Carl Tyler's Blog :: I got a new latptop last night as I haven't had one for a couple of months...

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I got a new latptop last night as I haven't had one for a couple of months...

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It came with Vista Home Premium (whichever version that is ) installed. After an hour I decided I could not stand it anymore, it had to go, so I started the process of installing Windows XP. I really see no benefits for me of using Vista. It appears to run slower than XP, ok it has some fancy aero stuff, but how does that make me more productive? The alt tab modifications are nice, but I pretty much have them already in XP by using the great free tool TaskSwitchXP. Windows Media Center is included, but I don't care about that, I have Tivo for that. So what am I missing? Why would I want my machine to run slower, what is my reason to use Vista? Right now I have almost finished installing XP, I'm on the 15th boot after installing another driver or windows update, hopefully they will be done soon.

Posted by Carl Tyler On 06/21/2007 | Permalink |

Comments

1 - Bah! Windows Shmindows. Get a Mac. Heck, even Mooney has one now.

Posted by Rob McDonagh At 04:24:56 PM On 06/21/2007 | - Website - |

2 - I've already admitted to "Mac-Envy" - with that said, ditch the vista and get some work done

Posted by Glen At 05:07:05 PM On 06/21/2007 | - Website - |

3 - @1 Mac was more than I wanted to pay right now. I just ended up getting an acer, but I think it was good value. I got this one from CircuitCity http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Acer-Aspire-15-4-Widescreen-Notebook-PC-5100-5840/sem/rpsm/oid/176216/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

Posted by Carl Tyler At 05:22:54 PM On 06/21/2007 | - Website - |

4 - Yes, I lasted a bit longer than you, but only stuck with Vista to 1) give it a chance, and 2) because I didn't have the time to put XP on it. I found the time about a week ago, and have been much happier ever since.

You're right, there's really nothing to commend it at all - the interface is cute, but it has it's annoying aspects. I have to right-click on the Command Prompt icon and run it in administrator mode just so I could run ipconfig in that prompt. And don't even get me started on having to approve every little thing. This ad isn't all that far off the mark, and turning it off caused other problems:

http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple-getamac-security_480x376.mov

Plus my VPN client would take up to a minute to connect; it only takes a few seconds on XP. Then it would spontaneously drop the connection.

Argh.

Posted by Greg Walrath At 05:44:35 PM On 06/21/2007 | - Website - |

5 - I managed 2 weeks with Vista on my new Sony before I finally gave in.

http://neilgower.dominohosting.biz/members/neilgower/neil/nblog.nsf/d6plinks/EDOZ-73EF76

Since I put XP on my machine, it has run soooo much faster..

The annoying thing is that the machine is a dual cofre with 2gig ram and scores 5 on all the windows scores appart from graphics card where it scores 4. Yet it is still not exaclty fast with Aero on....

Vista seems to be a real resourse hog, and it kept re-starting when I tried to use the wireless card.

I also found a lot of the enhancments to the program list etc very annoying...

XP runs like lightning on the Sony running XP, all my software works and I have no crashes.....

Vista in its current form seem to me like a money making exercise rather than a usefull OS upgrade...

Posted by Neil Gower At 07:07:37 AM On 06/22/2007 | - Website - |