Topic: the laptop actually caught fire tonight.

[DarkRider]

Just a thought why not get a USB powered cooling pad to keep it running nice and cool?

[fuzzybutt]

i have one

[333]

I have been told that if you do the downgrade thing, there's where you may have problems.  I have 2 machines with Vista, and haven't had a single problem.  People are so afraid of change, so much that they imagine potential problems.  Or they listen to those negative Mac commercials.

[fuzzybutt]

i have a friend who is an enginner/it man for several atlanta area radio stations and he wouldnt have a pc with vista. BUT i'm going to use it till i have a compatability or other problem

[Dusthawk]

I've been building computers since "93, yes, Windows 3 and 3.1 along with DOS 6.0, 6.1, 6.2 and 6.22. In these many years the best advice I can give for anyone is never buy the new operating system until at least 6 months after initial release. Those 6 months will give Microsoft enough time to work out any and all kinks from feedback received from real world applications. Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, and XP all shared the same types of hiccups, and Vista is no exception, it just took those few months to get it just right. The only other suggestion is running a minimum of one Gig ram, preferably 2 Gig, unless you will be running the 64 bit version of Vista Ultimate, then you can easily run up to 8 Gigs Ram.

[eldar]

See someone to back me. ALL systems have kinks when they first come out. People just forget. XP had plenty of problems when it came out. Look how so many love it now.

As for downgrading, you MAY have issues. See pc vendors no longer carry drivers for xp for new computers, not much anyways. BUT you can still go to the hardware manufacturers site and many times find the driver. But give vista a chance. Clean up the junk that starts with the pc and it should work very well.

[UnCrash]

I'm with Dusthawk and Eldar.  I've been building and repairing computers since 1990 and put Vista on my wife's new laptop purchased 4 months ago.  I also recommended it for my in-laws (who I end up doing tech support for).

Most major issues are fixed with it, it's more pleasant to use, and the hibernate feature actually works great.

[techy5025]

Vista works OK with a laptop...not so much with a desktop with lots of old hardware. I also don't like that it slaps me on the wrist every time I try do something that it thinks might "harm" the computer. And if you really want an exercise in futility, try to share it on a network. It takes a fulltime admin guy to figure that one out.....at least four levels of nested options, privilege levels, etc. I have yet to see a single advantage to Vista over XP.....maybe if all you use it for is to check e-mail.

Most new machines don't come with virgin Vista disks to allow a clean install. You have to install from backup disks that you create and that have all the same crap on them. The first thing I did with my new HP laptop was blew away Vista and reinstalled XP with all the updates slipstreamed in. The experts say that Microsoft will be glad to get rid of Vista and move on to the next version.

...in my opinion of course. 

Jim

[333]

Knowing there might be an issue installing an old LabelWriter on my wife's new Vista Desktop machine, I went to the LabelWriter's web site to look for updated drivers and found them.  Works like a charm, even when using it from an XP machine on my network.