I recently bought a Gateway laptop (2Gb RAM, T7400 CPU, 200Gb 7200rpm HDD) with Vista Ultimate for under $1000. I figured it was a great deal since Vista Ultimate was $300 list by itself and I'd have an opportunity to test drive Microsoft's latest. Oops. I primarily use WinXP SP2 as a workstation/gaming system with Linux doing all my home networking chores. A bit of background, I'm an MCSE and RHCE with 10 years of IT experience (majority in web hosting).
I've had nothing but problems with Vista and ended up installing Fedora Core 8 and WinXP instead. To be fair, FC8 gave me a little trouble too (wireless) but I was able to solve it without spending $60 for a technical support call. Now that my FC8 problem is resolved, it just WORKS. I find it offensive that Microsoft wants *me* to pay for problems with their broken O/S.
Between file sharing problems between XP and Vista (easily fixed but I'm stunned), severe performance degradation over XP or Linux, random system freezes, a Windows Security patch that renders the system inoperable (that M$ keeps forcing), annoying and repeated harassing prompts and DRM stuff and...... Forget it. I've simply had enough.
Vista Ultimate is a $300 expense that I will never personally make. With the exception of eye candy, Vista offers absolutely ZERO over XP from a user's perspective. My next expense will be a dedicated gaming system when XP is no longer a viable gaming platform.
Fortunately, Gateway offers XP drivers for my laptop on their website so I wasn't forced to hunt. Since you didn't have this luxury? I will never buy a product from HP again.
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I recently bought a Gateway laptop (2Gb RAM, T7400 CPU, 200Gb 7200rpm HDD) with Vista Ultimate for under $1000. I figured it was a great deal since Vista Ultimate was $300 list by itself and I'd have an opportunity to test drive Microsoft's latest. Oops. I primarily use WinXP SP2 as a workstation/gaming system with Linux doing all my home networking chores. A bit of background, I'm an MCSE and RHCE with 10 years of IT experience (majority in web hosting).
...... Forget it. I've simply had enough.
I've had nothing but problems with Vista and ended up installing Fedora Core 8 and WinXP instead. To be fair, FC8 gave me a little trouble too (wireless) but I was able to solve it without spending $60 for a technical support call. Now that my FC8 problem is resolved, it just WORKS. I find it offensive that Microsoft wants *me* to pay for problems with their broken O/S.
Between file sharing problems between XP and Vista (easily fixed but I'm stunned), severe performance degradation over XP or Linux, random system freezes, a Windows Security patch that renders the system inoperable (that M$ keeps forcing), annoying and repeated harassing prompts and DRM stuff and
Vista Ultimate is a $300 expense that I will never personally make. With the exception of eye candy, Vista offers absolutely ZERO over XP from a user's perspective. My next expense will be a dedicated gaming system when XP is no longer a viable gaming platform.
Fortunately, Gateway offers XP drivers for my laptop on their website so I wasn't forced to hunt. Since you didn't have this luxury? I will never buy a product from HP again.
-Brian