Vista and Office 2007

[Sea Demon]

It also seems I can't buy a new computer from Dell without Vista. I wish they would give you a choice of OS's. I would prefer XP for now until I'm more certain about Vista. Maybe I'll check Gateway. And if not, then it looks like I'm going to have to build a whole new rig myself.

[NefariousKoel]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

I wouldn't run it with less than 1 GB. 1.5 GB is probably like running Windows XP on 512 MB. Make sure you have at least 2 GB if you plan to play a game like SHIV. The more I play around with it, the more of a resource hog I see it is, and for what? Flashy graphics? XP is the better OS as far as I can see so far. Does the same thing, minus the ability to hit a button and see what windows are running all in a staggered 3D row - oops, I forgot, you can add this capability to XP too with a simple add on!

-S

That's my point. I recommended they double their RAM from 1GB to 2GB knowing how much of a hog Vista is. The problem came when I put the extra RAM in. It barely ran the few times it did at all.

I can guarantee the very same RAM upgrade would work just fine on WinXP. :hmm:

[kiwi_2005]

Running Vista Ultimate & have "MS Office Enterprise 2007 Blue Edition"

HAve use office since office 95 came out and own everyone. This Blue edition is the best in my opinon.

I wouldn't go back to anything else, even those free Linux Office which are good also.

MS finally got it right!

[kiwi_2005]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Anyway, I'll report on what I see later on. So far, I am un-impressed. Office 2007 is loading while I write this though, and that looks like a major change over Office 2003, so that may be worth the upgrade. Vista, so far, is not worth the upgrade.

-S

pfft Vista runs fine, no problems, games run etc., i recently had a run in with Starforce protection when reinstalling SH3, but solved that. Im very happy with Vista Ultimate, would never go back to XP.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Sea Demon

It also seems I can't buy a new computer from Dell without Vista. I wish they would give you a choice of OS's. I would prefer XP for now until I'm more certain about Vista. Maybe I'll check Gateway. And if not, then it looks like I'm going to have to build a whole new rig myself.

Not anymore. Heard Dell was re-releasing XP

And beleive this! THey are releasing a system with Ubuntu on it! That's an about face!

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/s...=19&l=en&s=dhs

Does that blow your mind or what?

-S

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by kiwi_2005

pfft Vista runs fine, no problems, games run etc., i recently had a run in with Starforce protection when reinstalling SH3, but solved that. Im very happy with Vista Ultimate, would never go back to XP.

I can't agree with you (yet). I keep running up and slamming into brick walls! And besides it being a resource hog - it is also dog slow! I heard you get a 10% reduction in FPS with Vista in games, but I feel it is even worse since my XP system will run circles around it in most office tasks. It has to think about doing something (probably DRM kicking in) when XP just goes ahead and does something. Its a responsiveness feel more than anything.

I'm going to go load up 2x xp2500 Athlons (I have 5 systems here with the exact same hardware) with 1 GB each and run them side by side. I'll see how bad it really is. Matter of fact, I'll only put 512 MB in the XP system and 1 GB in the Vista system.

On Office 2007, the Jury is still out with me on it. I am also running Enterprise. Its main difference is to rid you of menu's and replace with a Visual experience instead. I like it in the way it looks better, but in functionality, it may slow me down considerably while I switch menus to get to the visual menu that I need to do a particular task. I'll let you know how it goes later on.

-S

[Sea Demon]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Not anymore. Heard Dell was re-releasing XP

And beleive this! THey are releasing a system with Ubuntu on it! That's an about face!

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/s...=19&l=en&s=dhs

Does that blow your mind or what?

-S

Good. This makes good business sense. I might actually buy a new computer from them after all.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Sea Demon

Good. This makes good business sense. I might actually buy a new computer from them after all.

Don't! I even asked their rep to quit calling me. I have two laptops here that they used proprietary ATI GPU's on (when they didn't have to), and they never once updated the drivers, yet force you to use Dell drivers to make it function. I paid $3K for each of these machines, so why can't they just give me a little support? So I tried 3 times for them to update the drivers, and 3 times they were all over it and dropped the ball. So I told them I would never buy from them again and to quit bugging me. They still send me email about the great business deals you can get, but without support, whats the point? Whatever rep I am assigned to at a given time (they change yearly I think) still tries to call me occasionally, but I feed him the same story over and over. They keep vowing to fix it and create a special driver just for me, but why should I be needing to ask in the first place??!!! They should do this automatically for anyone who got this GPU!

I managed to find a way to hack the generic drivers to work on it, but its very picky and allows you to select out of spec resolutions and such - and if you select the wrong thing, there is no going back without major work to get it working again.

Anyway - the reason Dell is cheap on prices is because they are also cheap on support. If you don't have to support the product you sell, you can sell it at a greater discount, no?

-S

[SUBMAN1]

So far - My vote for most annoying new Vista addition – 'User Account Control'. This thing makes it so your machine asks you tripple to quadruple before you can even install a simple app like Adobe Flash for your browser! I quickly disabled that!

-S