vista. ;)

[Rick]

Contact your school and or whoe ever is going to supply you with school software.

Blackboard used by a number of schools doesn't run on XP very well if at all.
So asking it to run on vista is asking for trouble..

You may want to try dual booting to XP and Vista
Then later remove the unused O/S and partition

[Paul Komski]

Agree. Go with a dual boot until you are sure it will do what you want. Otherwise consider using MS Virtual PC 2007 (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx) and install the second or third OS into the Virtual PC. It helps to have loads of RAM is running virtual machines.