Vista skeptic

I'm planning on buying an HP 2500 in the next month or so. I like to wait for an OS to have a revision before converting to it, which in this case would be Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. Since that's not out until late this year (at the earliest), I'd greatly prefer to get an HP with Windows XP for the time being. Is there any way for me to order a new HP with XP instead of Vista?

 

Short answer: No, not from HP.

 

Yeah, it's not happening.

Try Ubuntu

 

I think that generally the problems with Vista are overhyped. Vista runs extremely well for me, all of my old hardware works well. I must have read 100 times on this board someone saying "I just bought a new laptop and such-n-such would not run so I loaded XP". Here is what I am running perfectly

Autocad 2000i
Autocad 2006
MS Office XP
My 3 year old HP printer works just fine
My 4 year old Canon scanner works just fine
My Logitech MX5000 desktop works sorta fine
AVG antivirus runs great

Vista does not crash on me whatsoever. I have not monkeyed around with updating drivers or anything I am using my DV9335NR just as it came out of the box 3 months ago.

I dont game on the laptop so I cant comment on that

 

I think depends on which market.

I notice on the Malaysia HP Compaq website for 2510p, there are 3 models pre configured with XP Pro.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/my/en/sm/WF25a/1090709-1124051-1124051-1124051-12434624-80114051.html

 

I'm with SECA on this one. I've been running Vista on my DV6000 since Vista RC2, and I've had no problems with it at all. It's been rock solid and hasn't crashed once.

People who post on forums about Vista inevitably post about their problems with it. The folks with no problems with Vista are too busy using it to post about how good it is. And it really is a fantastic OS: I wouldn't dream of installing XP when I could use Vista.

Try it with an open mind, you might just be pleasantly surprised!

 

No way to order with XP, but you can do it yourself. I've made a step by step guide.
http://www.nogodforme.com/HPDV6500T.htm

 

I mainly surf the net and use Microsoft Word and am loving VISTA ! Btw, someone just told me that the level of security on Vista is even better then the Mac - Now, that's impressive ! I have had ZERO problems running VISTA Premium

 

I would like to see someone post a list of programs that they were unable to get running on Vista.

 

No you can't but you can always get a XP Cd and install it yourself

 

I really like Vista. The search features and the ability to launch any application, file, network location etc, from the search box in the start menu has completely changed how I interact with my computer. My desktop has gone bare, my quicklaunch bar is now nearly empty and my mouse has grown lonely.

I am now using Home Premium at home and Business at work. I have not had any compatibility issues except Tiger Woods 2007. I really can't blame Bill for not personally addressing the fact that I would like to play Tiger Woods 2007 while I travel. I am sure EA Sports will get their act together and 08 will be compatible.

I am perplexed by all the forum belly-aching about Vista being unstable or too hard. I have a dozen Linux installs under my belt across several computers and they have all worked, but required way more knowledge and effort then either of my Vista installs.

I think the rational approach is to inventory your key hardware and software and check out there compatibility. Get the facts and decide if you can handle the impact of a Vista conversion. I would have reservations converting an old workstation to Vista if you barely had the minimum requirements, but in my experience a modern computer built for Vista provides a fast, efficient workstation and a fun, productive computing experience.

Aero is useless eye candy (pretty though), but there are significant improvements in Vista that you will want to take advantage of at some point.
Matt

 

Good post, my point exactly

 

I my computer is a windows Vista Capable, wen I got it came with XP MCE. After waiting for the end of the spring semeste to install Vista, finally last week I decided that it was time to install Vista Bussines that I got for free from my major department and even though every one is running craizy saying all the problems they had with Vista; I didn't care and went forward.

Installation process easier than XP, so far I have no problems with it, every program that I have works fine under Vista. Execept for some free utilities, but that not important. So far I have play some games and it works as well as XP.

