what do you think of that Vista malarkey the, JD? good/bad/indifferent?

I conclude that I'll be ordering my free Vista package that comes with this machine and not be installing it. I've been reading reviews and even taken it for a brief spin at the local Best Buy. My conclusions so far are as follows:

-The "Aero" interface is pretty, and pretty useless. It doesn't really serve any useful purpose, other than making people go "ooh, pretty!". My video card can already make windows transparent while dragging. Big deal.

-Vista requires extremely powerful hardware to run in all its alleged glory, and those who "upgrade" seeking better performance without investing a grand or two in new hardware will be disappointed and actually wind up with a much slower and encumbered machine.

-The operating system is supposed to be in the background, and not get in the way, unlike Vista's gigantic right side clock tower and other obnoxious features.

-New releases will be full of bugs and glitches as always, and if I install Vista I'm certainly going to wait at least a year for them to start ironing out the bugs. XP is finally approaching stability and (with responsible use) security. Its hard enough for M$ to find something that (almost) works... once you do, don't mess with it.

Overall, Vista may offer some improvements, but IMHO its not going to live up to the hype and won't provide enough benefits to make it worth the hardware investments and the massive cost of the OS itself, ranging up to $400 US for the highest version. Better luck next time, MS.

I can pick up an OEM for 70 quid.

That and it's the only way to get Dx10.

So it's sort of a necessary evil.

Not only that, but M$ is eventually going to phase out support for XP in favour of Vista. They did the same with 2k and NT (And virtually every other operating system they have released). Of course that wouldn't be a problem if XP was stable and secure, but that won't happen before next century.

The most royally irritating thing is, the lack of memory and performance on computers today is actually MORE of a concern than it was 10 years ago. The thing is, a decade ago, programmers went 'Okay, we have 500k of memory to work with, how can we program this thing to be efficient and stable?', Now, they go 'You have unlimited memory, make it run, stable or not'. Hell, The windows shell uses 30Mb of memory on its own, add IE7 (a whopping 85Mb), antivirus and firewall (Mine is at least 20Mb), and Services Management (25Mb all up), thats 160Mb of memory used when the computer is at idle. whatever happened to efficient programming? Now everything is so bloated you have to reinstall the OS every 6 months just to free up space!

M$ bloatware? never.....

So what's your take on it then, Taw?

So as to not create another thread on the same topic, ummmmm....

Curtisy of dear old uncle George, urmm Sam, I just bought a new lap top.

A Toshiba A105-S4334

Model: A105-S4334 (P/N PSAA8U14M02K)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5200 1.6GHz
RAM: 2GB PC4200 DDR2 SDRAM Memory
HD: 160GB Hard Drive
CD-ROM: DVD-SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) drive
Modem: 56K 56Kbps V.92 Modem
Network: 802.11a/g Wi-Fi
Display: 15.4" Widescreen XGA with TruBrite Technology (1280 x 800)
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Condition: Brand New
Warranty: 1-Year Manufacturer Warranty

All on sale from $999 for the low price of $699


Edited by - Finalday on 1/27/2007 10:36:35 AM

Well, Finalday, you've probably gotten a better value than myself, but I'll take my higher processor speed anyday. More RAM probably makes a bigger difference than anything, and 2GB makes a big difference.

Its refreshing to be able to play Battlefield Vietnam on maximum settings with all 64 AI bots turned on without any lag or visible slowdowns... on one core. Granted, its an older game, but still saps a lot of power.

I know this is a bit of an old thread, but I wanted to post the specs of my new computer, too. I just got it the other day.

Pentium 4 3.4ghz
1gig PC4200 DDR2 Ram
250 gig harddrive(although, my version of Windows XP will only see 131 of it)
16x DVD burner
No floppy disk drive
6 USB 2.0 ports
GeForce 7600 GS 512meg AGP(yeah, yeah, I know, PCI-E is the way to go these days. Whatever)
CMEDIA-based soundcard with 5.1 surround sound(with speakers!)
Windows XP Pro.

Price? $436 USD before shipping. With shipping, $486 USD. Note, that the video card, sound card, and DVD-burner were in my old computer, so I used those instead.

Modest specs, but definitely a steal of a deal when it comes to price/performance.

What version of Windows Xp are you running that won't read your whole drive????

I'm using an older version of Windows XP Pro before Service Pack 1 was released. I'm curious, is there anyway to have Windows read the rest of my harddrive without reinstalling the damn thing? I talked to the people who sold me the computer, and they told me I needed a copy of XP that had at least Service Pack 1 with it.

Edited by - meezookeewee on 3/17/2007 12:38:59 AM

You bought the computer new, but it didn't come with service pack 2?

As to get it to read more of the drive, repartition it, lest it have a seperate partition for the OS back up.

Edited by - Finalday on 3/17/2007 4:31:02 AM

I bought the computer without the OS. I installed Windows myself. I wasn't going to pay an extra 100-150 bucks for an operating system I got for free.