Is Vista OK?

flossy_splodge

Is Vista sufficiently bug free yet? There is a nice looking laptop going on offer at Aldi on Thursday but its running Vista and I still seem to be reading less than good reviews of it. Any advice please? The spec is exactly what I need and it is under £500 all in.:T

albertross_2

Only time will tell.. but it works, just make sure any hardware you intend to plug in (printers etc..) has vista drivers available.

You can get laptops at just over £320 from here if you want to save some money

https://www.dmxdimension.com

AMD® Turion 64 X2 Mobile TL52 Vista™ Business 15.4" WXGA 1024MB 120GB 256MB ATI Radeon® Xpress 1150 8x DVD Writer £387 N05153

https://www.ebuyer.com

cd02

i've been using vista for about 2 months now and it seems fine.. there's a couple of little bugs that pop up now and then but nothing thats gonna kill the laptop off or anything.. i'd go for it...

dudleyboy

I'd definitely go for it. We bought the last Aldi laptop the other month. They flew off the shelves like hotcakes and were sold out within 10 minutes of the store opening. All my local stores sold out within the hour and I had to drive 40 miles to pick one up from another store (they don't usually reserve so I was very thankful they made the exception)!

If you are seriously considering buying it then get there early - i.e. if the store opens at 9am on Thurs get there no later than 7.30 and join the queue! I'm not kidding, these things GO!

As for Vista, I've had no probs with it. Took a few days to familiarise myself but i'm now switching between XP on the PC and Vista on the laptop with great ease. I've not noticed any bugs at all but do be sure you download Vista drivers for your existing hardware (printer, etc) as the XP ones on your CDs prob won't work.

For the specs it's an absolute bargain. Hesitate and you'll kick yourself for missing out as these offers prove very popular.

mclaren_2

Ive been running Vista Ultimate since the day it came out on my laptop and it works absolutly fantastic. No bugs that i have seen, though, i have had a few updates in the past couple of weeks

make sure the laptop has atleast 1gb ram cos it needs that to run smooth. Prefferably, get 1.5gb + (i run at 1.5GB and its smooth as anything and tv on it works fantasitc)

Cricri

If Vista does not offer anything you actually need, I wouldn't suggest an update. And yes, I'd at least wait for the first service pack. WinXP has only been rock stable since SP2 for me (it was already quite ok at SP1 though). Besides, Vista is not actually cheap, and no, not all drivers/software are compatible yet.
Personally, I could get a legal Vista licence for free via Academic Alliance, and I have a 3.5GHz CPU, 2GB RAM and 320GB hard drive. But WinXP is rock stable, uses little resources, and offers everything I need. Therefore, I will not update in a while.
At the end of the day, it's your call! If you want to have the useless eye candy which sucks up your resources so that you can brag about how you have the latest Windows which looks better, then by all means go for it right now.
Some people will say "oh, but it's not all eye candy". True, but whatever it can do that could be appealing to me, there are some freeware working for WinXP which do it for me.

JonnyThunder

I've also been running Vista since the first pre-release candidate. I bought Ultimate when it was released and haven't turned back. There are however, some things i'd do to Vista as soon as its installed.

• Turn off UAC
• Turn off indexing
• Take an image backup using the tool provided

The UAC is probably the most annoying 'feature' of Vista. It's a protection system which just gets in the way (it asks you to confirm everything, and sometimes prevents software from installing correctly).

Like a guy earlier said, make sure you have drivers for all your devices. Also remember that some of them may be supported natively within Vista. And one more thing - don't expect all of your software to work after the upgrade! There is a vista upgrade advisor here, which will help you decide whether it's worthwhile. You can install and run this on your existing setup and it will indicate possible bottlenecks and incompatabilities.

Cricri

I already turn off file indexing and seurity centre as soon as I install XP And few other things.
You BOUGHT Vista ultimate? What are you doing on MoneySavingExpert anyway? ;p
As for the upgrade advisor, I do understand that it will point out incompatibilities, and might tell you to buy more RAM or such, but I can't imagine it saying "Hey, but your machine works mightily fine, you really don't need to buy Vista from us".

JonnyThunder

I kinda see it differently. I mean, I understand the view that 'if it aint broke don't fix it' - but in all honesty, I went into buying vista without knowing too much about it (despite having used the beta) and was really glad I did. Because although it didn't provide too much new functionality thats of real use, it does run a hell of a lot faster for business apps than XP. So purely from a productivity point of view it was worthwhile for me. So the advisor may not say "yeah, your current OS works great - dont upgrade" but it also wont say "if you install this OS, you'll see a 33% performance increase". Swings and roundabouts really.

And yes, I did buy it! :mad: I've been a naughty boy in recent times, but everything I run is legitimate now because I have a business to think about (gone are my student days). And although I think I paid around £120 for an OEM version, I think it was worth every penny.

Millionaire

Ive been running Vista since it came out as well. Had no problems with it, runs very smoothly. All my hardware and software works fine.

Like others have said, Just make sure your Hardware and software that you use is supported by checking their relevant websites. make sure you load the new vista drivers and it should all work fine.

If you try loading XP drivers you may have problems.

Anyway according to Microsoft, XP home is not going to be supported 2 years after Vista Release. So why go for a OS(XP) on a new machine that wont have support in 1 1/2years time? esp if you want it for 4-5 years.

Also can someone tell me "why to turn off file indexing?" thanks

jampton

Yes go for it and buy the laptop - there should be no reason why you can't install XP on the laptop if you have any problems with Vista - you should be able revert back to Vista in the future .