!@$*&%$(+)~?<>_ VISTA

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Michgal007 @ Nov 7 2007, 09:25 PM) [snapback]536487[/snapback]</div>

If the first friend never closes the lid on the laptop, OSX can't run its clean-up routines so the computer gets slower and slower. Mac Janitor is a free application that runs these routines on command. He or she may also have neglected to get enough RAM. The one with the keyboard imprint obviously never used the pad that comes with the laptop that you're supposed to put between the keyboard and the screen. The third one apparently doesn't know how to run the disk utility. A Mac is very much like a Prius in some important respects and one of those is that if you don't know how to use it then you're not going to get the best performance out of it. Lack of proper care and maintenance are not defects in the product. That's why Wintel is so popular, because it allows you to personify the phrase 'no brain, no pain'.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JackDodge @ Nov 8 2007, 09:07 AM) [snapback]536685[/snapback]</div>

I just wanted to add to this a little bit... I purchased my Macbook almost exactly 1 year ago (first mac i've ever owned). Since then, here's how each of my three computers has been running:
XP Pro box: Reformatted and reinstalled twice due to lousy performance. application crashes on average once a week over the life of the box. the machine has to be rebooted at least once a week for performance reasons.
Linux box: Rebooted twice in the past year, both due to power outages. No application crashes. no reformat and reinstall.
OSX: Upgrad to Leopard required a reboot. occasional (once every other month at most) reboot into boot camp so i can do something in Windows on the machine - unfortunately, some very specific software i have won't run in OSX. Occasional reboots for system updates. Never had a performance problem.

being a computer Guru, a bunch of my friends come to me for help. Of my mac owning friends, no request is more complex or troublesome than "I want to change the default background on the login screen, but i don't know how" (BTW, this took about 30 seconds to figure out and tell him). Of my windows owning friends, a majority of my time is talking them through installing firewalls, adware software, antivirus, etc. Second most popular request usually has me digging around in their registry or system services or msconfig or whatever to figure out why their computer is running so slowly and how we can speed it up without doing a clean install.

I've used windows since 3.1. I'm pretty much an expert in it. And i can tell you, without a doubt, that my Mac, over the past year, has been so much easier to maintain than any windows box i have ever owned. In fact, the Mac needs no maintenance from me, while windows requires a lot.

 

I understand your comparison, and yeah, a $300 price difference is significant. But there are still differences between the two machines that aren't yet taken into account. The Apple has a built-in camera and microphone, and a fair bit of bundled software that may or may not come with the Dell. You should also factor in the expected life of the machines, and something for your time spent on the help line.

If all you need is email and surfing, did you look at something smaller and cheaper, like a Blackberry?

I use both macs and PCs every day, so I'm not trying to push you one way or the other, but I am suggesting your cost/benefit analysis isn't yet complete. Not that it really matters to you now, because you've made your decision and moved on. I'm glad you were able to get the problems resolved.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hyo silver @ Nov 8 2007, 03:26 PM) [snapback]536850[/snapback]</div>

Not to mention Apple's customer service which Consumer Reports rates very highly. Still, as long as you're happy with what you have, that's good enough. I can't emphasize enough the parallels between a Mac and a Prius. No matter how happy we all are with our Priuses, I know plenty of people who actually are happy with their Detroit 3 rides so who am I to say that they're wrong? What's right for me isn't necessarily what's right for hycamguy or anyone else who's actually satisfied with their Dell.

 

I still find it hard to believe how many people have wasted their
careers on this garbage -- nay, so much so that they've become
*defensive* about it. There are no excuses, period. Sorry.
.
_H*

 

Guys, Let me say this. I downloaded the Microsoft tool that gave me a printout of if my PC was ready to handle Vista Home Premium-not to be confused with Vista Home. I already had a PC with a dual Pentium 800 processor, 2 Gigs of Desktop Ram, a 300 Gig HD, Sound Blaster sound card, and a high end video card.

I called Microsoft and I was able to get a Tech to do the entire upgrade over the phone with me at no charge. I had NO problems as my PC was already VISTA READY. Vista needs at least 2 gigs of ram and preferably a dual processor to make it run well. Another thing the tech told me was NOT to keep both OS's on the same PC. He stated that it could cause problems when installing Vista.

