Windows Vista? - DPChallenge Forums

07/11/2007 10:14:37 AM · #1

So Iâ��m in the market for a new laptop and what I want only comes with Vista. Those of you using it, what do you think of it? How much hard drive space and RAM does it eat?

Am I better off buying a copy of XP and replacing once I get it?

FYI: I'm looking at the Dell XPS M1210 with duo core 2 gig processor, 2 gig of ram and 120 gig hard drive. I intend to use it with a docking station to replace both my laptop and desktop that are both quite old and problematic.

Nikon AF Zoom-Nikkor 24-85mm f2.8-4.0D

07/11/2007 10:17:16 AM · #2

I beta tested Beta 2 and RC-1. If you want to spend the money on a copy of XP, then go ahead on it.

Even in beta It wasnt the hog everyone swore it would be id say my games ran about 10% slower frame rate wise. of course this was on beta video card drivers.

I ran with a 250 GB SATA hard drive and a gig of ram. Not much you can do about the laptop configuration except ram and when ordering hard drive space.

Check out other companys and places, you can get a no OS laptop.

Message edited by author 2007-07-11 10:21:37.

Nikolai1024

Nikon D300

07/11/2007 10:37:01 AM · #3

2 gigs of ram is a must with vista. Get fast hard drive too. 7200rpm Make sure vidio card is a dedicated card and not a stupid built in that uses regular memory for video memory.

Nick

MrEd

Sony DSLR-A100

Sigma 15-30mm f/3.5-4.5 EX Aspherical DG DF for Minolta

07/11/2007 10:54:06 AM · #4

I saw Dell is replacing Vista with XP.

Olyuzi

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX7

Panasonic Lumix G 14mm F2.5 ASPH

07/11/2007 10:56:27 AM · #5

Make sure the programs you want to use with the Vista platform are compatible or that there are patches to make them work.

Also make sure that your calibration/profililng hardware and software are compatible, otherwise, you may have to purchase new.

I think that if I were buying a machine with Vista I would get the 64 bit version so that I could load up on memory, but that may not apply to a laptop.

There are still companies that are offering laptops with XP installed. Even Dell has acknowledged that Vista offers challenges and many businesses are not upgrading from XP.

smurfguy

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

07/11/2007 10:56:53 AM · #6

I use Vista currently.

In both Vista and XP, you can turn off as much of the GUI-wow stuff as you want. Vista was more annoying during setup and install because of all the security crap - "Did you really mean to run/install this program??" There's also the problem on driver/software incompatibility, but that's diminishing with time.

But in day-to-day use, there's not a lot of difference. And once in a while Vista has something that I like, and some things I have to get used to.

So if it was me, I wouldn't spend the extra money on XP.

But then, I also dual boot Linux. And if I could get Photoshop CS3 running in Linux, I'd possibly never boot Windows again. =D

Message edited by author 2007-07-11 10:57:17.

shalrath

Nikon D200

Nikon AF Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D IF

07/11/2007 11:06:54 AM · #7

Vista eats memory, but if you have 2 gig, it should be Okay. As for differences: things have been rearranged a little, as previously stated the security warnings can be annoying, but the Aero interface (home premium and up) makes a big difference to application rendering speeds.

Otherwise for photoshop, not too much of a difference :P. (But my wacom drivers crash all the time)

awpollard

Canon EOS-5D Mark II

Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS

07/11/2007 11:10:09 AM · #8

Pay attention to the sticker of the laptop you are buying... "Made for Vista" and "Vista Compatible" run the cool stuff or "Vista Capible" which does not...

Many liqudators will sell you a new laptop today with a Intel 910/915GM video chipset which is the biggest piece of shiznit made...It will not do Aero or Switcher or any of the fun enhancements...Vista runs fine but w/o the cool visuals. Hence "Vista Capible". Intel has not plans to release a driver even though the the 915s worked (Aero and Enhancements) under the Vista Betas.

I'm with RainMotorsports in that it is not the hog that everyone says it is. But yes you want as much ram as you can have. Vista is constantly Indexing your Disks and caching information so when you use the live search that the info is there instantly.

At work I have Vista Business running on an old fujitsu laptop w/1.5G ram and it screams (except for the crappy intel video chipset)

At home I run (2) Vista Ultimates and (2) Vista Home Premiums all on different builds from nForce 2 Mobos and up. One has a Gig of ram and gets a little chucky at times but that is my Media Center PC and no one sits at it.

