New Vista laptop. So far, I'm surprised.

Nothing to do with problems, etc.

We got a pair of Dell Inspiron 1525, one for wife and one for me. Neither of us had ever used a laptop, so didn't want to go high end to start. These are second from the bottom, with Vista Home Premium SP1, 1.8G dual core Intel, and 2G RAM. I figured 2G RAM would be enough and so far it seems to be. We won't be running stuff like MS Office, so 2G ought to be okay. Also, McAfee security which we'll live with for a year.

I'm changing my tune about Vista. I'm impressed and might like it more once I get used to the differences between it and XP. We've had the laptops 3days. No complaints so far, except that I will be switching to a USB mouse. I've never been a fan of the touchpad.

Next purchase, a wireless router so we can use the laptops anywhere in the house. If things continue, this might become my main computer and my XP desktop turn into a test machine.

Finally, I'm not ready to say Vista Rules, but I'm liking it more every day.

 

Windows Vista is not as bad as some people are making out to be (especially the Apple fanboys). The majority of the problems were driver-related, so it's not just Microsoft's fault but the manufacturer/developer's also.

 

Chuck57,

I echo your experiences with Vista. I've been running it for 8 months and prefer it and think it is superior to XP. You do need to make adjustments with some of the interface changes and new capabilities.

You'll probably end up loving its built-in search capabilities (Windows Key).

 

I have mostly enjoyed the Vista experience. Glad it's working for you.

 

In my opinion , Vista is the best Windows ever - much faster , easier to use than other other Windows versions , a lot more secure by default.

Most of the time I work with my personal laptop - it has Vista , which I bought not long ago . Everytime I sit at someone else's computer - client's or at the office (using XP or older OS) I feel like I am working with an ancient machine I am so used to Vista now that I started not to feel comfortable with XP's manners.

5 out of 5 for Vista , from me

 

I have to say that vista is getting better and better everyday. I am using it since March 2007 on relatively high spec PC and so far it is smooth and have never encountered any major problem. I hope all the improvements continue.

 

i still sometimes have some problems with vista.
sometimes uac prompts blank out the screen for quite awhile.
file copying is still slow as a tortoise even with SP1.

 

I concur with lodore. File operations are slow and seem to get slower on large files. I am not sure but it may have something to do with virtualizing the file being worked on - (this is probably wrong since the workings of Vista is completely unknown to me.) Other than that and an occasional stall on DVD access, Vista seems to run very well.

SourMilk out

 

I have Vista and XP installed on their own hard drives on this quadcore.Both are good but I do find that I am using Vista more often and besides, Sandboxie and Returnil work fine on both.

 

I'm glad things are going ok with Vista for you. I have some experience with a few Vista machines and while the eye candy is nice, the noticeable speed difference between Vista and XP, along with driver issues still bug me (thankfully the lack of drivers is gettng better all the time.)

So, when I recently decided to buy a new Dell laptop, I did the downgrade to XP. (The downgrade program comes with a Vista DVD but I'll never install it.) Hopefully I can get more excited about the OS coming after Vista...

 

I just bought myself a new PC last weekend and decided to try Vista, so far I am extremely happy. The new PC startup and updating and so on went flawlessly, and in general, the entire experience this 1st week has been great. It's very fast here and very nice looking, has most of what I need. I am running the x64 version also. But I have to agree with the thread starter, I am both surprised and pleased here as well. I won't be returning to XP or Linux for that matter. This is it...

 

I haven't noticed any slowdown, but to be honest all I've used is the Works word processor which, since it can now save files to Word, is enough for me. Most places I deal with require Word format, and Works is a baby Word without the bells and whistles I never use. I did copy over a couple of large 350K files from CD and they open much faster in Works.

I also notice that they open more, if I can use the word, elegantly. Rather than appearing in the jarring way Windows used to open, they seem to quickly materialize - if that makes sense. So far, I'm liking Vista very much.

 

Hey chuck congrats on the laptops and glad to here your enjoying Vista.I have to agree as much as I like XP SP2, I have to thought vista would not be good after seeing a large amount of folks bad mouth it.I am very happy with vista my self As far as ram you should be plenty good with 2 gigs.Best of luck with your new toys.

 

You are correct there are times when UAC can black out though maybe only a couple of seconds it still longer then I desire.There really should not be many UAC prompts If any at all unless installing a new app Non the less I have mine off.

 

Chuck, your post reminded me of an article I read the other day. Plus I have read similar testimonials on users reviews of computers on NewEgg.

