I would not see any connection problems with mac (wireless).
I would suggest staying with windows unless one of you have mac experience or your willing to learn a different operating system. The file system is different on mac so you would have some incompatibilities there with regards to the pc. I can understand you wanting to avoid Vista, but xp should be available. On the other hand if that is all you are going to do with the new laptop it would be an opportunity to learn something new.

Thanks Zep.

I'm quite willing to learn the Mac system and DH knows next to nothing about either. He needs little cheat sheets for each thing he wants to do. LOL!

Not really concerned about file compatibilities -- I don't think. :-)) I'd probably put Open Office on the new one rather than buying another MS Office Suite. He won't do a lot of (like any) word processing and I understand anything I might create in OO will be viewable in MSO. If I were in need of editing then I'd C+P said info into a new Office Doc on my own 'puter and carry on. Might happen once a year.

What I do not want is a problematical OS that I'm constantly running to fix so he can do something inane like play crib on Yahoo. I've made it a practice to avoid all MS upgrades for a considerable length of time before installing. It simply isn't worth the headaches and time involved.

All that said perhaps a wiser, though possibly difficult, move would be to install my XP OS on the new laptop and buy Vista to install on my machine. I have to run thru some of the video info on Vista but I'm thinking I'd be the person that would be most likely to use (some of) the *bells and whistles* and he'd be more comfy with an interface that had some familiarity.

Problem(s) arise in buying a laptop/notebook sans OS or with OS and then uninstalling / reinstalling . . . blah blah. Hmmm

If I upgrade (can this be done?) to Vista on my XP machine, can I install my present XP system on the laptop?

I have a gig of RAM now so would need to upgrade to 2 at least. I'll run the compatibility test but think most everything else should work. Have 2 80 Gig HD's, one of which is partitioned to run W'98 (cause I had games that hadn't yet had patches developed that I like to play). That was two plus years ago and now there are patches avail so likely this is no longer a concern.

Lots of head scratching! :-)) Pleased to hear any shared thots. Thanks a bunch for the reply.

Holly

I love my Macs.

No problem --- you can easily move files between Mac and Windows computers.

I hear good things about MACs and can say in my association with engineering faculty members I can say I see a lot of MAC notebooks. Still, I think you can buy more computer for your $ staying with a MS, or Linux, machine, have you considered Linux? You said you've look for bare machines, sans OS, that will save you even more money.

As for OO, yes as long as you save in the MS format, there is a native OO format, doc, ppt, xls they can be read both ways between OO and MSO. I've used OO for several years in a "professional" environmnet, i.e., one in which nearly all used MSO, the company standard, and I had few, not zero, but few problems being the lone-OO user.

I've been looking around at laptops and I notice that Dell still sells XP on some of their lap tops and desk tops. I bought a computer in June from them with XP and I am happy with it. There are good deals on laptops. Visit Toshiba, Sony and Dell and compare prices. If you click for business machines, most come with XP. The business machines are nice because they don't come loaded with junk and the prices are more reasonable.

I took a look at Macs and their prices are 'off-the-wall' for what they offer. They are out of my price range.

Jane

The mac is intuitive, if you just want laptop that is useful and trouble free, go mac, you don't have to "learn" much. It is great with photos, lets you make videos, dvd's etc. from your photos with software that comes with it.
Games are easy, worth buying Hardwood Solitaire if you like cards at all, elegant interface. The mac laptops are wireless ready so no connection problems to your wifi.

I have several macs, a G4, a G5, an imac for my daughter and an ibook.
never found them price prohibitive, you get what you pay for.

you don't need anti virus software on a mac ;-)

There are fewer programs out there that are Mac compatible then with MS

There are, indeed, many programs that do not have Mac counterparts. Gamers, especially, have little interest in Macs. There is some web-content that cannot be accessed. Especially on the business side -- which PC's essentially own outright -- there are some compatibility issues. For these reasons, many people are responding to Mac's ability to run Windows as well as OSX.

For me and the way I work none of these things matter. The big deal for me is zero problems. No bugs; no maintenance; no crashes; and the machine shuts down and restarts so quickly even upgrades are a breeze. My day-to-day computer-life is so much less stressful I want nothing to do with PC/Windows ever again. OSX is so vastly superior to Windows in this regard, there's really nothing to talk about. For Joe Average -- and even quite a bit above average -- Mac makes an awful lot of sense. Thing just sits there and runs, day-in; day-out. Really a different -- and superior -- world.

The marketplace seems to reflect my own opinions. Apple's overall share is pushing only about 7%...up from about 4-5 a few years ago. However, the non-business share is up to about 20%. I believe this may indicate that business is dug-in regardless but that individual buyers are responding strongly to the benefits.

The new Macs (Intel chip) are able to run Windows as well as the Mac OS - You use either Parallels or BootCamp.
Apparently with Parallels you can also run Ubuntu Linux.
This is where the beauty of the Mac comes in.
A number of Apple resellers are offering Parallels free, along with a printer, a carrying case, a memory upgrade when you buy the MacBook. Also consider Apple's program iWorks 08 - it completely translates most Word, Excel and Powerpoint docs without problems.