Ha! You have now hit the laptop guru.
I am very familiar with laptops, especially how they bounce down stairs or how much force it takes to shatter the LCD screen, even how far they slide across both carpet and hardwood floors.
Anywhoo...stay away from Vista unless you are running beaucoup memory, at least 2 gb DDR2 at 667Mhz. But, you need room to add to it as well. Vista requires a basic memory requirement of 2gb to run effectively. The next is processor. Stay away from 32 bit processors, thats about 3 years old. IF you can get it, do a 2 Ghz minimum processor speed.
Best thing for you, stay away from premanufactured laptops you get from circuit city or best buy. They load the damn things full of crap programs from the dealership that simply flood the startup and normal processing.
If you cant afford a custom built laptop, look into Alienware, Dell XPS, Toshiba. Those are going to be the better ones for you and all fast, reliable and upgradeable.
Raz
btw...you can order your laptop with XP and dont have to get Vista. Vista you will find on just about every laptop in the retail stores because they are under a contract with microsoft.
