I use vista on a 4 gig ram laptop every day - and I like it. In our house we have win XP pro, vista 64, and 2 macs. We only have the macs because the school system here is in bed with apple - no other particular reason.
1 Gig or RAM is not enough for Vista, 4 Gig, it does a lot of multi tasking for me. (real day to day work computer)
Experience wise, I have used various mac flavors, a little linux, every version of windows there is, DOS all the way back to DOS 1.0, CPM, etc. I consider myself to be a strong user, but not an expert by any means.
Here are my general observations:
- Modern mac vs vista - not enough difference in software to worry about
- Vista is pretty virus hardened - very little difference now on which system is more virus resistant (mac / linux / vista)
- Vista more or less has virus protection built in - so it is sort of like running xp pro with a strong AV running. This does slow it down a bit, but not so bad. There are some quirky things, but I just set the viewing to be more classical than the new vista defaults.
- They all run more or less the same programs / word / excel / ppt / firefox / opera, etc. I try to pick s/w that will work with an OS - not always possible, but often is.
- The kids cannot use mac's internet software (safari I think) because it locks up on many of the site they need for homework, etc. - so they use firefox. Firefox is essentially the same for pc / mac, etc.
- I like Opera for the dual purpose web browse / email combo aspect, but I don't know anyone else that uses it.
- If you ever though PC software was restrictive, wait until you get a load of apple concepts
- Personally, I find it very frustrating to find programs and files on the macs (and always have) but that is somewhat of a taste / experience problem.
Screen size
- 13 in mac screens are fine for kids - too small for adult eyes. If you want a 15 in screen, then it is mac pro only, which is way over priced compared to a 14 or 15 in pc laptop. (think rape)
- There are a couple of brands I would never buy
- Toshiba (reliability) Sony (too focused on sony - only compatibility) , NEC (reliability)
I have had good luck with Compaq, HP, IBM.
I have heard reasonably good things about Dell.
Gateway - no experience
Given what fails on a laptop, I would suggest getting one that the parts are easily replaced - such as a business grade HP or eq.