Laptop suggestion

[Dan Neely]

Meanwhile my 16mo old Acer laptop has had zero issues and installing more ram was a breeze. Which just goes to show another posters point about the futility of these threads because for any brand there're people with no problems and people with horror stories.

Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall

[Todd Smith]

My guess is the configuration of vista and the probable tons of bundleware (firewall, virus software, etc.). I always suggest doing a clean install on any DELL / HP / etc. computer.

Todd Smith

[Flynn Arrowstarr Regular Schmoe]

We use the recent T61 widescreen notebooks at work. Haven't run them with Vista (we downgrade them to XP) myself, but my co-worker runs his with Vista and has no problems with it. Flynn

[John M Drescher]

I really could not explain this and for the cost you would think that Dell would/could configure the system correctly. Especially the 1/2 hour initial boot. To me that was ridiculous. If I bought it for myself I would have sent it back.

John

[Snowman58]

Over the years I have probably had 20 laptops. The first was one of the original 18 lb, 5 inch screen luggables I carried to Asia! Laptops usually last 12 -24 months before being broken or obsolete & passed on. I have had recent experience with Dell Inspiron (2.6 Single Core, 1G), Toshiba Satellite (1.6 Dual Core, 2G) & slight exposure to an HP Pavilion (??) with a 17inch screen. The Toshiba was a replacement for the Dell (passed on to another employee) & the HP is GF's. IMHO the HP is too large & heavy to travel with but it's biggest problem is the very limited range Wi-fi. GF always has to go sit next to the hotel computers while I am able to use either the Dell or Toshiba from the room. She recently took it to Europe and got so tired of lugging it around and not working, she Fed-Ex'd it home. All three were either XP to start with or upgraded to XP from Vista. Which made a huge difference in speed and stability (!) on the HP. For general use, the Dell has the fastest perceived speed. The dual core Toshiba only catches up when doing a massive spreadsheet re-calc and then it just matches the Dell. Processor speed still trumps core count in my opinion. I like the touch pad, keyboard & screen of the Toshiba best & Dell the least, perhaps because the Dell has the "widescreen" and an over sensitive touchpad. After six months of use, it never felt comfortable. You can quickly learn the keyboard of any laptop, but a poor touchpad or screen are forever. My 2cents! (Whatever happened to the "cent" symbol?)

[Paul Conrad]

Todd Smith wrote:

suggest doing a clean install

That's what I did right away with my Toshiba. It runs Vista Ultimate better than it did running Vista Home with all the junk Toshiba put on it.

"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon