Posted on 04/11/2008 6:50:11 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Never buy a computer with Vista installed on it. It has been nothing but a huge headache. It has the uncanny ability of making a DSL line as slow as a dial-up system, and that’s not what we are paying for. Taking it off is a bigger production than junking the hard drive and starting over.
“I have: 1GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm....DARN!
When I purchased a Dell laptop last last June, for my daughter, I was given the choice of XP or Vista. She chose XP. This time I wasnt given a choice.”
Yup it sucks...and it kinda forces you to upgrade the memory to 2 gig which blows if you’re trying to stay within a budget. XP works just fine with 1 gig of RAM.
You may want to buy a copy of XP off eBay or something and install on your new laptop.
Unfortunately, that 1% must be what I use, because I tried to use it and the first day out, couldn’t do something I use all the time. Didn’t go back.
All kinds of Dell laptops with XP——>>>
Since we have three XP laptops & one PC, could I use one of those OS disks?
I don’t consider Outlook to be a great selling point. I really like it but I really like Big Macs too. Outlook has really burned us. I try to use Thunderbird when I can.
I work for a company that provides network support, desktop support and integration support for small and medium sized businesses. Not a single one of our clients has made the jump to Vista, largely because their business software vendors have nixed it.
If you call a support line for ANYTHING, the first question they ask is “are you running Vista?” Unfortunately, every vendor on the planet is blaming every glitch on Vista.
I think most people are simply waiting on the next OS and are trying to give Vista the big miss.
I think that all people really care is if it works well....XP works....so they don’t want to change. Change costs money, time, frustration.....businesses don’t want to spend any of that on Vista in this environment.
A bunch of my customers have moved to terminal type devices....devices that run a single application or maybe a single application and e-mail. Lower capital cost, lower support cost, lower user cost.
In the Windows 95 days, people were telling me that desktop support would be gone in a few years. Instead its even more intensive. Just keeping up the Windows patches is nearly a full time occupation. Combine that with anti-virus and anti-spam and it is a full time occuption. I can see how a small business would fail to see any “improvement” in the situation as it now stands.
XP is fine. Leave the crap alone. Just say NO TO VISTA.
Also, use Linux for good security.
Make your machine dual-bootable. It’s not difficult, and some of the linux flavors are very easy to use.
Email, browsing and the normal things that connect to the internet (other than gaming) can use Linux with no problem.
Everything else? Use XP.
Too late now.
I was put off Windows Vista by all the negative talk, but I decided bite the bullet with my latest laptop.
If you get 3 or 4 gigs of memory, which isn’t all that expensive these days, it seems to work just fine. It’s actually faster than my second-oldest laptop which is running XP Pro.
Windows was built so the 4th gig was wasted, but the word is that Vista SP1 will be able to use it. I don’t know; I haven’t had time to download the service pack yet.
I don’t think upgrading an old computer makes much sense. The technology changes so fast, it’s more practical just to buy a new computer with the new OS on it.
You can’t run Vista Premium on 1 gig.
Two 1 gig sticks should only cost about $50.
I use Win XP at work, and use Solaris X (linux freeware from SUN) in my x86 and Mac’s at home. Stable, virus free, and full of wonderful features if you need them.
Solaris X is highly recommended.
There are several Linux distributions that do exactly what you want, and will run from a CD, or at most a DVD (more likely the latter if you want games and graphics editing).
And they’re free. Ubuntu or its derivative Kubuntu are probably what you want. This month the new long-term support version comes out. It’ll be supported by the community for the next 3 years for desktop implementations (5 for server), so in May or June, most of the initial-release bugs should be cleaned up, and you can just download a bootable DVD from the Ubuntu Linux website and go to town.
A 32-bit OS cannot reference more than 3.5G of RAM because of the size of the address. You need 64-bit Vista or XP to see 4 gig or more.
What a crock. IF these guys had an inkling, they’d be making that great product to wipe MS off the shelves.
I once tried to migrate a smaller hard drive to a larger harddrive. wasted money on a norton program, tried all the geek advice on the net but the XP clone on the new drive did not work.
The problem is that MS wants their program to be treated like a piece of hardware. You can only buy it “once”.
It would be rather hard for Microsoft to scrap the existing Windows code base and start from scratch.
You have to realize with Apple, the majority of Apple users are sycophants for Jobs, so they’ll gripe, but will do what he says.
Windows has a much larger user based, especially on the corporate side, so changing the whole code base would require all the companies that make software for Windows to develop new software for this new platform.
By doing that companies looking to upgrade are going to be in a costly position since none of their existing apps will not work on the new code base.
Essentially, Microsoft is a victim of their own success.
Not only that, Vista is basically a DRM (Digital Rights Management) platform.
The purpose of Vista was not to deliver more power and performance to the user, but less.
The "improvements" were all for Microsoft's benefit, not their customer's.
Can I add another 1 gig stick to the laptop? They are only $34.99 @ Dell.
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