Re: Windows Vista
- From: "Chickenhead" <kuNOrtshapiroSPAM@NOSPAMhotTHANKSmail dawt cawm>
- Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2007 19:07:02 -0800
I got a laptop for my wife for Xmas. All the new laptops come preinstalled
with Vista. That included this one. Seemed a little ridiculous, since the
hardware RAM limit on this laptop's mobo/chipset was 2 GB.
The few laptops I could find with XP instead of Vista were mucho expensive.
I'd have been better off just buying XP and a Vista laptop, leveling the
drives and installing XP. MS screwed the pooch with Vista -- I almost see
another Microsoft Millenium debacle on the horizon -- Supposedly it's a
DRM-choked nightmare.
On the other hand, even with just 1 GB of RAM, the wife's Vista laptop seems
to be running okay. You can disable some of the bloatware features. I
spent a few hours deleting all the trialware crap from my wife's laptop --
and that did make a difference. You make some tweaks to the GUI to de-bloat
Vista too. I'm hoping you can disable some of the DRM-nanny Big Brotherware
if you're willing to crawl through enough menus and tweak enough settings.
I don't think you're going to have nearly as many issues with Vista versus
XP as you are with pre-installed trialware, adware, and Dell customizations
to the OS. The first thing I did with my wife's new laptop, after updating
the BIOS, was get rid of all the HP/Compaq crap; they stuffed the OS full of
HP/Compaq stuff that steered you to buying more crap from HP, Compaq, and
their "Partners." It was pretty deceptive, since a lot of it was packaged
as Customer Support features. Turns out those features were things the OS
already did (except for sending mined data to HP), but were re-setup to
direct you to HP and their Partners.
Then there's the non-HP/Compaq adware/trialware that was in there too.
"Hey, anyone wanna' try Vongo, Vonage, AOL, MS Office, MSN, Earthlink, and a
whole bunch of other stuff free for 30-60 days? You've got nothing to lose,
because it's FREE! How 'bout letting us keep your computer updated by
installing whatever we want whenever we want? Do you mind if we send a few
bits of mined data while we're at it? I thought not. Can we interest you
in some new products from us or our partners? Our resident memory Support
and Help Assistant will be happy to show you."
Dell does the same thing. I recently de-crapped a friend's computer who
had just bought a Dell.
That's the way of the world when it comes to laptops and pre-assembled
computers. It's almost worth it to just buy an OS separately even if the
computer comes with one. That way you can just level the drives and install
it. The time and aggravation you'll save will probably be more than the
cost of the OS. By the time the manufacturer finishes with their
preinstalled customizations, the computer will be little more than a bloated
advertising device. They won't even sell you the OS alone with a computer
anymore. Instead, they give you "recovery" disks that reinstall all the
customized crapware along with the OS.
I doubt it's an option, but it might be worth finding out what kind of
discount you can get if they send you the computer WITHOUT an OS.
By the way: There were a couple of groovy looking $399 laptop deals at Best
Buy, but you had to get up at 5:00 AM and stand in line in the cold for 2
hours to get one of the 8 laptops they had in stock. I stopped in 2-3 times
at 2-3 Best Buys to discover the deal they had advertised in the paper was
not in stock; but that they'd be happy to sell me a different craptop for
$200-400 more. I don't even think it's legal for them to do that. I
thought Bait-and-Switch was illegal. Guess things have changed yet again.
If it was me, and I wanted it to be easy, I'd, just buy an XP OS separately,
level the drives, and install XP. The only problem with going that route
is hunting online and then installing all the drivers could take a while.
Plus I might have to spend another $15 for an OEM version of some DVD
burner software.
"Jon Fox" <jfox@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:47744d33$0$24260$4c368faf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hey, guys -
I just ordered a new computer, a dell XPS system with Windows Vista. That
particular model didn't come with the option to go with XP, or I would
have. I've heard some not-so-great reviews of Vista, and I'm just
wondering if anyone has any experience with it or what your thoughts are.
Thanks.
Jon
--
****************************************
Jon Fox
Instructor of Commercial Music - Guitar
McLennan Community College
www.jonfoxjazz.com
.
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