Who is running MS Vista?

[cleanteamofny]

Keven,

That is why I put Vista on a separate hard drive, to see what problems arises and can it be resolved quickly.

I've put Vista on my laptop and I could not find the proper drivers for the sound card and ended up replacing the HD.
For me to say this it bares fruit.
If you have a laptop that is vista compatible. Do Not Install! Too many issues with the drivers that cannot be solved quickly.

Anyway, later this summer I will give Red Hat a try, my roommate told me it runs very nicely and doesn't take up too much HD space,
so I'm looking forward to see how that works.

For the Apple/Mac fans. I'm clueless about the machine so I will have to buy one and learn what it does and doesn't do.
All I can say, both have there share of problems but windows will have flaws that will be talked about through the next generation!

 

[panthera]

I hear you...

I only installed Vista on the two machines I did because their users absolutely wanted it.
Anyone who installs the first version of any new OS is asking for trouble.
I remember the problems with Carbon very clearly. Oh, I forgot. It begin an Apple product, it ran perfectly right out of the box and the problems were only in the user's heads...

 

[jasonl]

Alot of specialized software for business, like Cisco's VPN, and stuff like that won't run in Vista. Get a copy of XP and reformat the computer. Citrix DOES run in vista and does it well. So does good ol' mstsc.exe (terminal services client).

Chad, do a system restore. That will roll it back to before the updates were installed.

 

[hydralique]

rp2813 . . .

If you want a laptop that comes with XP rather than Vista then you'll probably have to buy from one of the smaller manufacturers. You might check Sys Technology at sys.com. My latest desktop came from them because it is really difficult to find a pre-made computer of any sort with a high-end video card aside from those oriented toward gamers, and those don't suit my needs. Sys was able to custom build my computer with pretty much what I needed in the City of Industry, and when I picked it up I noticed to my surprise that they also build laptops. Since I bought mine last fall it came with XP Pro by default, but they may still be able to install it.

One of the reasons I bought last fall was to make sure I got XP, just because I don't like being an early adopter of anything on the computer that earns my living!

 

[exploder3211]

The second laptop whent back to office max. I have $800 credit with them to buy another computer.. Should i fix my partners old 6 year Gateway up and wait a year until microsoft fixes vista or should i buy another laptop with vista and make the backp disks, fix his gateway to use any and all of my old xp programs and use the pos vista laptop for web surfing and that kinda stuff?? What should i do? I will check out sys.com ad see what they say.. Right now i'd sell a bodily orgen for an XP OS laptop.. Thanks Guys

 

[cleanteamofny]

Is it worth fixing?

I would say no to fixing it.
6 years is too old and the only upgrade you can do to that machine is to replace the hard drive and maybe add more memory, that is about it.
Only do it if you just web surfing only and not playing hardcore games like Quake 4, Halo2 or any power games that requires a fast processor and an excellent graphic card like the XFX PVT71JUHE4 GeForce 7950GT or the BFG Tech BFGR88768GTXWCE GeForce 8800GTX.

 

[panthera]

My paws and whiskers, poor Chad!

Lot's of folks, including me, have several legal XP licenses lying around. Just buy one.
Not from me, unless you prefer German over English :-(((

Really, just get a laptop from a series that went on sale before Jan. 1, 2007. It will have been built to work with XP, regardless of the bullshit the sales in-duh-vi-dual tells you. Check online and you will see that lots of HP, Dell, Acer, etc. support XP perfectly well although they are no longer sold with that system.
Pull the dratted hard disk out of the thing, store it safely. Put a new one in, and run XP on it.
If the Laptop breaks, put the original HD back in and get it repaired or replaced. At least in Europe, you do not invalidate your warranty when you swap HDs.

Microsoft will support XP for at least the lifetime of the laptop...and it will be several years before any of the big software firms will stop supporting it...the commercial community is too heterogeneous to sell stuff only for one system. I can't think of a single important program which doesn't still support Windows 2000 (or ME, for the masochists of this world).

I am typing this on a laptop built in 2000. It is just fine for the IE and E-Mails, watching a DVD or office programms. If the damage to your partner's is nothing a new hard disk or a bit of memory can't fix, go ahead. But investing more than 50-60$ isn't worth it, IMHO.

In Europe, the XP license from an older computer may legally be transfered to a new machine. I don't know the legal situation in the US. Best case, you won't even have to spend the few bucks on Ebay.

 

[cleanteamofny]

Do you remember?