If I have to complain, I would complain that it run a little slow, due to the fact that I have only 1gb of ram. But that is my problem. Every body know that Vista requieres a lot of memory and as higher the version they use the most they need depending on what they are planning to do on the computer. I am planning on upgrading it to 2gb at least, since I know I will need it, because the way I use my computer.

The only thing I don't like about Vista is that it ask permision to open every thing. But that doesn't bother me a lot. It is not afection my system performance.

I also installed Vista home premiun to my sister computer, a month ago. So far no complaints from her.

 

HP and all the other oem's for that matter give vista a bad name with all the crap and bloatware they pre-install on our machines and their driver release management.

Here's what I do:
Perform a clean vista installation and get only the wired network driver from HP.
Run windows update and get most of the updated certified drivers from Microsoft rather then the dodgy 'total care advisor'..
Add ONLY the very specific HP drivers (ie quicklaunch etc) from HP's support page and you will be a happy camper..

 

To f15hp, you can turn off the USER ACCOUNT CONTROL (UAC) in User Management. I also found it really annoying when I need to get things done quickly (but at least, it gives people a chance to make a second thought before doing something).

I've been using Vista business (I don't like the others for the full load of Media Center stuff), and so far my notebook runs fine, if I don't want to say great. Everything is actually faster than in XP, and the notebook is more stable. No more hang and looping sounds, or crash.

I don't know if you guys (especially with dv6000t) have this problem, but my Optical Drive is just gone missing in Explorer, and Device Manager (cannot access it with DVD burner also) occasionally. I tried the solutions from HP, and then from Microsoft, but none worked.
Do you think that this is the problem with the edition of Vista I used? I got it with license from my university (free of course).

Apart from the Optical Drive issue, I will stick with Vista from now on. It runs Halo 2 flawlessly, and also boost my Creative Suite 3 work.

 

i installed Vista Ultimate a little over a month ago, only ONE program gave me issues and if i had done the research first it wouldnt have happened. Alcohol 120 doesnt work with Vista. but, i found a better and more effective program anyway. Nero 7 does all i need and works better and is Vista friendly. i have had NO driver issues, only prog that gave me probs was Alcohol (big deal) and Vista runs awesome. try it. if you dont like it, then just go back to XP.

ev

 

I would love to hear more from those of you (SECA, Zcott, mallmand) who have not had problems with Vista. I want to love Vista. I'm not ashamed to say I love "eyecandy." I've had a computer since my first TRS80 in 1980. Heck, there's no way I want to go back to command line driven DOS. Bring on the goodies!!!:laugh:

But I have had nothing but trouble since I decided that my old faithful Sony Vaio laptop (bought in 2003) was having enough issues that it was time to upgrade. So, starting on Aug 13th, I purchased an HP dv9500t. Without going into all the details, I got caught up in the recovery disk issue that HP had. So I have been through 4 new laptops, running both Vista Home Premium 32 and Ultimate 64. You can go read the posts on HP's lousy tech support to hear any and all of those issues. I ran into them all.

But, suffice to say, two of the computers I had long enough (one for around 3 weeks) and now the one I finally kept for around 4 weeks, and both have had similar problems. Basically, they start fine, and get more unstable over time. Since this has replicated itself on 2 computers, I give a somewhat lower probability to it being defective hardware. Some details:

As I said, I have an HP dv9500t with an Intel 7700 Core Duo Processor. I have 2 GB installed RAM, plus a 4 GB memory stick, 2GB set up for ReadyBoost. Two separate hard drives, both 120 GB running at 7200 rpm, built in WebCam/Mice, and a docking station with an external monitor.

HP never did send me a computer that wasn't turned into a brick by there defective restore disks (see another thread in this forum for those details), so I finally just gave up on them and went out and purchased by own copy of Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit. Used this for my operating system install. Let Windows do its update thing, and then went to HP site to download necessary drivers. Only programs I downloaded from HP other than drivers were the extended help files, and QuickPlay. I downloaded QuickPlay as it seems to be the only good way to access my webcam, and has more complete functionality with my remote control.