Since upgrading I upped my ram to 3 gigs and only had to replace my HP scanner as it was not Vista compatible. I have a 2nd PC that is a backup & I put it in there.

If you just follow all the instructions and recommendations Vista will install with little or no problems. I only own 2 PCs & know nothing about laptops, but everything you need to know is on Microsoft's web site.

If you want Vista for a business there are 2 higher versions that have lots of extra security features. I noticed immediately after the installation that my HP was running smoother & faster than it ever did before. I was told by the tech that Vista is much more efficient than XP.
I purchased Microsoft's Live One Care software and have had NO problems with Vista or my PC for 7 months.

I hope this helps some of you who are afraid of Vista. The 2 biggest problems with installing it are not enough ram/processor and hardware that is not compatible with it. I wouldn't lie to anyone. If I didn't like Vista I would have re-installed XP. I hope this helps.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hyo silver @ Nov 8 2007, 12:26 PM) [snapback]536850[/snapback]</div>

Dell's laptops are unreliable pieces of junk with abysmal technical support (their desktop machines are considerably superior).

You can get Toshiba laptops with specifications which will meet the OP's needs in the $600 range, if you shop carefully. Here is one for $500, after rebate.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hycamguy07 @ Nov 8 2007, 11:46 AM) [snapback]536775[/snapback]</div>

For your needs a low end laptop is fine.

I'm simply stating that the Apple is not a low end laptop. That's my issue with your comparison.

As I illiustrated, we both bought Camry Hybrids. Admittedly the TCH is far more than basic transportation. Someone who needed a basic car could have bought something for less than half the price we paid for our cars.

That doesn't mean that we "overpaid" when we purchased our cars.

I'm sure you'd take offense if someone called your Camry nothing more than a brand name Yugo. You used the "Bueller" comment in your original post.

 

All computers need a little maintenance.

Once a month I do the following on my Titanium G4 I've had since 2003:

Repair disk permissions using Disk Utility.

Do all housekeeping using MacJanitor.

Clear all caches using CacheOutX.

About once a year I use TechTools or DiskWarrior to defrag.

 

all these comments about dells being worthless POSs makes me wonder where ours came from then...

we have an inspiron 5100 that we got in 2003 (i think) that to this day runs just fine. DH uses it now, he had it all set up to play music at work and he uses it for email and internet stuff now. he loaded the hard drive down really badly and it got very slow but those issues are resolved now.

my computer is an e1405 that we got about 18 months ago. so far it has crashed twice. programs freeze up on me maybe once every couple of months if that. i run some heavy duty stuff on here for work, it's not just email and internet. i find it very reliable. it came with a bad dvd-rw drive in it, they sent me a new one no problem.

if these computers sucked so bad, yeah we wouldn't consider another dell whenever we're in a position to buy a new computer. but as for now that's so far in the future that i have nooooo idea what's next.

sounds like the OS is the problem and not necessarily the computer. and dell could do more than what they're doing for hycam, certainly, and that does suck. hycam, i wish you all the best. if it comes down to it, i'd buy xp and install that instead.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Nov 10 2007, 11:14 AM) [snapback]537675[/snapback]</div>

I believe that it was actually corrupt OS files on the laptop that was the problem, which could have been corrupt when they were installed by Dell, or could have become corrupt due to bad spots on the hard drive (which might or might not have been there since the computer was assembled by Dell), or could have been corrupted by some software installed on the computer because those kinds of things happen sometimes.

So it might not have been a Vista problem, per se.

Of the three problems I initially had with Vista, two were definitely Microsoft-induced problems: the problem where my wireless desktop required installing an update to Vista but Microsoft made it an 'optional' update that required user-intervention to install, rather than an automatic update, and the problem where 'some' fireware devices that are automatically detected in XP aren't seen in Vista without a manual registry change (and that Microsoft didn't even have 'firewire' as a key word in their note about the problem, making it nearly impossible for someone to find the note). The third problem where my USB2 ports were being seen as USB1 ports seems to exist in XP, as well, where the problem can be resolved by 'voodoo magic' by trying different ports, rebooting, etc until the problem goes away.

