Looking for new OS

Ive just about had it with Vista on my laptop and want to try a new OS before I junk this thing. Is anyone running Win7 or Ubuntu on a HP DV5z AMD 64 bit laptop? The machine is about a year old and I have 4gb of RAM and the thing is a dog. Ive used Ubuntu in the past on Dell laptops and its a pain to get everything running wireless drivers, flash, etc. Win7 being a RC may or may not have everything up to speed on for my machine.

So, if you have Win7 or Ubuntu on a HP DV5z please give me a shout, good or bad.

 

You'd probably have more success asking your question in the .HP-specific forum, since your question has more to do with what will, or will not, work on an _HP machine.

Rather than posting a double thread, ask the moderators to move this thread to the _HP forum.

 

Thread moved to HP forum.

 

windows 7 has great driver support.. pretty much everything works out of the box or after a windows update check (there may be some aditional drivers you'll need, but i didn't on my dv4)
also, with your specs, it should run good speed-wise

i don't know the situation with ubuntu tho

 

I run the latest 64-bit Ubuntu (Jaunty 9.04) and everything works out of the box - this is not on the 5X.
Just remember the first thing u should install on a new ubuntu install is "ubuntu-restricted-extras" to get ALL the codecs, etc. The only codec that you may have a problem with is 64-bit flash (which is for all OSes in one way or another).
Just download http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html and unzip/copy to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins to fix that.

 

Have you tried a clean install of Vista? Vista normally performs great on hp hw (I only have hp hw, and it works great on mine. not your exact laptop, though).

I don't apply much tweaking at all. I change the search index folders which get indexed, and that's about it.

But a cleaninstall can do wonders to some crapware-riddled laptops including hp ones.

 

You never stated what your current OS is, but if it is XP, 2K3, or Vista, then it is down to how you have it installed and tweaked. Changing OS would only help because you are doing a fresh install and possibly a reformat. Fragmentation on NTFS is not that big of a deal anyways.

 

I guess that depends on what you call a big deal... I consider the fact that defrag of an actively written to disc is essential otherwise you will have an obvious performance loss a big deal.

Although originally hyped as fragment "proof", NTFS inherently fragments data as it writes, as a standard. I could go into detail here, but feel free to google it to your pleasure.

 

Windows 7 is what Vista should have been, it's sort of what XP was for 2000. If Vista works then 7 will too, and it will work better.

I have Ubuntu on my DV5, i am happy with it atm, but it took weeks of tweaking to get it to run flawlessly. If you're not willing to learn how to configure drivers, how to get your fonts to display properly (Ubuntu fonts are a huge mess by default), how to make your audio stutter-free, and how to make your videos play at more than 5 fps, i suggest you to go with Win7. 64-bit please.

 

I agree that W7 is what Vista was supposed to be. I would recommend it and guarantee that W7 will run just fine if your machine is a year old. I would just recommend the 32 bit variety, as for general use 32 bit is easier to setup, easier to get software onto, and the advantages of 64 bit OS still are primarily on paper, for those using the computer for general purpose.

 

I installed Win 7 on a 6 year old Dell XPS Gen 2 and the thing rocked!

 

I have only had a few minor issues with 64-bit Vista, and it is the OS of my main computer. If your processor is 64-bit why not use it to its full capability? The only thing that has been dropped from 64-bit is 16-bit compatibility, but NTDVM wasn't great anyway, and you can use a virtual machine with much better performance.

There is no reason NOT to go 64-bit, and it's the only way if you have 4GB RAM or more. I have 8GB in my main computer. And i always found 32-bit Vista slower than it's 64-bit counterpart, even if most of the software is still 32-bit. The drivers are 64-bit and that's what matters.