Go for it. It wipes the floor with POS Windows XP (and Vista, of course). It is an updated version of vista with better performance and a slick interface... and its crash proof as far as I can tell; i've yet to experience any annoying crashes in a little less than a year.

As far as AMD vs Intel, intel CPU's tend to have better processors and the AMD's tend to have better graphics chips. IMO you can't go wrong with either, may as well get whatever's cheaper and whatever laptop manufacturer you feel comfortable with if you are a casual user (internet browsing, word processing, music etc). 4gb of RAM will only help you if you get the 64bit version of Windows 7, so make sure it has that if you do go for that model. I run 4gb of RAM on Win7x64 and it runs amazingly well.

__________________
1985 CA 300D Turbo , 213K mi