Vista SUCKS - Redux
Okay... before, I was just slightly annoyed. Now I'm REALLY annoyed... ironically, just a couple of days after I posted my glowing review of some of Microsoft's other products.
We just went to order five laptops, as a part of our regular refresh cycle. We use Toshibas in our organization, because they're a rock solid product... we've only ever had one that had a problem, and they seem to be the best units out there. Today, we got the bad news... the current model is only available with Windows Vista.
Fat chance of that... I've already gone to Dell.ca, and priced out the replacement unit... with Windows XP Professional.
Microsoft, if they want to stem the bleeding, better act fast. For years, I've been pro-Microsoft, because their products, even with their bugs, tend to work well. Windows XP SP2 is rock solid, I've crashed it less than dozen times over the last four years... between all seven of the machines I regularly use.
BUT... I'm not moving to Vista, it's as simple as that. It sucks... sucks RAM, that is. You can't use the OS on anything less than 1GB of RAM, and even then, it's a dog. Windows XP? Runs great on as little as 192MB, with a 450Mhz PIII CPU.
And when I finally can't get XP anymore? I'll finally make the move to Linux. I've actually started playing with one of them recently, NimbleX... runs right off a 200MB CD, with full access to any HDD's or USB drives connected to the system. It's a nifty little OS.
So, to make a long story short, here's a word of advice to Toshiba... follow Dell's lead, stick it to Microsoft, and get us an XP option... or we're taking our business elsewhere.
UPDATE: Just got word back from our local vendor of a little trick that some vendors are employing to get around this problem... the "Recovery CD" that comes with the laptops will reinstall the laptop with Windows XP Pro.
A whole lot more pain than is necessary. However, it means that we'll still stick with Toshibas, FOR NOW. (maybe I should also look at that one I was going to get from Future Shop, and see if that's possible there too...)
We just went to order five laptops, as a part of our regular refresh cycle. We use Toshibas in our organization, because they're a rock solid product... we've only ever had one that had a problem, and they seem to be the best units out there. Today, we got the bad news... the current model is only available with Windows Vista.
Fat chance of that... I've already gone to Dell.ca, and priced out the replacement unit... with Windows XP Professional.
Microsoft, if they want to stem the bleeding, better act fast. For years, I've been pro-Microsoft, because their products, even with their bugs, tend to work well. Windows XP SP2 is rock solid, I've crashed it less than dozen times over the last four years... between all seven of the machines I regularly use.
BUT... I'm not moving to Vista, it's as simple as that. It sucks... sucks RAM, that is. You can't use the OS on anything less than 1GB of RAM, and even then, it's a dog. Windows XP? Runs great on as little as 192MB, with a 450Mhz PIII CPU.
And when I finally can't get XP anymore? I'll finally make the move to Linux. I've actually started playing with one of them recently, NimbleX... runs right off a 200MB CD, with full access to any HDD's or USB drives connected to the system. It's a nifty little OS.
So, to make a long story short, here's a word of advice to Toshiba... follow Dell's lead, stick it to Microsoft, and get us an XP option... or we're taking our business elsewhere.
UPDATE: Just got word back from our local vendor of a little trick that some vendors are employing to get around this problem... the "Recovery CD" that comes with the laptops will reinstall the laptop with Windows XP Pro.
A whole lot more pain than is necessary. However, it means that we'll still stick with Toshibas, FOR NOW. (maybe I should also look at that one I was going to get from Future Shop, and see if that's possible there too...)
posted by Christian Conservative @ 11:12 a.m.
5 Comments:
At Fri Nov 23, 01:25:00 p.m. EST,
Anonymous said…
Don't ask someone what his computer is. If it's a Mac, he'll tell you. If not, don't embarrass him.
At Fri Nov 23, 03:27:00 p.m. EST,
Neo Conservative said…
*
concur totally... got a 1 gig acer laptop with vista basic and it's just huffin and puffin along.
it'd be a screamer with xp pro.
*
At Fri Nov 23, 03:29:00 p.m. EST,
Anonymous said…
I have been a Toshiba fan for years but went Acer 2 months ago because of Vista
At Fri Nov 23, 03:31:00 p.m. EST,
John M Reynolds said…
I run SUSE 10.2 at home as a scanning machine. It actually dual boots to Win XP SP2. It used to run Win98, but I finally upgraded (full version only thanks) December 2006 just before Vista came out. I have used Vista. It was the home version. Connecting it to an XP box with a cross over cable was pointless. It would not network after 5 minutes of trying. I gave up and copied data between the machines using a USB drive. Yes, it was the sneaker method, but it was still faster. The home version also does not allow you to create additional admin users. It just does not work. I had to use the parental controls to get it to create an alternate login name. And I quickly lost track of the number of times it asked me to verify the task I was doing.
Sigh.
I am trapped with Microsoft because of the software choices I made that only run on Windows. I may consider trying to connect my digital camera while in Linux, I don't know if my printer's card reader will work. Canon is not Linux friendly.
At Sat Nov 24, 08:02:00 a.m. EST,
Rileysowner said…
With Vista Microsoft seems to have forgotten that the purpose of a more powerful computer is to run applications, not the OS. I figure the less the OS uses the processor power and RAM of a computer, the more that is left for the applications. Stupidly, Microsoft thinks that what people want to run is the OS, forget the applications.
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