I am experiencing technical difficulties…

Comments:

1. Did you have a hard drive failure?      by awtrader
   
2. Nope, but I was heading there. Lots of performance problems getting worse and worse. Figured it was a good time to rebuild as any. Its always painful!
   
   Mojo      by Mojo
   
3. Hey Mojo -
   
   How did the rebuild go? Did you do a restore or repave and reinstall?
   The latter can be a LOT of work. Do you run WinXP?
   
   -aw      by awtrader
   
4. Quote:

   Originally Posted by awtrader Hey Mojo - How did the rebuild go? Did you do a restore or repave and reinstall? The latter can be a LOT of work. Do you run WinXP? -aw

   I'm curious if anyone is using TOS on a Vista system. I'm going to buy a new laptop and it's getting harder to find new, non-refurbs that have been configured with XP. I will be keeping the old XP book just in case. HP or Dell? I've always had Dells but I hear these HPs coming out now are really nice.
   
   Wondering if anyone has had any issues in general with Vista. Maybe I'll run out to a computer store this weekend for a test drive. Think they'll let me load TOS to check compatibility?
   
   OptionGal      by OptionGal
   
5. Quote:

   Originally Posted by OptionGal I'm curious if anyone is using TOS on a Vista system. I'm going to buy a new laptop and it's getting harder to find new, non-refurbs that have been configured with XP. I will be keeping the old XP book just in case. HP or Dell? I've always had Dells but I hear these HPs coming out now are really nice. Wondering if anyone has had any issues in general with Vista. Maybe I'll run out to a computer store this weekend for a test drive. Think they'll let me load TOS to check compatibility? OptionGal

   Hi OptionGal,
   
   I have had a computer with Vista since April 2008 and trade with TOS full time. My laptop is a Dell M1330 with 2.6 Ghz Core 2 Duo Intel. The only issue I have is annoying little authorization message which comes up every time I open thinkDesktop. I can't find a way to stop it from appearing. Otherwise it works fine.
   
   My husband just bought an HP computer with a 2.4GHx AMD Turion x2. It is a tablet/laptop - the TX2500z, also with Vista. He gets the same message on starting TOS. His internal antenna and network connection is a little faster than mine, but my computer is definitely significantly faster than his. We both have draft "N" for wireless connection, via WPA2 using a fast D-Link router.
   
   I definitely prefer trading on my Dell computer, but either would be fine.
   
   Other general issues are that Office 2007 is very different from 2003 and earlier. David hates it - he can't find anything any more. I get more security messages from Vista than I ever got from XP - maybe that is a good thing, but it can be a nuisance. The last thing is that some programs just don't play nicely with Vista. In my experience, this includes Google Sidebar and Desktop Weather from www.weather.com. They are unstable and keep crashing. Oh yes, so does PC-Cillin - nasty fatal system errors with the BSOD (Blue/Black Screen Of Death) event.
   
   If I had to buy another new laptop, I would go for the Dell with Vista. I think XP's days of update support are numbered, and I am worried about security. David likes his tablet PC enough that he would buy the same too. So I guess the choice is yours!
   
   JMHO
   
   Warm regards,
   
   Dawn      by Dawn
   
6. OptionGal,
   I run Vista on my laptop and XP on my desktop. I find that TOS runs fine on Vista. I don't notice any performance issue with TOS on one compared to the other.
   
   As Dawn mentioned, the differences you will notice are all related to Vista itself rather than TOS. In an attempt to be more secure, it drives you crazy with prompts and warnings, basically trying to protect you from yourself (which I suppose is good in csome cases :-) ) I still prefer the old XP interface for managing the sytem and settings though. In Vista I still sometimes have trouble finding where to change or find things. Some of the Vista interface seems so illogical!
   
   In my day job I am an IT professional and the Vista/XP battle is a vigorous one, especially amongst the IT group! Amongst about 200 machines at our company, over 90% are still XP. The reality though is that XP will shrink away at some point.
   
   I'd go ahead and buy Vista now. Some of the Dell systems will give you an XP disk also. Or you can order it with XP installed and they give you a Vista disk. If you really don't like it, just reinstall XP and wait for Windows 7 to come out. It is supposed to fix all of the Vista issues. It is touted to be what Vista should have been.
   
   Dan      by Rudyo
   
7. Thanks Dawn and Dan for your responses. I went to BestBuy this weekend, but the laptop model I wanted (it's been on sale since Black Friday) was sold out at all stores in my area. I ended up ordering a Vista system online from the HP website and it should be here early in the week.
   
   OptionGal      by OptionGal
   
8. Hi Option Gal -
   
   Sorry I didn't see you question about Windows OS choice until tonight. I see you have already committed to Vista, which is probably a sensible choice. Many of its enhancements relate to multimedia support. And as you have seen the user interface has changed dramatically. The security enhancements in it are quite real, just as long as you do not disable them or choose to always say ok because of the irritation factor. I still run XP on most of my machines, but do run with a limited rights user account (non-admin) which is more difficult than on Vista. (I did buy a Dell laptop with XP last June during the final days of its OEM availability.)
   
   When Vista first came out there were lots of problems with peripherals, drivers, etcetera, and many support techs didn't know how to support it very well, if at all. That has changed (for new peripherals), but it still is a resource hog, so you will want to run with 4 gig of memory. (That's the max that the 32 bit OS will directly address.)
   
   I guess you have recieved your new box by now. Let us know how you like it.
   
   -aw      by awtrader