Posted on 04/11/2014 9:31:26 PM PDT by This Just In
Good evening, Freepers...
Our PC ran on Win XP, and although we continue to use our Dell, I'm in the market for yet another laptop to replace this XP.
There's one particular laptop that's caught my eye today. The Dell Inspiron 17 7000 looks like a decent buy. Would any of you happen to own this model? If so, would you care to share your advice/suggestions? If any of you have some information that would be helpful, I'd appreciate it.
Thank you for your time and assistance.
TJI
I just bought a new Acer Inspire laptop. I got it online through Walmart and I’m thrilled. I paid $699 with free shipping. Check out the specs for the price. I did my homework and read countless customer reviews on just about every brand. Need to mention that it is windows 7. I stayed away from 8. I love it. Long battery life, etc. Great machine for the money.
With a Mac, you will spend a huge pile of money to get a machine running Linux.
Go ahead and learn Windows 8. It doesn’t take that long. Like anything, you get used to it after a while. It has some tremendous advantages over previous Windows versions, especially for laptops.
Windows 8.1 is a fine operating system.
There seems to be a level of anti-Microsoft sentiment which just seems to come out in such discussions.
People railed about Windows XP and Windows 7 in the same way.
When I finally decided to upgrade from XP to Win7, I bought a Samsung junk 17” laptop. It lived one month after the warranty and the motherboard died. Samsung did not have replacement motherboard, thus I have an $800 doorstop.
I next bought a Dell 17” Win7 i7 processor. It was okay, but loading was slow. Eventually, the hard drive seemingly got messed up, files got corrupted, etc. I bought a new hard drive locally and used the Dell image disks to recreate my installation. The new drive loads Windows much faster.
Except for the need for the new hard drive, I am content with the Dell. It is much heavier than an older ACER XP 17” laptop I used to have and heavier than the Samsung-junker.
FYI
windows 8 is not that bad, its just different. there is a small learning curve but once you get used to it, its really not that different. If my SO can use it anyone can. Things to note, 8 has less hardware requirements then 7 or vista so if your system is dual core its likely compatible. while the OS is touch you can easily use a keyboard and mouse, 1 issue however the curser has a tendency to disappear, very annoying, so you’ll want to make the curser black and disable trails and other effects. Current laptops are becoming less user repairable, so likely updating hardware in the future won’t be possible. Don’t skimp on the hardware unless you know you can upgrade.
My only complaint with Windows 7 is that it is impossible to set up a wired network without a router of some sort.
I needed to transfer huge amounts of data between two computers and wanted full use of the Gigabit NICs my machines had through a gigabit switch. They would not communicate until I also ran a patch cable from my switch to my wireless router. Not exactly my idea of a secure wired LAN.
I refuse to use Windows 8 on any of my machines. I tried it out on a customer’s computer. How that abomination ever got released on the market is a mystery.
I'll second that.
I've got an old Dell Precision workstation with an early Pentium Core 2 CPU. Win XP had become just about unusable on it. I suspect that Microsoft updates purposely slow their OS's down a little with every installed patch to force people to buy new computers (with a new version of Windows pre-installed, of course).
Anyway, I had an extra copy of Win 7 Professional and decided to give it a try on this rather dated box. I was pleasantly surprised with how much better it runs now. Win 7 breathed new life into this machine. I haven't even added more RAM to it yet; it still has the max that WinXP could use- 4GB. I can go up to 8GB on this system, and the 64-bit OS can actually make use of it.
I have two Windows 8 laptops and I wish at least one of them had my good old Windows 7 installed. In fact, I’m trying to look into getting rid of Windows 8 altogether. I think it is a horrible, ridiculous jumble that makes no sense whatsoever. If I wanted a smartphone for a computer I would have bought a smartphone so I could scroll around the screen. I don’t want that. I want what I was happy with. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Fortunately, I happened onto a good deal with an Asus desktop with Windows 7 for 1/2 price. I snapped that up at $399 some time ago and have been a happy camper ever since. To make it even more satisfying I use a good old IBM “clicky” keyboard and there is none better.