Bottom Line: Pay attention to the Sticker and if you can find an ATI or nVidia Video chipset on the laptop that is the way I would go. Intel has the 945 and 965 video chipsets that run Aero but again Intel can not make a vid card to save their life.

For the Record I have not had any issues with Vista on the 6 (Wife's sony is Vista Premium) Vista Machines I use. Sure there were issues with the betas and RCs with drivers. I actually hate sitting down at an XP machine at work anymore. Vista has some productivity tools that make getting around a lot quicker.

But Also note that I am an IT guy and pewters like me...I seem to never have the issues that users and weekend warriors have.

Message edited by author 2007-07-11 11:13:05.

07/11/2007 11:14:52 AM · #9

Originally posted by smurfguy:

Vista was more annoying during setup and install because of all the security crap - "Did you really mean to run/install this program??"

During install those message don't come up onyl after when your installing other apps or changing any settings and you CAN turn them off, so first thing you might want todo is turn them off.... yes their stupid as hell.

Originally posted by shalrath:

Vista eats memory

I keep hearing this, The release version must have been worse then the RC1 test version was.

As far as your comment goes on the messages, turn em off.

Message edited by author 2007-07-11 11:15:43.

07/11/2007 11:20:28 AM · #10

Thanks for the responses!

The graphics card is a: 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 with TurboCache. What ever that means. (I know nothing about graphics cards). Itâ��s a free upgrade from the base and is the best Dell offers on this machine.

Right now I have it configured with a 120 gig 5400 rpm hard drive. Would uping it to the 160 gig 7200 rpm be worth $150? Will the slower hard drive slow down the computer that much? i found that Vista takes about 12 gig of HD space.

I could not find Dell offering XP on their XPS laptops. I'll call before I order and see if it's an option.

I get a 21% discount with dell and I really want the small 12â�� screen laptop so I think the M1210 is the best choice for me.

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

07/11/2007 11:22:44 AM · #11

The faster hard drive will consume a bit more power at the benifit of increased access speed.

dwterry

Canon EOS-1D Mark III

07/11/2007 11:51:27 AM · #12

I have 4Gb on my home machine, 2Gb on my wife's laptop, and 1Gb on my daughter's laptop. All of them run Vista really well, even my daughter's machine runs well. I was concerned about the memory, but it hasn't been an issue. For my wife and I, she uses Corel Painter and I use PhotoShop, Lightroom, and many other memory hogs, so that's why I put the extra memory in. It all seems to work well.

07/11/2007 12:12:37 PM · #13

Having just upgraded my work machine with a new mobo, CPU and memory, I can tell you that Vista is CPU hungry. I went from an older 3.2GHz P4 to a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo and the difference is huge. From what I can tell, the CPU makes the biggest difference as long as you have 1GB memory. And for a laptop, definitely get the fastest hard drive available.

Other than having a few programs that are not 100% compatible, I very much like Vista.

Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

07/11/2007 12:16:53 PM · #14

Originally posted by LoudDog:

The graphics card is a: 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 with TurboCache. What ever that means. (I know nothing about graphics cards). Itâ��s a free upgrade from the base and is the best Dell offers on this machine.

Unless you are going to be playing games on it, stay away from the powerful video cards. They do nothing but eat battery life. If you can, go with the Intel GMA 3000 or thereabouts.

ClubJuggle

Canon EOS-400D Rebel XTi

07/11/2007 12:22:09 PM · #15

Dell will sell you a no-OS laptop if you like; you just need to call and ask.

If you plan to run your laptop with just the included hardware you should be fine. If you plan to add hardware you may run into trouble. From everything I'm seeing, Linux has better hardware support right now than Vista does.

~Terry

07/11/2007 12:23:59 PM · #16

Originally posted by TJinGuy:

Originally posted by LoudDog:

The graphics card is a: 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 with TurboCache. What ever that means. (I know nothing about graphics cards). Itâ��s a free upgrade from the base and is the best Dell offers on this machine.

Unless you are going to be playing games on it, stay away from the powerful video cards. They do nothing but eat battery life. If you can, go with the Intel GMA 3000 or thereabouts.