I hope MS will use the footage mentioned in the article wisely and hopefully the Vista bashing will die down.

 

I've got to agree with that article. I admit, when we got the laptops, we wanted XP installed. We were told that Dell only sells XP now with their high end machines. I guess I could have argued, or demanded, or gone elsewhere, but we've used Dell products for years and never yet had a problem with them. I'm glad I did now. The more I use Vista, the better I like it. I only shut down the laptop a few minutes ago and switched to the desktop, which hasn't been on all day. XP seems clunky now, old fashioned by comparison - and slower.

 

I have been using laptops exclusively for better than a decade and Vista Home Premium (now with SP1) since June of 2007.

I have a Core 2 Duo at 2GHz with 2GB and have no problems running Office 2007 or PhotoShop CS2.

 

Hmm, I was told that Office Ultimate 2007 would run slow on Vista Home Premium and 2G RAM. I got the disc free for participating in the MS survey thing, mentioned here months ago. Our laptop, I think I mentioned, is 1.8Ghz Intel dual core.

Now, I'm tempted to try it - if I can register it. I have it (registered) on my XP machine, 512RAM, 1.8Ghz AMD Athlon, and it worked but it's pretty much a dog on that one. Have to think on it.

 

I have Office Ultimate, and it works beautifully!

 

I think it might be worth a try, I don't see why it would run "slow". I have the MS Office Home/Student and MS Outlook as separates cause I got both for $100 each at Fry's, which seemed like a good price, since they wanted $369 for MS Office Standard, which has the same things in it. Why pay more? But I have 4 gigs ram here, and a triple core, so maybe that helps. Only thing I'm missing is Access, but I have that on my work laptop and don't need it for home use.

You might try it, if it struggles, then maybe add more ram?

 

or using software that needs admin rights, aka imaging apps which i use alot due to software testing.
vista doesnt really give me anything more than xp did.
yes it looks nicer but thats about the only good thing.
hopefully service pack 2 will come along soon and finaly fix the major slow file copying and not cause major slowdowns when the ram is nearly used up.
my old xp machine with 1gb of ram must use a paging file alot and doesnt cause major slowdowns when it does. yet vista with quad core and 2gb when the ram is nearly used up i get some major slowdowns even thou the hard drive is quite alot faster than the one in my old xp rig. so yes its a OS issue.
so if you have xp DO NOT upgrade or should i say downgrade.
its like going from a ferrari to a tractor.

 

I just set up an LUA account on this laptop since I vowed not to go security download nuts on it. That's for the desktop where, now if I screw something up I can just use Paragon and go back to June 2007 when it was clean.

I have McAfee Security Suite aboard. I'm not fond of McAfee although it does well in tests. Sometimes one must bow to one's wife's wishes. I think (hope) using LUA will give even more protection.

This laptop will be used 95% for office type stuff, word processing, and internet. Used thus, I doubt I'll ever get into RAM trouble any more than I'll ever fill the 120G hard drive.

I never thought I'd see the day when 2G RAM might not be enough. I'm still of the old mindset that I only have one program running at a time. I close Word before opening MSIE.

 

When I first got Vista I did have LUA set up. But I noticed the only difference between it and the standard admin account is that you had to supply the admin password at the UAC prompt instead of clicking OK. Since I am the only one using this computer I didn't see any point in running LUA because you get the prompts anyway in admin mode.

McAfee is ok. Like Norton it has improved a lot in the last few years as far as performance impact goes.

I remember the time when having 512KB of RAM was a luxury, lol. Also years ago when the word "multitasking" first came into being I couldn't imagine myself running more than one app at a time. Right now I have two browser windows open, Windows Mail, and watching TV in another window

 

Speaking of prompts....... that's another thing that seems way overdone by those who don't have Vista. I get them, but there aren't anywhere nearly as many, or annoying as I'd read. I've come to the conclusion that a whole lot of people read something about Vista and assume it's true, but never bother to check out what they read. That includes me, since I believed all the negative stuff. The reality is a LOT different. It's great.

*edit* BTW, installed Office Ultimate, except for a few programs I didn't see any need for, and the obligatory service pack.....seem to be getting an awful lot of updates for this and that. It was pretty fast update and installation. Since putting in the service pack, Word opens even faster.

 

My experience has been the same. I've read some monstrous accounts about Vista's prompts, but it's never been a real issue for me. In fact, I think there's a whole lot of misinformation out there on Vista: how "bad" Vista's defragger is, Vista inappropriately uses too much ram on 2 GBs of ram machine, UAC is "stupid", etc.