FYI, Vista preloaded PCs...

I believe the topic has come up at least once about the warranty on new Vista installed OEM PCs. Allow me to relate a recent experience. DISCLAIMER; My experience is in no way meant as anything other then a statement of my semi-indirect experience in one particular case. Yours may vary so please exercise all due caution. My Mother-in-Law recently purchased a new Compaq (HP) Presario w\Vista Home Basic pre-installed. At first she was pleased with the new, though basic, graphics. Formerly ran Win 2k. She even accepted the additional clicking needed for the enhanced security features. But this is where the "fun" ended. Knowing only the most basic functions of a PC she could not understand why her HP printer may not, turned out it was not fully functional with a PC from the same company. Then we found out several games her and her Husband played were not functional either. I contacted the writer of the games. Their reply was "run as Administrator\support is coming\no plans for supporting Vista." This did not always work or please either of them. This lead her, totally unbeknown to me to call MS. Let me just say I am glad I do not work the Help Desk at MS now-a-days. They were of no help and of course laid the blame on the "other" software developers which we all know they will do.
I gave her 3 options that I knew of. 1# No longer play the games and deal with a partially functioning printer. Hoping support for them would eventually come along. 2# Try to return the new PC and pay more $$$ then her old ailing PC is worth to upgrade it. Even though it would still not be at the hardware\performance level her new one is. Or 3# Contact HP\Compaq to see what their EULA stated about changing OS`s on a still under warranty PC. Much to my surprise they stated they had no problems with a change to XP. They did warn her of the need to get new drivers but other then that apologized for the inconvenience, thanked her for purchasing HP\Compaq, and wished her a wonderful day.
I just finished wiping the hdd, installing XP Pro, fully updating it, installing their games and d\l the fully compatible printer driver. I must say it is a snappy performing little machine.

 

Thank you Pete, the info. is much appreciated. She had told me she was planning the purchase and would ask for assistance when the time came. Next thing I knew, she was asking me to come over and set it up. You have already read the rest of the story.

 

rebate time
(unless they supplied that copy of XP)

 

Had not thought about that. Will pass it on to the Mother-in-Law to see if she wish`s to pursue it. The bag with all instructions (?) and disks are still sealed.
Side note: Both her and Husband are quit happy with Vista, HP and all the other pre-loaded stuff off of the machine. Fast to boot-up and shut-down, and everything in between. (trying to talk them into DSL now....still on dial-up )
One more curiosity, Task Manager shows the processor, Pentium 4 @ 3.0 GHz, as a Dual core though all specs, and price paid state it is a single. Any thoughts?

 

Hyperthreaded single core.

Blue

 

Thank you BlueZannetti. Hyperthreaded it is so the mystery is solved. (I am an AMD guy myself.) Knew about hyperthreading, did not know that it would show up in Task Manager in that fashion.