Im looking for a laptop but having a hard time figuring out what the best processor would be for the vista OS on a laptop with 2G or more of ram; Celeron, Core2Duo, Turion, Athlon,Pentium 4 etc etc, and which ones i should stay away from.

The laptop wont be for gaming but i want it to run smoothly and fast with vista which i only hear terrible things about, OR if I should find a laptop with XP for piece of mind.

This post has been edited by rocco1005: Apr 20 2008, 08:45 AM

The best CPU type (in general) out of those would be the Core 2 Duo.

The only way you'd only hear bad things about Vista is if you were only looking for bad things. The majority of people who are happy with something rarely feel the need to talk about it. It is those who are unhappy who have a reason to go complaining about it. Even so, you will find that most recent reviews of Vista are generally favorable.

When it comes to performance and multitasking, the order goes like this:
(Celeron / Sempron) < (Pentium 4 / Turion64) < (Pentium Dual-Core) < (Core 2 Duo / Turion X2)

Since Vista has so many things running in the background, it would be best if your multitasking were optimal. Generally, the Core2Duo has the most memory for this and is what I suggest. If I were you, I would get a T8100 or above since they are running Intel's latest technology(code name Penryn) for better performance and battery life than it's predecessors.

Happy Hunting!