Im sure they are not as efficient but in 2D mode my X700 does nothing but run cool and idle. It takes less then 4% of its capability todo normal tasks. It does however eat more energy during video then a normal card because I have alot of video filtering setup.

But never had a decent GPU on a laptop maybe you have more experience with it then me.

07/11/2007 12:30:05 PM · #17

Originally posted by ClubJuggle:

But you only save like $25, so it is worth getting it with Vista, trying it and then changing it if you hate it.

Message edited by author 2007-07-11 12:30:26.

Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

07/11/2007 01:03:40 PM · #18

Thanks for all the great input so far!

I think I'll stick with Vista and swap it only if I hate it or run into problems.

Still debating on the hard drive speed choice though. I'm patient and my current computers are dogs, so I'm thinking if I didn't get the faster one I'd never even know I needed it. How much of a speed difference is there? 10%, 25%, 50%?

ClubJuggle

Canon EOS-400D Rebel XTi

07/11/2007 01:05:33 PM · #19

Originally posted by LoudDog:

What are your choices?

~Terry

Nikolai1024

Nikon D300

Nikon AF Zoom-Nikkor 24-85mm f2.8-4.0D

07/11/2007 01:07:38 PM · #20

Originally posted by LoudDog:

Not sure about % but 7200 is much faster than 5400. Read //www.tomshardware.com/ for more.

Message edited by author 2007-07-11 13:07:50.

Nikon AF Zoom-Nikkor 24-85mm f2.8-4.0D

07/11/2007 03:28:19 PM · #21

Originally posted by ClubJuggle:

Originally posted by LoudDog:
Thanks for all the great input so far!

I think I'll stick with Vista and swap it only if I hate it or run into problems.

Still debating on the hard drive speed choice though. I'm patient and my current computers are dogs, so I'm thinking if I didn't get the faster one I'd never even know I needed it. How much of a speed difference is there? 10%, 25%, 50%?

What are your choices?

~Terry

80GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM) [Included in Price]
120GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM) [add $55 or $2/month1]
160GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM) [add $125 or $4/month1]
80GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) [add $100 or $3/month1]
100GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) [add $150 or $5/month1]
160GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) [add $200 or $6/month1]
200GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) [add $250 or $8/month1]

The 100 gig 7200 is on back order.

Edit to add:
The 5400's have a 12ms seek time and the 7200s have a 11ms seek time, spindal start time is all 5 sec, buffer cach size is 8mb on all except the one included in price (2mb) and the 200 gig (16mb)

Message edited by author 2007-07-11 15:35:25.

Nikolai1024

Nikon D300

07/11/2007 03:30:54 PM · #22

Originally posted by LoudDog:

Originally posted by ClubJuggle:

Originally posted by LoudDog:
Thanks for all the great input so far!

I think I'll stick with Vista and swap it only if I hate it or run into problems.

Still debating on the hard drive speed choice though. I'm patient and my current computers are dogs, so I'm thinking if I didn't get the faster one I'd never even know I needed it. How much of a speed difference is there? 10%, 25%, 50%?

What are your choices?

~Terry

80GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM) [Included in Price]
120GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM) [add $55 or $2/month1]
160GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM) [add $125 or $4/month1]
80GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) [add $100 or $3/month1]
100GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) [add $150 or $5/month1]
160GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) [add $200 or $6/month1]
200GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) [add $250 or $8/month1]

The 100 gig 7200 is on back order.

200GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)

You'll thank yourself later.

07/11/2007 03:50:41 PM · #23

Originally posted by LoudDog:

That pricing makes no sense. Looking at Newegg.com for reference, an 80GB 5400 drive costs %50-$60, a 120GB 5400 drive costs $70-$80, an 80GB 7200 drive costs $80-$90, and they only have one 100GB 7200 drive and it costs $109. And remember that Dell is buying drives from the lowest bidder and their cost is much lower then we could ever get.

So why do they charge twice as much to go from 80-120GB?
Or why $100 to upgrade the 80GB to 7200?

If it was me, I would buy the laptop with the cheapest drive possible and then buy the drive I actually wanted and install it. Then you could buy a 2.5" USB enclosure for the old drive and have both.

Oh and don't even get me started on memory. They rape you on that one.

Message edited by author 2007-07-11 15:51:21.