<p>im an incoming freshman and i have a few questions about laptops…</p>
<li><p>is it recommended to buy a laptop through penn? there doesnt seem to be that many options in computer connection…</p></li>
<li><p>does anyone know how things will change once windows 7 comes out? should i spend the extra money on vista ultimate if everything will just upgrade to windows 7 in october?</p></li>
<li><p>do you really use everything in microsoft office professional, or can you get by with less?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Umm I have no idea about anything applying to PENN…
but I’ve used Windows 7 and it ROCKS so I would definitely wait to get it. (And I hear vista sucks)</p>
<p>Windows 7 comes out Oct. 22nd. The upgrade coupon that lets you get a free upgrade to Windows 7 if you buy a system after a certain date is rumored to be June 28th. I’m waiting :)</p>
<p>the main problem with vista was that when it came out, and people upgraded TO it they had great performance issues because their previous machine configs were not upto par with what vista required…if you bought a new laptop with vista already on it, it ran pretty well…</p>
<p>any thoughts on whether it will be the same with W7?</p>
<p>Why would anyone want to pay for Ultimate? It’s the biggest scam ever; it’s expensive and the extra features don’t actually cost Microsoft anything as they are mostly trivial to implement. If you have the Business version, there’s not a single feature in Ultimate that you can’t get from a 3rd party application (and they are a lot better). If you don’t need to connect to a Windows Domain (I’m sure you don’t), don’t need 2 physical CPUs (which no laptop has) or want over 4GB RAM (which again no laptop offers), just buy the home premium version. Just take a look at:</p>
<p>If you play games and do school work, having the Ultimate version isn’t doing anything else except it might grow your ego and make CS majors think your dumb. If you are still desperate to spend extra money on Ultimate, just give it to charity. I’m still surprised that people even consider buying the Ultimate version.</p>
<p>However, if you really want Windows, I would wait for Windows 7 (and buy the version comparable to home premium). As another option you could wait for Apple’s OS X Snow Leopard and buy a new MacBook. These should both come out at pretty much the same time.</p>
<p>Having looked at the laptop options the school offers, I would not buy a laptop from the school, because you can find them cheaper elsewhere. However, if you don’t know what you need and where to look, then it might be better to go with the schools recommendations.</p>