Deciding that too many people had been having issues with trying to get Office 2000 to run under windows, I purchased a copy of Office 2007 for small business. I'm no longer a gamer, my primary program usage is Office 2007 (Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), Quicken for finances, IE 7, and WMP. Other than that I use an Olympus digital voice recorder, and Acronis to provide backup, disk image, and recovery options. Also use RegistryFix and Eusing as registry cleaners.

Suffice to say that I ran most of all this on my Vaio laptop for 4 years under XP2 and, up until the last 4 months, hardly ever had any program crashes. Absolutely stable. And, since I was used to Win98, where you had to reinstall every 6 to12 months because it garbaged itself up and became unstable, this was a little bit of heaven.

Now, a day doesn't go by without some program crashing. Generally it's Outlook, but sometimes IE. Also have crazy stuff happen, like Outlook business projects showing one view, and then becoming "miniaturized" with no ability to change without restarting. Have talked to Microsoft, and they usually suggest starting up a new user profile. Yeah, that may fix it for a few days to a week, but then starts becoming unstable all over again. That's not a solution. Who wants to have to completely set up a new user profile every 3 weeks.

Heard there were some issues with Virus programs under Vista. So ran without for a while. Then loaded up PC-cillin. No change. Tried various combinations of PC-cillin checking/not checking incoming/outgoing e-mail. No diff. Uninstalled PC-cillin. No diff.

Just a whole bunch of annoying crashes and glitches. So many aspects of programs that just do not seem to work as they are intended to. Just did not have this with XP2. As an engineer, I realize that I've just introduced so many variables that I'm not sure how to separate them. But I just simply don't have another computer, or another operating system to try one thing at a time. Not to mention I simply don't have the time to do that.

Oh, and did I mention it usually takes about 3 - 4 minutes to boot up. Longer to do a restart.

So any comments, suggestions, etc., would be more than appreciated. Thanks.

 

If you order the laptop with Vista Business or Ultimate you can always downgrade to XP for a small fee later, usually the cost of recovery cds.

I have a clean Vista business X86 install on my 8710W and it runs equall to or better than my desktop and I have a powerfull desktop. Ive been using Vista since RTM and love it.

 

I've had Vista for around 2 months on my new laptop. I run Office 2007, IE, Autocad 2006 & 2007, Revit Structure 2008, video editing software. I only had IE crash on me a few times right after I bought the laptop. I usually run a minimum of 4 software apps concurrently. The Autodesk products that I use are not even meant for Vista and they work flawlessly.

 

Blue Ridge: I can't possibly suggest any fixes to what your problems are, but I can tell you that I've experienced none of the issues you've mentioned. All my apps are extremely stable (with the exception of some alpha software I'm testing, but that's not a Windows thing) and the performance is fantastic.

To anyone else reading this thread: Don't be scared off by reading this thread. Rarely will you find a post saying "I love Windows Vista" because people take it for granted and will spending their time using it instead of abusing it. What you're seeing is a very public demonstration by a few people who don't like Vista. In fact, it's a leap forward from XP in terms of stability and usibility.

 

I'm afraid I have to echo the same. I have not seen any major program crashes of the sort you are seeing. The main issue I am running into is that the system fails to go to sleep once in a while, and I must force it off. A few thoughts about your post:

It might be water under the bridge, but you don't need to buy another copy of Windows to get a clean install. You have now bought a second license to Vista. All you need to get is an anytime upgrade disc for $7, and you can do a clean install with your current license. If you have another computer, you can move that retail version to that system, and use the license that came with your laptop. Since you already have the retail disc, you don't even need to get the anytime upgrade. This issue would not cause stability problems though.

Get rid of the 2GB readboost. It's doing nothing for you with 2GB of RAM, and as you said is another variable that could cause problems. Readyboost is only useful for people who have 1GB or less of RAM.

