Thinking of getting a laptop...
 

I was thinking of getting a laptop. Maybe a Dell as I have been happy with my PC. What's the deal now with Vista? I'm leery of it and would prefer to get XP. Also, is it difficult to network it with my PC?

I am completely out of the loop on laptops, as my current one is about 10 years old and in the 6 years I have had it it has only been used as a word processor... because it really can't do anything else!

Any help is appreciated!

We bought a Toshiba Satellite last night at Best Buy for about $550. I am still debating on whether or open it or not. It seems like downgrading to XP is going to be difficult though. I have located most of the drivers for it. The only issue is the hard drive has difficulty being recognized in XP. I am going to put all drivers on a jump drive and hope for the best.

I probably need to make an image of the Vista install.

I'm wondering if it would just be best to buy a refurbished laptop with XP already on it.

You can order dell laptops with XP on them, if its not an option on the website simply call them prior to placing the order (but with the selections in your cart so they can check them) and request XP instead of vista, There shouldn;t be any issue with it, they got hammered pretty badly recently due to piss poor support of new customers so they're bending over backwards to make people happy.

As another option, try looking at Lenovo, its IBM's new personal computer sales system. Yes its basicaly jsut a thinkpad, but the one I have from work has been pretty amazing.It will come with Vista however.

I just bought my wife a new Dell. She surf's the net, types e-mails, and plays some of those Dreamcatcher games....so I got one that was around $650 and expect it will do just fine. I'll buy a 2nd one for me next month, as long as it runs text-based games, I'm good.

Just playing around online building one it came out to $699.

How does the home network thing work? I want to be able to print, but don't really care about using the internet on it (don't want to pay for antivirus for two computers.)

What are the upgrades I should go with? I was thinking just the basics, like memory, processor, & screen.