"I do not as a rule seek advice about food from thin people..." - Jeffrey Steingarten
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Hazel Heart Interview| Author | Post |
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HeyNow  Oblivious  Gold Star Hey! 5965 Posts 1/03 |  Posted - Nov 24 2007 : 12:23PMAny advise here? We've long been in the market for a new desktop to replace our old 450 Mhz P3, yes, an oldie. Oldie Olson we call it! With Win2K. But I am an old Yankee at heart and that mean frugal and you don't replace until blah blah blah. But what about picking up a decent $700 range laptop, somehow get a wireless router going on our desktop and have the portability (within the house only really) to use it wherever maintaining the old desktop too (mostly for internets anyhow.) [Link] |
| astroknight Questionable Moderator Tastes so good... 4187 Posts 11/99 | Posted - Nov 24 2007 : 1:24PM "I do not as a rule seek advice about food from thin people..." - Jeffrey Steingarten [Link] |
| BigBobxxx Senior Member 2681 Posts 5/04 | Posted - Nov 24 2007 : 2:18PM Editor's Corner Is Vista Destined to be a Desktop-only OS? I love Windows Vista on my desktop computer. It's fast, it's smart, it's pretty. It has the "wow" factor of transparent title bars and the functionality of sidebar gadgets and the added security I want in my business. It was only logical that, after running Vista as my primary OS for well over a year (counting betas), I would want to use the same great OS when I go on the road. So, soon after the consumer release of Vista last January, I went out and bought a Vista laptop. I hate Windows Vista on my laptop. It's slow, it's kludgy, and it's not all that pretty. In order to be able to get anything done at all, I have to turn off Aero, losing all the eye candy. To get acceptable performance, it helps to turn off the sidebar, too. Even then, doing any kind of multi-tasking jams it up. Working with it is a matter of "sit and wait." Oh, I still have the added security. In fact, my Vista laptop is even more secure because a computer you rarely turn on is unlikely to be attacked. I find myself avoiding it, reaching for my old XP laptop instead, when I need a portable, instead of the Vista machine. I've even seriously considered downgrading it to XP - but I bought this system specifically to run Vista. So I keep tweaking, and performance edges up a little, and I convince myself that I can learn to live with it. It would be different if my troubles were the result of installing Vista on some old laptop that was never meant to support it. But I plunked down $2200 for a new Sony TX with Vista Business preinstalled. I loved my little TX that was running XP, but the Upgrade Advisor told me its hardware wasn't compatible with Vista, so I waited for one that was (I thought). My desktop computer that runs Vista so well is admittedly a behemoth. It's a Dell XPS, their top of the line gaming machine (although I don't do games), loaded with 4 GB of RAM and a fast Dual Core processor. It scores a 5.1 on the Windows Experience Index. The Vista laptop scores a 2.0. WEI is a utility that rates a system's performance; you'll find it in the System applet in the Vista Control Panel. A higher score indicates better performance. 5.1 is a very good score. 2.0 is a very lousy score. So why does my laptop that was supposedly made for Vista get such a low rating? Well, the WEI rates individual components but your final score is equal to the lowest rating. With one and a half gigs of RAM, it gets a pretty good 4.2 rating for memory. And the processor gets an acceptable if unimpressive 3.0, while the hard disk performance snags an okay 3.7. The weak link is the graphics performance. That's where the 2.0 comes from. Why did Sony put a graphics card that won't run Aero acceptably into a computer preloaded with a version of Vista that includes Aero? You'll have to ask them. Something I've noticed about people's opinions of Vista is that they seem to be greatly influenced by the power of the computer on which they're running it. And I'm not the only one who's had the disappointing experience of happily running Vista on my desktop system and then being very unhappy with its performance on a laptop. And Sony is by no means the only vendor guilty of selling "Vista" machines that aren't up to the task. Some vendors' low end desktops advertised as Vista capable fall short, too. Portables will probably always lag behind desktops in terms of hardware resources, but vendors shouldn't be selling computers as Vista machines if those computers aren't capable of running the OS properly. I would not have paid over two grand for a Vista laptop if I'd known I was going to hate using it. What can you do? Not much, except to be very careful about buying a Vista laptop right now. Eventually the specs for portables will get better and they'll be able to run Vista with no problem - but unlike with a desktop computer, you can't easily just switch out the video card on a laptop (and doing so would void your warranty). So don't think that just because it seems to be running okay in the store that it'll still perform well once you enable Aero and load it up with programs and try to multi-task. Before you buy, go to the WEI and run it, and if the score is under 3.5, think very seriously about passing on that one. That way, you won't end up pretty much wasting a couple thousand dollars as I did. It could be worse. I still have my almost identical Sony running XP, which works beautifully. And even my little $400 Eee PC, on which I installed XP after getting fed up with the elementary Linux interface it came with, runs faster than the $2200 Vista Sony. So I'm not without a good, usable computer when I go on the road (or just want to read my email while sitting out by the pool). But taking Vista on the road, for now, is a non-starter. And that's a shame. Let us know your experiences with Vista on a laptop. Have you found a portable that runs it well? Or do you run Vista on your desktop and stick with XP on the road? Should hardware vendors be required to ensure that their computers get an acceptable performance score with Vista before selling them with that OS installed? Or should they at least be required to prominently disclose the WEI to customers (such as in online advertisements)? Tell us your opinions at feedback@vistanews.com. [Link] |
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