Stop using your registry cleaners. There's no reason you need a cleaner, especially on a new machine. IMO, registry cleaners are a solution in search of a problem.

When you installed the office programs, did you have 2000 on first, then upgrade? or did you have a clean install of 2007? I would not even try to install office 2000 on a vista machine.

 

Also just had another thought... run memtest against the RAM in your system, you could have bad RAM. See the guide in my sig.

 

Being one of the people here that has had issues since moving to Vista, I would still echo Zcott's statement to not necessarily be put off by Vista. To do so is certainly not my intent. One, I cannot say for sure that it is Vista that is causing my issues; and two, Vista does indeed have many features that make it a very welcome evolution in a Windows based operating system. It is absolutely my intention to stick with it and make it work.

That said, I would not quite agree with Zcott's statement that this is only "a public demonstration by a few people...." Yes, you can sure see that in the attitudes of many that post, but there are also a very large number of people that have a lot of issues with Vista. I work in a high tech area of the country and know a few high level IT people associated with companies such as IBM. Almost all cautioned me about personally moving to Vista this early in its development. This was based on the issues they were aware of even in corporate environments moving to Vista where there was a good deal of very high level IT expertise. Even the Microsoft technical people I have talked to admit this. It is simply inevitable in any new system of this complexity.

I am not a Microsoft basher. While there are always technical support issues (just image the complexity of the system, and the shear number of variables that can cause a problem) Microsoft's technical support is light years ahead of HP's, and, more importantly in my opinion, Microsoft has instilled much more of an attitude of trying to find a solution that benefits the customer. HP seems more to have instilled an attitude (with some notable individual exceptions) of what's best for HP, and how do I spend the least time with this customer.

So I would without question say move to Vista. But go into it with open eyes realizing that there is a fair chance that you will face some issues. If you do not, great, but be realistic and ready to work with that reality.

 

Orev - Thanks for your comments. If by memtest you mean the Memory Diagnostic Tool, I've run it (and chkdsk) several times. Both report no problems.

Office 2007 was a clean install. No other office installed on the notebook.

[Reason I didn't go with your original suggestion about an anytime upgrade disk was primarily because I could not afford the delay of 7 - 10 days to get the disk. I was loosing a heck of a lot more in downtime than purchasing Vista cost me. (Though ironically I could have gotten Vista from Microsoft as part of their Windows Feedback program.) Might add also that since I couldn't recover the actual license number due to computer being a brick at that point, Microsoft maintained that the license key connected to the computer would NOT have worked for a clean install as it is solely connected to an OEM restore disk. Anyway, all this is just an aside.]

I started using RegistryFix back in my XP2 days, and I saw a definite effect in terms of boot up times. Don't know about how it affects Vista. I'll definitely try pulling the ReadyBoost off.

Thanks again.

 

my 2 cents. The more I use Vista the more I really like it. I have dual boot with both XP and Vista and I use vista 90% of the time, but its nice to have some backwards compatibility with XP at times. I think most users that whine about Vista don't know how to use a computer, or how to do a google search for that matter. Either way they really don't have enough experience to form an opinion for other users to consider when choosing and OS.

Anyway for those doubt'ers (and haters) I'd say try Vista and forget about the FUD and see if you like it or not. Use your mind and form your own opinion and don't let marketing machines force feed you their opinion.

-Reby

 

By memtest I mean "memtest86+". This is not the same as the Memory Diagnostic Tool. memtest86+ is an industry standard tool and is exhaustive. If you check the guide in my sig, you'll see what I'm talking about.

MS is going to tell you that about the OEM key, but they are wrong. You would also need the activation certificate that goes with it though, so you could not use that key alone. My ABR tool handles this for you, but it's really beyond the point now, as you need the original install to make it work for you.

It's hard to say what else could be going on. It could be related to other utilities you may have installed but did not mention as well, and also any "tweaks" you may have done to the system.

