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Recommended

Pricing

• Windows XP Pro or Vista Ultimate

• Windows XP Home Edition or any Vista

For the majority of laptop buyers, at purchase time you get to decide between Windows XP and versions of Windows Vista. Since Vista “Ultimate” is a mere US$50 upgrade to the purchase price, you may as well go for the max if you are ready to jump into Vista. There are reasons still to stick with Windows XP, primarily because it’s faster than Vista on the same hardware. There’s also the annoying DRM features like taking high-definition video content and blurring it if you don’t have a monitor that supports HDCP. You may not care about that with your laptop, but it’s one of those things that Microsoft and corporate hacks decide in a back room that makes Geeks sad.

In this backwards world, if you want anything besides Windows XP (SP2) or Vista, you will likely have to install it yourself or pay extra. Since paying extra money not to have Windows is a waste of cash, we’d vote for installing it yourself, but suit yourself–we won’t get into the merits of Windows vs. other operating systems. If you don’t like Windows, get what you want.

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