As I said if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
For sale, two Windows 8 laptops. If not, maybe I can give them to the Salvation Army. I HATE, HATE, HATE Windows 8.
Windows 8 is great OS with a stupid GUI. If you have W8, just install Classic Shell and all will be well.
So Windows 8 needs third party help out of the box just to be usable?
What a ringing endorsement.
BFL...
LOL!
The latest version of Windows 8, Windows 8.1 Update 1, allows for a direct boot to desktop. While it doesn’t bring back the Start Menu — a later update to Windows 8.1 or the upcoming Windows 9 should do that — it seems to work well.
I’ve been a Windows 7 fan for a long time and really resisted upgrading to Windows 8 until I got my Surface Pro and start to play around with it.
It takes some getting used to, but Windows 8 is not a bad operating system, but the interface takes getting used to. Forunately, that latest Update 1 patch enables features which make it easier to use as a desktop machine.
-Chad
It's Crap designed to attract X Box users and Tablet users. A lot of people including myself still do not have high speed service due to location. MICROCRAP basically told about 30% of the market to kiss off. Worse is another fact no one points out. In it's short life it's patches and fixes have exceeded XP's 10 plus year patches and upgrades by about 3 or 4 to 1 in MB's. This is an 8.1 box and first thing it needed was over 300 MB of patches and updates.
XP even on dial up can be reformatted and back up running with all patches & updates in about 24 hours. Just this one upgrade will take 4 days on dial up IF IT WERE EVEN POSSIBLE to do so. You call that great planning? At least in previous SP's Microsoft usually offered Disk for it. This one exceeds the space of a CD ROM and can not be split up. It has to be done in one download.
There seems to be a level of anti-Microsoft sentiment which just seems to come out in such discussions
When a company puts out a dysfunctional product they deserve criticism for it. I was a happy and loyal MS customer till this abomination of an OS which MS still calls good came out. IT SUCKS!!!!!! All the warnings of issues people post about changing to LINUX are true with WINDERS 8.
It took me all of one evening to set up XP the way I wanted and enjoy using it. I never had any serious complaints about XP. It was reliable and gave minimal trouble. W-8 over a month into it has been a PITA nightmare. It is a Smart Phone/Tablet OS some Idiots at MICROCRAP put on desktops just for the sake of having a new OS release. Again many customers do not have high speed service. This includes persons who at least need to get on line and can accept dial up. I've seen more "Can Not Display This Page" Screens and IE restore pop ups on WINDERS 8 in a month than a year of XP. The OS stinks.
Horse Hillary. That only fixes the Start Menu issues. The This PC Window is a royal PITA. My Documents for example makes it hard to do simple task like send to because the Idiots deleted simple easy to find and often used needed things like FILE, EDIT, and other Tabs add to that the frustration the Command icons or word Font it too blasted small even on a 20 inch monitor. Oh and I'd love to tell them where they can "PIN" WINDERS 8 so it's easy for them to find.
Well I like it.
I am impressed with Windows 8.1.
That said, I bought another drive, installed Ubuntu on the replacement drive, and am currently using Linux on my pc. But I think Windows is routinely slammed here on FR, and I believe they’ve got a good product.
Your experiences with it seem less than optimal, but I was actually impressed with 8.1.
W-8 was an OS they should have pulled early on and said Opps sorry we goofed. Microsofts worse enemy is their own arrogance including their you will like this or else attitude as of late. If they don't start listening it will be their demise. Patching a shoddy OS is not a solution.
The W-7 users are going to have to worry about how soon MS wants to force feed them W-8 or worse if they can do worse than W-8 on their next one. MS has a long history of putting out a good OS followed by a crappy one. W7 as I understand it was decent. Oh one last thing I loathe their mandatory password feature as well. No opt out for that either as in previous OS.
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