HP 8510W has terrible performance with default Vista 64-bit install

So, just got my shiny new 8510w with Vista Business. Specs are good, with 4GB RAM, 2.4GHZ proc, 100GB 7200rpm drive. I initiated the installation process, chose Vista 64-bit, and waited, waited, and waited some more.

Approximately 2 hours later, the damn thing finally installed. It was kind of awesome, since with Vista Install, and HP partitions, I had only about 54GB left on the 94-95GB drive. Yeah..... (I know, I know, I can play with restore settings and such to save some space).

I finally patched it up, and the system ran like a dog. It was slow, hard drive was constantly swapping, took a long time to copy files from network, just terrible performance. This was day and night with my Vista Business install on an old HP TC1100 laptop, where even with only 1GB of RAM and 1.2 Pentium M CPU, the thing was snappy. Now, I did optimize that install, disabled all the shiny crap, disabled bunch of unnecessary services, etc...

Still... for a regular user, who is not familiar with systems, this would have been a terrible experience. For me, it was simply annoying. I am in the process of installing Ubuntu just for the hell of it right now (killed that useless recovery partition), before doing manual Vista install on the thing. Going to give it a go, before going to our corporate XP image.

 

My default Vista Business install was also slow as heck. In fact I just said screw it and wiped the whole thing. Since HP gives you actual Vista DVDs and a driver DVD I had no issue with cleaning out the HDD and starting fresh.

The new install was much, much faster, although as you said I had to disable a ton of services and extra crap to get it anywhere close to XP speed/resource usage levels.

 

Yeah, that's probably what I am going to do (either that or go with XP). Although, this Ubuntu install is working very well, and I got VMware Workstation going with XP image.

 

I'm a few hours from buying the 8510p (not "w") Vista 64-bit version...should I instead take the XP Pro version instead? I don't have any problems in making a new clean install - but what are all those services you have diasabled, is it easy to disable them?
I have a XP Corporate laying around - so should I just take the Vista 64-bit and keep it for later?

Also, will the 8510p be a good purchase for games?

 

Not exaclty on topic but I ran my 8510w with VB32(default build) for a day before I rebuilt in xppro. After taking some of the clutter off I was not upset with the performance at all.
I will likey take advantage of that VB64 disk when vista settles down and that change makes sense.

 

Get Vista for later. Future investments ftw

Yes it's good for games :O

As to the services, just search for Vista tweak guide or streamlining vista or something. I was able to find some good guides on what services we don't need etc.

 

Well, not sure about games, but Vista 32-bit can be tweaked quite a bit. As I mentioned, I have it running on TC1100 with not too many issues, and it's a slow 1.2 Pentium M (the power-saving version). So, I am sure I could get the 32-bit edition going without too much problem.

However, I do have 4GB of RAM, so that would be a waste of a gig of memory . I dunno, I am actually fairly happy with Ubuntu (minus some sleep, hibernation, and multi-monitor setup issues). Installed it on a whim, and been pleased with how far Linux on desktop has come in a few years, but that's a different thread.

I think I am going to ghost my install, and then install vista-64 from scratch.