Yeahh...

is xp better than vista for a laptop?

it really depends on how much RAM memory you have.

My comp sucks!
It only comes with 40 gigs.
Fuck dell.

not really its the Cashe memory where vista or xp goes some laptops cannot store vista because vista is such a large file, RAM is random acsess memory witch it like a big chalkboard that you computer thinks on, the more RAM you have the faster your computer will be, i have 8 gigs of RAM . the Casche memory is on the motherboard or on some the motherboards you just store it on the hard drive. i run vista, if you have a really good cpu (central prossesing unit) vista is great! sorry if this dosent make any sense. Vista is a VERY sable system (if you have a good computer)my computer buildvideo card EVGA GTX260motherboard EVGA FTWRAM CORSAIR DDR2 X2 8 GIGSCPU INTEL CORE2 QWAD CPU COOLER> COOLER MASTER V8SYSTEM UNIT Windows Vista

Depends on hardware too, some newer laptops are built to run Vista and can be really hard to get XP working on, like mine.