 

Another dv9500t user here with good Vista experience. Running Home Premium, using Office 2007 with Outlook open all day, Firefox, Quicken (with my data on a Truecrypt volume), Onenote open all the time, and a few other apps. Vista has crashed a couple times when going into/coming out of Sleep, but no other issues.

 

Yep, definitely had the occasional going into/out of sleep thing.

Other questions: Anybody using Acronis scheduled to make automatic backups? Have wondered, and will most likely play with, if that could be causing Outlook issues. I do have it set up to do a differential backup every night of my pst file and the business contact database.

What, if any, virus programs are you who are not having stability problems using? Are you using them to scan incoming/outgoing emails?

 

I have a brand new Pavilion HDX, 4Gigs DDR RAM, Intel Extreme x7900, 500G HD. Its got every option available. And Vista seems like it takes forever to load, seems like 5 min. And is slow to open applications, locks up Internet Explorer. Asks you permission to do everything.

The primary software that i use is Solidworks (3D engineering software) and it will not run on Vista Ultimate 64. My software distributor recomended that i go back to XP because their software is not stable on Vista32 either.

So i dual booted the system with XP pro and it is amazing how much faster it is running and it boots in like 10-15 sec. When running in Vista i feel like its consuming so much more memory just to make the user interface feel more touchy-feely and smooth, almost trying to mimic a Mac interface. To me all that smooth edged stuff and toys are cool and nice to look at but not at the price of performance loss. Microsoft has work to do on it, but when they get it running more efficiently, im sure it will be great like XP.

Here is my conspiracy theory:
It still kind of makes me wonder why they even released it at the state its currently in? Did they know that masses of people would be running out and purchasing XP to downgrade? because you know they are raking in the money from both OS's sales at this point. I wouldnt put it past Billy.

 

Because they were taking so long and already so far behind schedule it was making them look foolish. At least it works for some people.

 

there are a couple of great guides on the internet

 

Uh ..... to ????? Links?

 

E-gads. Not only am I having some stability issues, but I just discovered this forum considers "Blue Ridge is an UNKNOWN QUANTITY at this point." Now what shall become of me? I have quantity? But it's unknown? At lot of attributes, good bad, or indifferent I know I have, but I was always pretty sure there was one, and only one, of me. At this rate, I'm becoming less stable by the moment.

 

I agree, I've been using Vista since Beta1 and the RTM version has been fine. People who complain about Vista complained about XP when it came out, not enough drivers, program compatabilty etc etc...

When the next version arrives in '09 or '10 they will begin complaining again, it does make for entertainment though. Gaming will get better as drivers mature but I do have to say not impressed with DX10, we'll see how that pans out in the next 6 months.

 

All I know is: My Pavilion dv9525eo came with Vista Home Premium installed, used vista for a couple months now and 1 week ago I downgraded to XP using the sticky guide on this forum. And oh my god the difference! I cant believe I've gotten used to the slow boot times, the slow GUI interaction etc. My 5 year old desktop with PC was 3 times faster than my brand new Pavilion running Vista. So I thought I would give XP a go and I go everything to work! Every driver, every program, every function. And now the Pavilion is even faster than my desktop and boots in about 15 seconds opposed to Vista using nearly 2 minutes (before it was usable, on net etc).

So I cannot see any advantage of Vista over XP. Security? As long as you know what you are doing on the net, you don't get viruses. I have NEVER had a virus on my desktop XP, and plan not to on my newfound Pavilion.

 

I fail to see how boot times equate to a fast computer however, back in the 386 days me and a buddy used to time our machines, we used a few benchmarks for the heck of it as well.

I care more about how it works once Windows has loaded and find no difference with everyday computing between XP and Vista. I see a big difference in gaming but expected that so use an XP box for my serious games.

The difference for me is looking at the same damn ugly interface that XP has even skinned to look like Vista it just wasn't nice enough. I like the eye candy that Vista has and the functionality it brings and when I click IE, it opens instantly, when I open my Office programs they open instantly, when I open third party apps they open as fast as they did on XP, they also plow through scripts the same and my video editing is close enough to not notice the difference.

