Which Windows OS is recommended?

Hi guys & gals !

I'm a new happy MacBook owner. But as I do some web-designing as well as I run MS Access a lot (and have the full MS Office licence for Windows), that's why I've gotta install Windows OS as well.
I was planning to do that using Parallell along with either Windows XP Pro or Windows Vista Business.
Have been trying to read up on which OS people recommend and most posts in various Forums seems to say XP is the OS to install, BUT - then most of those threads I've found seems to be a few years old (usually from 2007/2008)...
If checking the Parallells web-page they say all versions of Vista would run good on a MacBook ( Not much of a surprise!! ;D ). But I wanted to check with you pro's what you would recommend these days. Maybe Vista works better these days than it did way back when the most of those posts I've been reading were submitted?
The thing is that it begins to be a bit harder to obtain XP (at least here in Sweden) and I can get a full Vista Business licence for 2/3 of what the XP Pro would cost me (thanks to the university I attend at this time).
So - can anyone give me some advise here - would Vista work fine or is it still XP I should install? Btw - I don't play any games or similar and I plan to run both Mac X and Windows at the same time via Parallell (so I don't have to reboot all the time when wanting to run a Windows program).

THANK YOU for any advise in this matter !

You could always save your money and run Windows 7 beta, out on the 5th May, otherwise your Uni's deal for Vista looks good

Personally, I would go with Vista. It will work well on any recent machine with 1-2 GB of RAM, Intel Core Duo or better and you won't have to suffer AV/malware problems as much as on XP. Get hold of AVG to protect your machine - its free!

I prefer XP - but I agree most of the Vista issues have been resolved. Still requires too much memory IMO. However, I think that Windows 7 is superior and where we're all headed soon anyway. If you can wait a few days to download the Win 7 release candidate, that would be a great choice too.

Agree re AVG - you definitely need good antivirus.

If my experience with Win Server 2003/2008 under virtualization is any consolation, XP will run much faster. Vista is a resource hog and for me, noticeably slower than XP.

On a virtual machine, XP. Vista is slow and problematic if you cannot dedicate 2GBs to it. Also the VM HDD will be slower than a native one, and Vista is constantly indexing stuff which will make things painful.

Windows 7 is an option, but not fully supported, so I'd go for XP until it's released.

Zoolook said:

On a virtual machine, XP. Vista is slow and problematic if you cannot dedicate 2GBs to it. Also the VM HDD will be slower than a native one, and Vista is constantly indexing stuff which will make things painful.

Windows 7 is an option, but not fully supported, so I'd go for XP until it's released.

Click to expand...

Agreed, although even with 2GB, the VM will be noticeably slower.

Thanks to all of you !
Looks like the "initial" Vista problems are solved, but that XP will run faster.
Might be worth waiting for the Win 7 candidate though...

THANKS for all good info and feedback !

// Clabbe