ACTIVE RAIN TECH GEEKS, I NEED YOUR HELP!

I've heard that most pre-Vista microsoft programs won't work with Vista or at the least have compatibiility issues in most programs. There are many stores and private sellers on Ebay selling brand new, with warranty laptops with XP and sometimes XP office. Most serious sellers on Ebay are honest people with visible track records of delivering quality service. I bought a laptop from someone on Ebay in 2004 and had a great experience. The laptops that you see at Best Buy and the like are consumer models and most business models are sold through local vendors who will also provide the service. Toshiba runs a quality program where their business models through local vendor/servicers, I'm sure they could still sell you a machine with XP. I'm not convinced of the value of Vista and think that in the future it will become the modern equivilant of MS Millenium, replaced quickly with a less "fussy" new edition called something totally different to get away from the stigma of a problem OS. IMHO.

I am fairly sure it will work.  You can actually get a Vista computer to run on XP also....you can actually load both operating systems on the same computer.  I would recommend buying a Dell though.  Dell probably has more models with XP than with Vista now.  (yes you can buy a new Dell with XP)  As a Broker Owner my only criteria for my agents and their personal computers is that Vista is not allowed.  I do not have the time or the resources to support Vista.  It does not work with MANY of the different software packages out there and quit frankly was now well thought out.  jmo

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Vista and it is much better than XP. You will have no issues running office 2003. The stuff you hear about Vista is almost all untrue. Most complaints stemmed from people with insufficient hardware to run all the bells and whistles. It is more secure and stable than XP period.

Look for one of the "build your own" or custom builders. A lot of them still have copies of XP they can load for you. Just look in the Yellow Pages or  online. Good Luck

Yes, you can run Office 2003 on your vista machine.  I have it and it runs just fine.  Go with the new technology.  I used to resist change, but it is better to realize that the only thing that does not change is change.  LOL

Merry Christmas

Don

Aloha Michael,

I don't have VISTA; I bought my laptop while XP was still available so I can't really answer your question.  I was a software development manager for 15+ years and had to go through the pain of upgrading applications to work on new operating systems.  Microsoft keeps getting better at doing this.  However, VISTA was a huge architectural change so people are still experiencing problems.  

My suggestion is to get a VISTA machine but find one that will give you Office Suite at a low cost.  That way you have the newest versions of everything.  Each new application development usually tests to work with old versions of docs - but not all combination of old docs and old OS's.  

The other option is to start converting your Office based documents to use Google docs - browser based software which are free.  I find it pretty decent for Word/Powerpoint applications but the Excel work I do takes more power!

The $$ spent now will save you a lot of time and hassle.   Keeping 2003 Office Suite products will continue to cause problems in the future.  Even the IRS recognizes software needs to be updated every 3 years now!

Kathy

We've bought lately from Dell because they offer (or at least used to) windows xp. AS an alternative, check out Open Office as an alternative to Windows Office. It is open source so free, and I like it very much.