Years ago when XP came out with the powertoys?
There was one cool features that they had but yanked less than a month later.
Moving clouds on the XP desktop wallpaper. I had it and regret not saving that .exe on a disk.
But time has moved on and Vista has this wonderful moving desktop wallpaper add in called: Windows DreamScene.
This desktop wallpaper comes alive with a montage of built in photos or you can play a movie that is on your hard drive used as your desktop wallpaper.
This is very nice and well done!

 

[jasonl]

7950GT is a DX9 card
The Geforce 8800 series are DX10 cards. You can get the 8800GTS for about $400 and it will rock your world. Or get the XFX 8800GTX where you can play ALL games at max resolution and maximum quality.

I'm using a laptop with an ATI x700 card. It was a good bang-for-the-buck GPU two years ago when I bought it but it's getting real old real quick.

 

[cleanteamofny]

Jason, is there a way to upgrade the graphic card in a laptop?
Or is it built into the motherboard?

 

[hydralique]

Graphics cards . . .

The ATI card on my three year old Fujitsu laptop crapped out a few months ago, and cost $400 to fix. That beat spending the fat part of $2K on a new laptop, but sure didn't make me happy, especially since the problem was random and I spent most of a day formatting the drive and reloading all my applications just to make sure it wasn't a software issue. According to the tech, the Pentium 4 chip is the real culprit because it makes so much heat. I think ATI should have insisted on better ventilation before allowing Fujitsu to use their product.

That said, nVidia is on my sh*t list too. The cooling fan on the Quadro FX card in my desktop started making nasty noises after about a month, and had to be special ordered from nVidia by the manufacturer of the computer. So far the replacement is woking well, so I keep my fingers crossed. I can't figure out whay nVidia distributes the Quadro FX series so poorly, while they push the GeForce line so much. Most of the GeForce cards work well, but according to user groups there can sometimes be display issues with graphics intensive applications. The Quadro FX line was fully certified by the manufacturer of my software, while the GeForce wasn't, so that made my decision.

Best cards I ever had were a Matrox of some sort under Win 3.1 and 95, and a 3d Labs card under Win 2000 Pro. Neither gave a moment's trouble. The 3d Labs card would open and run new applications even after it and the computer became outdated enough that the software manufacturer said it wouldn't work without a more powerful card. I'd have insisted on a 3d Labs card in my new computer but they seem to have abandoned the graphics card market to ATI and nVidia. Sad, because I really think their product was more professional and better made.

 

[jasonl]

On most laptops, the video card is soldered to the MB. They never have enough ventilation, that's why they have very loud fans in the machine. Next PC I get is going to be a desktop I built myself with water cooling.

Zalman and Koolance sell awesome kits with blocks for cpu, gpu, northbridge, ram and even your hard drive. All that heat goes to an external radiator and blown out of large fan. The very little heat that the case will have will get sucked through its own exhaust fan which won't need to be loud at all.

 

[jasonl]

Laptop cooling

There are laptop coolers as well. Zalman makes one that blows cool air up into the laptop. I bought a Targus one that does the same. Very quiet and makes a big difference in temps.

 

[exploder3211]

I am going to buy one of those cooling pads.. I am going to fix the old Gateway and probably look at getting a basic vista laptop which will be partitoned with vista on one half and xp on the other. I think that will solve it. So far my partners new dell with vista basic has been ok.. Only time will tell

 

[washabear]

I have what is called Vista Home Basic, which just happened to be on the computer that I bought. I haven’t had it for very long, but it seems OK. It seems like any other Windows system to me. I’m somewhat unsophisticated in my computer knowledge, and my needs are pretty simple, but I have been able to do what I want to do with it so far.

The Windows Mail that comes with it, though, might be another matter. It worked fine at first, but now, when I open it, I often get a “Windows Mail is unable to run” message; then it does a little scan and eventually works. Hmm, that’s not encouraging. I will probably end up getting Eudora, which is what I had on my old computer and always worked fine.

I do have to say, though, that I am not entirely pleased with Word 2007 (not the main subject here, but I thought I would mention it anyway). It does what it’s supposed to do, but I don’t find it as intuitive as the earlier versions. I find the multiple menu array cluttered and confusing, and it’s not always easy to accomplish things with keystrokes instead of the mouse, which I prefer. One pleasant surprise was that I was able to install programs and macros that I made on older machines (dating back to 1993), and they actually work, so that’s a good thing, but, apparently, some aftermarket applications (eg, specialized dictionaries and spellchecking software) won’t run on it yet, which is not a good thing.

 

[jasonl]

Not ready for prime time

Vista was released too soon with many bugs, much like alot of Windows OS's. Wait for SP1 and more drivers to come out.