Afew months ago I bought a new Acer laptop with 2Gb RAM that runs Vista. It’s been a total fucking dog since I got it.
Worst symptoms:
Won’t wake from sleep - I have to hard-restart it every time. It always gives me the bios screen offering me safe start etc. when I do. Then it goes into ‘resume’ mode and 99% of the time will have lost connection to the wireless network.
Something about the wireless adapter is banjaxed.
Out of the box, it couldn’t read WPA or WEP encryption. It could see the SSID but never connected. So I had to unencrypt the signal and lock it down to known MAC addresses.
Now it connects, but most of the time it’ll hold the signal for a while, then the computer will lock completely for a minute or so - not even the mouse will respond - and then it’ll leap back into life with DNS errors. If I check the IPconfig, everything will look fine, DHCP enabled and IP address allocated, with gateway and DNS IPs there too, but it will have lost the ability to communicate with the outside world, even though it’s still connected. I don’t think it’s the (Belkin N+) router as this does not happen to my work laptop running XP, nor my roommate’s XP lappy.
Rather than reinstall Vista, I’m considering moving straight to Windows 7 - but I have no idea if this will cause me to lose the drivers for the wireless adapter. Will it blast the entire disk? Will I need to reinstall all my software? What about drivers for all the (internal) peripherals?
(Is it really the fault of the OS? Could it be a faulty driver? Or a hardware issue?)
I always have that problem with sleep mode, across several different machines. I’ve assumed it’s some app I’m running that interferes - background scanner or something.
If it was me, I’d download the necessary drivers from the different manufacturers (not Acer) and reinstall Vista and see if that doesn’t clean up your driver problem. I have a compaq tablet bought direct from them that never could connect until I reinstalled fresh and voila! suddenly everything started.
That said, Win7 is supposedly a beauty. I have my copy on preorder. But if I was trying to isolate a computer problem, I’d hold off introducing new variables.
I’ve been playing around with Windows 7 for a while. It’s great: what Vista should have been - it feels really light and fast. There is an in-place upgrade path for some versions of Vista to W7, but I’d reinstall from scratch.
You can get a free download of the Release Candidate for another week or so here:
and that’s good till the end of June next year. The RC is pretty fucking solid, but if you have MSDN (or Technet maybe? not sure) access through work or whatever the RTM version is available for you now. Microsoft seem to have got the collective finger out with this, and if I had to pay for it, I would.
Windows 7 is Vista with speed tuning, a knock-off of the OSX dock and some really nifty user interface improvements. Windows 7 is not a massive overhaul or departure from Vista. I’m planning on buying Windows 7 for both my PCs, but that’s not because Vista is teh sux0r. I use Vista right now and quite like it, it sounds like your issues are driver problems mostly with maybe some software problems mixed in.
Windows 7 is pretty much a service pack for Vista that they’re making you pay for. Not even as big of a change as from 95 to 98. I’m pretty sure they’re calling it by a new name simply to get away from the name Vista, because it’s gotten such a bad rep.
(Hopefully this isn’t too much of a hijack) Since the topic may come up as it is also soon-to-be-released: Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6) is almost a whole now operating system underneath, that looks and acts almost exactly the same, except it’s a ton faster. And they’re pretty much charging the bare minimum they can get away with.
So, to sum up:
Vista/Windows 7: pretty much a point release update (version 6.0 to 6.1 - yes, Windows 7 is actually Windows 6.1)
Leopard to Snow Leopard: Big changes underneath, very little on top (10.5.x to 10.6.x)
If you’re having issues with Vista, I’d upgrade to 7. Even if you’re not having problems with Leopard, I’d upgrade to Snow Leopard.
First off, if your laptop was borked when you got it then you should have taken it back. With the problems you have, I’d suggest a few things:
Take it back.
Check for a BIOS update on the Acer site and see if that solves the sleep problem.
Check for a WiFi card update on the Acer site.
A quick look online seems to show a few people with the same connection issues as you (and I also had them with Vista - only had it happen a couple of times with Win 7). A possible solution could be to try disabling IPv6.
Avoid networking hardware from Belkin.
Re: Windows 7. I’m currently running it on an Acer laptop with 1gig of memory that originally came with Vista (which I replaced with XP after about 2 months). Up to now, I’d have to say it’s a great improvement over Vista and many of the most annoying things seem to have been dealt with.
As to downsides, I can’t think of when compared to Vista. Many drivers should be there when you install and, if you are missing any, then a quick pop over to the Acer site should get you the ones you need.
It was irrelevant, but I don’t mind. I love Macs too even though I don’t have one, so I can appreciate the monomaniacal enthusiasm vicariously.
So if I’m planning to download the release candidate, I’m wondering which drivers will be plug-and-play, and which I will have to back up? Graphics? Sound card? Wireless adapter? USB? IDE?
ETA: hi Kal - you answered my question before I asked it - get out of my brain!?
I haven’t been seriously thinking about it (at least not yet) but I’m wondering about updating from Windows XP to Windows 7. I think I read somewhere that this would be much more difficult than upgrading from Vista. I’m fairly happy with the way XP is running on my desktop and laptop, and have no plans to replace either in the foreseeable future (barring catastrophic failure, of course, which is how I ended up buying both of them in 2006).
Windows NT 4.0 = NT 4.0
Windows 2000 = NT 5.0
Windows XP = NT 5.1
Windows Vista = NT 6.0
Windows 7 = NT 6.1
This makes it a lot clearer than Microsoft’s advertising hype, which claims XP and Windows 7 were both “new” operating systems. XP was just a facelift to 2000. Everything under the hood was mostly the same. For Windows 7 they just took Vista and fixed all the crap that people were complaining about.
Microsoft has a horrible record with respect to backwards compatibility, and they openly admit that they intentionally break backwards compatibility any time they think they can make the OS “better”. Changes in the major version number (NT 5 to NT 6 for example) have a much greater chance of having something not work than changes in the minor version number (NT 5.0 to 5.1). So, between 2000 and XP, most of your drivers and programs will work. XP to 7 will likely run you into a lot more trouble, as would XP to Vista. Vista to 7 is not likely to give you problems, especially considering that 7 is basically a huge bug fix for Vista.
Wow, not only have all my problems evaporated, the thing is blisteringly fast - including my download speeds increasing, and rendering of web content almost instantaneous. Wonder if the shitty Acer management software was also part of the problem?
Speaking as a Mac Zealot, windows 7 will make it a lot harder for mac folks to point and laugh.
But since I use XP, Linux and Win 7 on a daily basis, I think it’s pretty darned nifty and will be more than happy to leave it in an always on VM…I just wish they hadn’t broken home networking. I have a Printer sitting next to the Win7 box at home and nothing that isn’t windows 7 can print to it.
But this IS a service pack… of Vista! It’s also had the largest public beta in history. There’ll be some growing pains, But I think folks’ll be okay for the most part.
