(no subject)

[camwyn]

I bought a laptop last week at Best Buy. $650. Toshiba Satellite. Nice machine, good processor, good RAM, 17-inch widescreen. Fun, right? Slight problem: it runs Vista.

Now, I'm an XP person. I've been XP for a while. I know that eventually we're going to have to adapt to using Vista in the office, but until MS gives us no choice, that ain't happening. I'm currently torn: do I leave the laptop as it is and attempt to learn Vista through use, or do I format it down to the particulate storage level and install XP and all the necessary drivers? Has anyone had to do the wipe-and-change OS shuffle? Can you offer any advice on how to do so with a minimum of trouble?

(For those of you who wonder about such things, the laptop's name is Dion. Not for the lead singer of the Belmonts. For this Dion- specifically, because this computer might or might not end up being reformatted and getting an identity change.)

Comments

[unmisha.livejournal.com]

Go back to XP. Vista, even with SP1 and all the updates, is still pretty unstable. Since it's a new purchase, now's the time to do it, instead of deciding to do so 3 months down the line :)

[dhole.livejournal.com]

I got a laptop with vista during the summer, and I have to say, Vista is kind of a steaming pile.

That said, you're probably going to have to deal with Vista eventually, and you might be better off starting on the laptop, were Vista survives at your mercy, to starting in the office, where you can't escape it.

[crisavec.livejournal.com]

Nuke and and XP it now, while you can still get the drivers for it from Toshiba. Play with Vista on a machine you are not forced to use, so you can escape it if you need to get real work done.

[skyschemer.livejournal.com]

Learn Vista. My only complaints with it come down to the dumbing down of the interface to make it "easier" on the "average person". Like XP did with Win2k, Vista has hidden some advanced features that you probably got used to in XP. And if Aero is a thorn in you side, you can always turn it off.

Lots of people slam it, but frankly, most of those arguments come down to "it sucks" which is light on details, and probably just a reaction to how different it looks and feels in parts. Someone above claims it's "unstable, even with SP1", but I don't see it. I've run both XP and Vista at home on the same hardware and its anyone's guess which is more or less stable. In fact, I'm running the 64bit version of Vista, so you'd think that would be worse while all the hardware folks learn how to write 64bit drivers, but it's really not been a problem.

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

Vista blows goats. Switch before you have any data to worry about backing up, like I'm stuck with.

[unmisha.livejournal.com]

I'm a tech for a university department - we run a shop of ~200 computers, mostly Dells, Latitudes and Optiplexes, and we keep testing Vista on our standard configs. SP1 was just made available to us, and it broke the 3 of 4 older models we had for testing. 2 simply ceased to boot properly at all, and the 3rd now reboots randomly.
I have nothing against the look and feel of the OS, but between the stability problems and the older applications we need to keep running (that won't run on Vista, and are rant-worthy for institutional reasons completely unrelated to OS), we simply can't run Vista.
I've got friends who are running it fine on high end gaming machines, but I remain leery of bringing it into any business or business-related environment.

[skyschemer.livejournal.com]

And therein lies the rub: old hardware and old software may not play ball with a major OS upgrade. There was plenty of pain in moving from 2k to XP, and there will be plenty going from XP to Vista. Our company is still on XP and for the same reasons you mention. But camwyn's scenario is not the same, at least, not from the way the post is worded.

At the very least, it's modern hardware, and as it shipped with Vista, one could reasonably assume it's Vista-capable.

[eor.livejournal.com]

If you're going to switch make sure you have a CD or CDs with all your drivers (or perhaps a USB stick that XP plays with sans driver, or both). It can be a real PIA if it's a new laptop because new stuff means play hunt the driver game. Make sure every single thing (sound card, video, LAN, wireless, ad nauseum) has an XP driver available and you have it before you slide the XP disc into it.

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

The switchover (which I just did on an HP laptop) went terribly; the driver installs are cranky and it was a pain in the ass to do. Ubuntu is your friend.

*uses squid icon in lieu of penguin icon, since I have no penguin icon*

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

The main trouble I've heard are all hardware related, which may not be a big issue on a new laptop. However, I've also heard from some programmers that it's a hassle to work with if you're doing that kind of stuff, because there's so much it doesn't support yet or things that are still unstable.

[renshai.livejournal.com]

slash and burn! seriously, move back to XP before you have to deal with the hassle of transferring files and stuff, but keep your Vista disks. There's a chance that sometime in the future it will not suck so much. Of the 5 laptops that were running Vista in my programming class this morning, 4 crashed and burned in a two-hour span. Given that we were all working on an assignment worth 25% of our grade that was due at 4pm, the Vista users were very unhappy.

The only problem I've had on the two systems I've switched over was, as pointed out above, doing the find-drivers dance. Check there're XP drivers for your components before you go through with it, because there's nothing more disheartening than having to crawl back to Vista after you thought you'd kicked it to the curb.

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

Interesting assumption. Let me know how that works out for you.

[duane-kc.livejournal.com]

Having a laptop too old and decrepit even to run XP, I have no personal experience with Vista. (I would *kill* for someones' old Win2K CDs right now...)

That being said, among persons whose opinion I trust, the universal opinion among those who have used it has been to format and install XP *within two weeks of starting usage*.

Anecdotal evidence to be sure, but compelling nonetheless.

[arabel.livejournal.com]

My only experience is via the boyfriend - he's had Vista for less than a month, and has already gone through four system reinstalls, two recovers, and a heap of other problems. Admittedly, his computer is all kinds of crazy hardware-wise, which may not help, but that's all I know.

*shrug*

[eric-williamson.livejournal.com]

Eyes my Win2K CDs... who would you kill?? ^_-;;

Everyone I've heard from has had the same experience, as well...

[eric-williamson.livejournal.com]

How in the name of... I bought my wife an HP laptop and she tried switching it to XP, and the HD stopped responding. The recovery partition wouldn't even boot and booting from an XP CD - it couldn't see the HD. I've just sent it in for HP warranty service as a result... but would be very interested in how you managed to upgrade.

[duane-kc.livejournal.com]

Got any cockroaches you want stomped? Or politicians? [grin]

[eric-williamson.livejournal.com]

Seriously, at least cockroaches are honest about their intentions...