I’ve had over 500 transactions on ebay and never been screwed. I’ve bought 2 laptops and many things around $1000. The feedback system works, and I buy from ebay I’m buying from an authorized dell seller.
And I have had two and got fucked on one.* What is your point? Do you really believe that your chances of getting fucked are greater with a large company like Dell than you are with some person you might never hear from again on eBay?
This is not always true. I had problems with my video card (Geforce Go7200). Games didn’t run properly until I upgraded the driver from a 3rd party source.
I have been runnig vista without a hitch for about 6 months now…had no driver problems… Switched from 2000 pro. Many low end machines I have seen being sold with vista are barely adequate to run it, so much of the blame should fall on the hardware manufacturers, not microsoft…people think OS upgrade = faster, nothing could be further from the truth.
Oh boy you asked for it.
Everything. Software designers responsible for it deserve to be fired and shunned into a different profession that they’d be more suitable for, like fast food.
You have to hunt for everything. Nothing is in the same place it was almost.
It’s been several months since I uninstalled from my laptop (which came with it), but one example that springs is to mind is trying to get the configuration settings for tcp/ip for the wireless adapter.
In 2k/xp/2k3 all I’d have to do is right click on the connection and select properties and click properties. Select tcp/ip and click properties again. Easy as pie.
Vista I can’t even remember exactly. First I had no separate icon for the connection, all the connections had one icon they shared which made it a pain in the ass. There was no obvious way to give them separate icons either. Why can’t they have separate icons? What’s wrong with the option? Right clicking the incompently designed connection thingy gave me the option to “manage networks” Then somewhere in that was an option that lead to this weird network thing for managing security which could be useful except it was a choir getting it do anything but apply the default settings so why’d did they even bother with it? WTF mate? Then finally in there was a link to “network connections” which finally gave me an icon that I could right click to pick properties and configure the network connection. WTF mate?
The icon tray was nuts. In xp/2k3 I can hide any icon I want to, there’s a little arrow by the icon tray and I click it and bring em back lickty split. This is nice. I hide the volume icon so it’s there and easy to get to but out of site, the battery meter icon so I can check the power levels when I want to, but it’s not using the display too much otherwise. Except in Vista these icons are either on\off, and there’s no option to hide them. WTF mate?
Don’t get me started on the file search program. It’s useless. Try find an exe file, or search containing text.
I’d have to reboot to linux and use the linux find utility to find alot of junk. WTF mate?
Btw a couple of updates aren’t going to fix vista just like a couple of rivets aren’t gonna raise the titanic.
Oh and it’d skip folders for searching too which was annoying as heck.
oh and the folder explorer! My god that thing was hideous, and completely uncustimizable. Why couldn’t I pick which buttons were on it? like the up button. There was no up button. Why can’t I have an up button?
Muscle memory and three or four absent minded clicks on the up button takes alot less mental energy then the stupid bread crumb thing. It sure is crumby alright.
Rather than dump the original Vista and perhaps ruin your guarantee, I presume another option is to partition the disk, and run XP off one partition.
Well, I ended up getting the original latitude I wanted but with Vista instead of XP(not directly from Dell)
I heard it is easier and legal to downgrade with Vista business. Is this true? If so, how is it done?
Thanks for all the help so far.
Any tips on how to downgrade vista business to xp pro?
If you didn’t get it from Dell, does this mean it doesn’t have a warranty?
If not, and you have an XP Pro disk, just do a format/reinstall.
Try this instead:
[Forget it for Vista Home]Install Virtual PC on Vista. Boot to Vista, install XP through Virtual PC. This way you can preserve your current system and install XP without causing harm or unreasonable downtime.[/FifVH]
Cool. I’ll try that.
And it does have a 3 year warranty through Dell.
If you head on over to notebookreview, there is a thread on how someone did exactly what you are trying to do.
I really wouldn’t recommend running what’s going to be someone’s main OS on a virtual machine - it’ll perform like an absolute dog. And imagine the hassle of booting two operating systems every time you turn your computer on. Great though Virtual PC and VMWare are, I really wouldn’t want to be doing significant work on them, and particularly not if the main OS went completely unused.
As posted by drachillix in the second response to your OP, yes, you are allowed to install XP Professional if you have an OEM licence for Vista Business. You have to get hold of your own XP disc somehow, though. Then follow the tortuous procedure outlined in flex727’s link to get all the drivers you need. Then install XP as normal. Then when activating, you’ll have to call up Microsoft and explain that you’re downgrading, and give them proof that you have a licensed version of Vista Business. Then they’ll activate your machine.
Have you ever installed XP yourself before? Because to be honest, given the apparent difficulties of getting drivers for the machine you’ve purchased, it sounds like you could very well end up turning your laptop into a brick unless you know what you’re doing.
I’m hoping the OP will use Vista for a while before he decides to dump it. You may end up liking it.
Give it a month or so and by the time the month is up you’ll be so used to it this whole discussion will be moot.
Well, quite. I certainly wouldn’t choose to upgrade to Vista just yet, despite the fact that I get a free copy through my department, but just looking at the driver hassles involved in getting XP onto this laptop it’s hard to see how learning Vista is going to be more of a pain than the downgrade. You’re going to have to get to grips with it at some point, and it might as well be in school when you’ve got all the time in the world. 