I think too many people buy into the negative hype of those idiotic Apple commercials. The same company who one day claimed to have the fastest computer on the planet, then the next announce they are switching to x86 (I would have loved to see Steve Jobs face that day). I digress...

To each his own... enjoy XP for another few years...

EDIT: I do have to say however, if the speed boost I keep reading about is true with XP SP3, you'll be even more happy.

 

My new laptop came with vista. after a couple of days full of compatibility problems and (estimated) 3,423,295 UAC pop-ups I switched back to XP and never looked back. I hate to say this, but those PC vs Mac commercials are dead on.

And here's another reason to stick with XP for a while: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20071126/tc_nf/56872

(I'm not a XP fanboy or Vista hater. Vista does some stuff better than XP, but it just ain't worth the hassle yet.)

 

Totally agree. I noticed an overall increase of performance when swithing back to XP. It launches everything so much quicker in my opinion. try clicking control panel in vista vs xp! Vista used over 1 gig of ram just idling, vs XP now using 267mb. It's the little things that matter, and my notebook just isn't powerful enough to run Vista to my satisfaction, so I will use XP for a couple of years more, before getting a 2x more powerful PC and then it might reach XP levels of performance...

 

Vista will not work with my HP 4100C scanner. I spent a whole day searching for Vista driver for this scanner. Eventually I found a nice third party scanner software called VueScan from www.hamrick.com and it works well but costs me $80 for professional version ($40 for standard version). It's a lot better software than Microsoft scanner software using Windows XP.

I was very surprised to see Vista working with my 20 year old HP Laser printer with parallel port.

At first I didn't like Vista but it's growing on me. The only thing I hate is IE 7. I miss the automatic folder collapsing under favorites. In IE 6, if I click on one folder, it automatically collapse previously used folder. It's not available in IE 7.

Peter

 

Ok I just have to ask how many drivers did you have to hunt down to get XP working?

I ask this becuase I bought a dv6426US from Circuity City in August. It came with Vista Home premium. I live on this notebook, I am a small business consultant focusing on MS products. Anyhow I quickly got the SLOW file copy performance problem while on the job with Vista, in the first week I had it. I had tested Vista since Beta 2 on a desktop box and it was fine for me (I game on a 360). Anyhow after the first week I went to XP on this notebook.

Going to XP was a pain. XP did not find anything on this notebook, see my specs. I went to HP and they had like 3 XP drivers for my exact model. I had to go to the base model dv6000 (a year older) to get the XP drivers and other places like Intel, realtek or where ever. In FACT I had to use a USB floppy drive after I got a driver from Intel and choose F6 at boot up OOOORRRRR disable the faster HD transfer rate in the BIOS.....so that XP could see the SATA HD in my notebook.....just to do the XP install.

Anyhow 3 weeks ago I went back to Vista on this notebook after serveral "performance updates" released by MS....more like chunks of SP1 to address the network copy performance problem. So I did a clean install of Vista Business from my Action Pack. GOD BLESS VISTA.....it found all of my notebook hardware, either during the initial install OR during the first update after the install (which was way faster than XP install). Granted this is not a Santa Rosa notebook....but Vista found my memory card reader in the side of this notebook...wired...wireles....video...audio....and DID NOT NEED to have a F6 driver for the faster HD performance.

FACT....Vista shipped...YES SHIPPED...with more drivers than XP shipped with...something like 14,000+ compared to XP with 10,000+. Vist has even more dirvers now.

I run all kinds of software on this thing, Office 2007 (Outlook with 5 pop accounts and the hotmail connector), firefox, Quicken 2007, VMWare Workstation, VMWare server tools, Photoshop, Motorolla Phone tools, Sony Vegas, Visual Studio, WS FTP (old version), DreamWeaver, Zune 2.0, Citrix Client, OneCare 2.0, StarWind iSCSI target software, True Image 10.0 with scheduled backups every night....and more. I almost never shut this thing down...only when I am traveling for more than an hour. At night I just close the lid and it hibernates.