Other 'crashes', especially ones where a reboot would say that there was a problem, were probably Vista problems as well, but seem to have gone away since mid-August.

I've never bought a Dell - I have Sony, Gateway and HP desktops and a Sony laptop now, and have previously had a Compaq desktop and various IBM laptops at different jobs, and a Fujitsu laptop. I've been reasonably satisfied with all of them, except that I probably wouldn't consider a Sony desktop again. Mine is 5 years old and should have a new power supply, but it's a Sony-proprietary power supply and costs more than $200 - I was told by my local PC repair shop that this is a common problem with Sony desktops. My other desktops have 'standard' power supplies that can easily be replaced. I priced Dells when I was getting my two most recent desktops, but at the time I was looking, I did better with the HP and the Gateway.

My first XP machine had problems that caused it to nearly grind to a halt the first month, and it required re-installing the operating system and all of my application software. And in 7.5 years as a 'road warrior', travelling 24/7 with laptops, I had three catastrophic hard drive failures. (So now I'm a big believer in disk-image backups of my systems and can recover in a matter of hours rather than days.) And in my early days as a 'road warrior', my laptops had an IBM proprietary operating system called OS, where it did nice things like the spooler file overwriting the operating system.

I've never considered an Apple because of the price, including the software I'd need, but everyone I know who has an Apple is very pleased.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tom_06 @ Nov 5 2007, 10:33 AM) [snapback]535009[/snapback]</div>

Actually, I've been running Vista and XP in a dual boot system almost since the day I brought it home.
For the OP, I don't know what's going on, but I've had no connectivity issues at all with with Vista. The one and only reason I have the dual boot is the old applications that I run that aren't compatible with Vista. BTW, the link explained nothing for me. Particularly not your infantile desire to waste my time with a link that I thought might have some content.

 

I saw an interesting article this morning... Benchmark tests against Vista with the upcoming SP1 and XP with the upcoming SP3:

http://www.news.com/Windows-XP-outshines-V...ml?tag=nefd.top

Basically, the article says that for your basic productivity tasks (preparing documents, presentations, etc - basic office work) Vista ran over twice as slow as XP.

So, for all that extra slowdown, my only question is, what are you getting? Is it anything of value, or simple window dressing to make everything prettier?

 

Raw speed is only one factor of many.

Try doing multiple things at once. Vista is a slam dunk when it comes to threading with a quad processor.

Power managements is no contest for Vista either. It handles the latest notebooks much more efficiently.

There's a lot to Vista that simply won't get noticed right away... until you look back at XP later.

 

I'm an IT Manager for a manufacturing company near Washington, D.C. My staff and I support about 150 PC’s and a few Mac's within our design department.

Regarding Vista: I installed Vista Ultimate on a Dell Lat D510. I upgraded the memory to 2GB and the hard drive to a 7500RPM, 80GB drive before the upgrade.

I did have to speak with our Indian friends a few times in order to get the authorization issues worked out. That alone is my main reason for not using Vista on my other 200 PC's. I believe in "clean installs" where I always run the install on a new hard drive - or an existing HD that has been reformatted. Vista won't allow for that kind of "upgrade" - and that pisses me off and everyone else that feels as I do!

All in all I like Vista. I have had no problems (except for my NetPhone/VoIP - which I'll figure out when I get a chance) and it's proved to be pretty stable. Unfortunatley my Intel video driver won't allow for the Aero stuff from Vista, but I don't care about that much.

Regarding Dell: Up until three years ago I bought all Dell. I stopped using them when I noticed that there were more and more problems with the PC's I had been buying. I got sick and tired of dealing with tech support - American and Indian - because they treated me like a low level user each time I had to call. I mention "Had to" because I rarely need to talk to them unless I've found an issue that is covered under warranty. When that happens I’ve got to prove to them that it does, in fact need a new power supply!

Their billing is what really drove me crazy. I’d place an order thinking it’d be on my main account. Then I’d find out that they placed it on a different account that has short terms – and then I’d have to pay a late fee. Argh!

I now buy my equipment thru CDW or PC Connection. I do so much volume that I get great deals. Right now I’m keen on HP PC’s and Toshiba laptops.
Just my opinions – for what they are worth.