Vista - Why so many flavors?

[Bharat Nain]

Originally Posted by Cory

I'd suggest the opposite...my family has owned 4 dell computers since about 1999 or so.

We've had I think two major problems the entire time. One was that our newest was DOA. The first one we purchased would randomly die every hour or so.

Both times they shipped us brand new computers within 48 hours. You can't beat service like that.

I agree. If you are not a very tech-savvy person, then it is best to buy from a company like Dell. They are extremely good with customer service and the price for the extra service is well worth it. I bought a Dell for my parents and until now the only problem I have had was the network card dieing once. Replaced that and it has never failed. We also bought our printers from it. They initially shipped us a color laser printer that was behaving oddly. One call and they immediately shipped us a new one.

About Vista- I used it for a while because our college had licenses to give out for testing. I really really loved Vista but the only issue I had was other softwares were not compatible. I was forced to switch back to XP because of that. Other than that, I enjoyed every aspect of Vista even though my computer was not exactly upto specs for it(512 RAM, 2.8Ghz). The comparison sheet is pretty good to see which flavor fits your need. I would wait for other softwares to come upto date before migrating to Vista though. I NEED softwares like Photoshop, Premiere pro, AutoCAD, etc to work on my computer.

[jacob07]

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain

I agree. If you are not a very tech-savvy person, then it is best to buy from a company like Dell. They are extremely good with customer service...
.

I agree. I have had a hp laptop in the past and now i have a dell. I have known people with gateways that have complained about the customer service they got when they called. In my own experience with HP I have never had a problem solved with their customer service that was quicker then an hour! Dell has quick and speedy customer service, and actually know what they are talking about

[JesseK]

I bought a Dell Laptop in mid-May. The reasoning was because I was so impressed with the laptops my work purchased for their size, weight, feel, and speed that I went to Dell's website and configured one with a better processor/memory/etc for home use. (Core2 Duo T7300 + 2GB RAM) I also got Vista Premium since there was a nice promotion on the website at the time.

The only thing that's a pain in the butt is the version of Solidworks that Battlefield HS uses doesn't work on Vista, so if I want to CAD I have to tote my work and home laptop around since the work laptop has limited (firewalled, proxied, etc) internet access. But once that's settled most everything's fine:

**The internet still runs fine with Firefox.
**The start->type program name->it runs is pretty cool; it keeps you from searching through endless start menu folders
**Eclipse still runs fine
**Matlab R14 still runs fine
**CORBA ORBs setup via Java still run fine for both Server and Client (Premium required for advanced user and port services & settings)
**Office 2007 is TONS better than office 2003, it's much more intuitive and Excel has some really neat (albeit OOXML that's under contraversy atm) new features for formatting and units and 3D surfaces (which makes what I was doing in Matlab semi-obsolete but easier for others to follow)

Some games don't work (Descent II port & Simcity 4) but I also have a desktop with WinXP for those.

My take on Vista: it will be just as good as any other MS OS in a year or two, just like every other MS OS that came before it. I chose to get it now so that I'm not paying for XP now + and upgrade in a year. I can deal with the shortcomings for now, as can most people.

[StevenB]

I don't see Vista listed on the list of supported operating systems for Inventor:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=8410923
On the other hand, they don't officially mention XP Home Edition, and it runs fine.

On hardware problems: some people will have them, some people won't. It really isn't fair to judge the OS's hardware autodetection based on trying it on one machine. The same is true of Linux - sometimes hardware works out of the box, sometimes it doesn't. Apple gets off easy, since they control the hardware (although not all of the peripherals).

Likewise, "new program bugs" will cause problems for some, but not everyone. Large businesses can't afford to take that risk, but many individuals can.

I'm not a mac person, but I found this pretty humorous:
http://news.com.com/1606-2-6190253.html

[Alex.Norton]

I Bought a Toshiba laptop a couple of months ago becuase my video card destroyed my mother board on my old desk top. It was one of the Toshiba Satalite series and it came with Vista home premium.

I haven't actually found any problems with it so far that I can't live with. I can run Solidworks 2006 (after a little fidling), and some other CAD-like programs that I use and only one game hasn't worked beautifully, DOD (which I think is actually my video driver). The only thing I don't like is all the extras that Toshiba installed that I don't use and think clutter my start menu.

Plus its so much prittier than XP

[JohnBoucher]

Thanks for all the advice.....

I understand that when Vista came out it lacked support for serial ports. Is that the case?

Any USB to serial problems?

[RyanN]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

Thanks for all the advice.....

I understand that when Vista came out it lacked support for serial ports. Is that the case?

Any USB to serial problems?

Nope... I have a USB to Serial adapter for my laptop and it works just fine. I can program the robot controllers, as well as program my BOE-bot without any issues.

[eshteyn]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

Thanks for all the advice.....

I understand that when Vista came out it lacked support for serial ports. Is that the case?

Any USB to serial problems?

Port addressing and communications works perfectly, Microsoft used less components of NT in Vista however they kept the the same component that runs ports,etc.....