I have had Zero problems.....period for the last 3 weeks. Vista had a few problems, most NOT caused by Vista. The biggest problem windows of any version faces these days in being shipped on a new PC with TONS OF CRAP pre-installed. This HP notebook came that way.

My advise to anyone when buying a new computer...format...clean install. If you cant do it...find someone that can. I dont mean put in the "HP" cd and recover I mean blow it away, recovery partition and all (if you have one) and clean install the OS.

 

I personally would wait until Vista become stable as I have personal experiences of what a pain it can be. I have had to deal with many issues and even the blue screen and it has been a pain. Though Vista might look pretty on the outside, its not as nice as it looks.

 

Uxion, I have installed Vista on a dozen PC's at least not one of them has had a blue screen.

Heck I have not seen a Blue screen 2000 and above for at least 5 years....how do people get blue screens these days.

 

None.

Got all my drivers from the driverpack kindly offered by Hackez on the sticky guide in this forum. Everything worked, and to get XP installed I slipstreamed the SATA drivers onto my XP using this wonderful prog called Nlite. Also put SP2 onto it (as it was a SP0 version). Everything worked flawlessly, and I now enjoy a faster PC with XP than Vista could ever give me (on MY computer).

Vista even used a gazillion years just calculating the time it should be using unzipping a zip file of 2-3 megs, then another gazillion years actually doing the job. Nicely done...

 

The number was actually 19,500 on the DVD at RTM with 11,700 ready to go on Windows Update. No OS in history has shipped with this many drivers.

 

As long as the network card is working at a fresh install I am happy, seeing as I always upgrade the embedded drivers with aftermarket (better) ones.

 

I converted my company 6 months ago. 100 computers so far, no issues other than people loading very old programs on some, run in XP SP2 mode and run as admin they work fine. No BSOD's, for me, it HAS been as nice as it looks.

 

Here's something to make you guys think a little. During the course of the day I'm on two computers, one at work and my hp. On paper my workstation is twice as powerful as the hp laptop.

Workstation: Dell
Intel Xeon Processor. 4 processors @ 2.0ghz each.
4gb ram.
200gb 7200rmp HDD
2-Latest Nvidia SLi Video cards
(I work for a major national engineering firm, we always have the latest pc's for designing.)

Laptop: (specs are below my signature)

So here's the thing. I've started using Autodesk Revit Structure 2008. It's a 3d building design software. So my laptop is 2x faster than the Dell. The dell is running XPsp2. While my laptop is running Vista. This software is made for XPsp2. While i'm running the software I usually have more programs opened in the hp. So how is this possible?

 

A guy I work with had a friend come in with his laptop running Vista. They wanted to hook up two monitors to the laptop so that they could play a game on two monitors. They hooked up the second monitor, inserted the disk, and ... *poof* ... lost the video. Vista, in its infinite, in-bed-with-the-enemy, blindly-do-as-all-the-content-providers-demand wisdom, decided they were trying to steal digital content, and disabled the video subsystem. After many hoots and hollers from us XP luddites, they tried it on my co-workers HP with XP installed. Yeah, it worked just fine.

My operating system is there to do my bidding. Period. Any OS that thinks it's smarter than me, knows better than me, or needs to police me can go straight to hell. I'm shocked that there are so many sheeple here who don't feel the same way.

 

How can you hook up 2 monitors to 1 laptop?

 

You know last time I checked I was still in a free country. Meaning that we can do as we please. Everybody has different uses and expectations from their OS. Just because a percentage of people don't like the way an OS operates doesn't mean that everybody else is a sheep. In my case, I acted on what I have experienced with Vista and not what I have read in forums or in the news. I have yet to have a major flaw that has soured my opinion of Vista. As far as I am concerned. Why fix something that isn't broken.