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A) They don't always give a CD or the CD doesn't work or else they give you CD but it only came with a DVD player[not a combo] on the laptop, etc. As you can probably guess I haven't had much luck with laptops.
B) You are semi-right on that buggy bit. At least with HP you are. My old dell has no issues with any of it, no matter if I am using Win95,win98,winME, or winXP. Though I don't know how new dells handle it. Hmm.. My freind's Compaq Presario also doesn't care about the OS as long as it is a newer OS. My Dad's compaq(also a presario if I recall) also works regardless of OS(he has used 3 different OS's). I have also been told IBM(Lenova now?) laptops don't mind OS changes much.
The biggest issue with getting the utilities working is, in my experience, that they use slightly more resources then they do factory installed. However, the difference is much less than the resource difference between 98 and XP or XP and Vista.
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I would reccomend Vista, as it is the next thing, and you will have to learn its innards sooner or later. I would also say get it only if you plan on getting the 64 bit version on a 64 bit laptop so that you can gain the extra MMU addressing that will allow you to put more than 4 gigs of ram and run higher end applicatsions, especially since vista alon can take up 2-3 gigs with little effort.
In sum, I second this so as long as you make the processor upgrade (they will likely do it for free while under your thumb).If I were you, I'd (begrudgingly) accept Vista, and install Linux on another partition.
Otherwise:
SLACKWARE
Last edited by bipper; 04-25-2007 at 06:15 PM.
Hmm... it was my assuption that they did. We've had 4 laptops in the past 5 years in the household, one of which broke, but they've all had a utility and a backup CD with them.
There are DVD players which don't play CDs?they give you CD but it only came with a DVD player[not a combo]Any chance of you meaning it the other way around? If yes, I don't know how many laptops still -do- have CD players in them.
[q=ShunNakamura]-Another note; I have heard that the boot loader is not as safe in Vista as it has been in previous versions. This could be a very dangerous issue, though I'll admit that I have yet to try the OS myself and thus can't be sure how easy it is to mess stuff up like that(before I install vista I need a major processor upgrade, which means I need a major motherboard upgrade, which in turn could cause me to acquire all new hardware(except hard-drives) due to older hardware in my system).[/q]
This isn't entirely accurate. The bootloader in Vista is no longer NTLDR, but called Winloader, and no longer has directly editable configuration files. By that I mean you can't just open up boot.ini and chuck in a few new entries or change existing ones. In my opinion, this makes it a safer bootloader than NTLDR.
Don't get me wrong, I still think any Windows bootloader is one of the worst features of the operating system. It's quite difficult to sort out a multi-boot environment as a direct result of not being able to easily edit boot configuration files, but there are programs that "will" do it for you. I say "will" because at no stage did any of these programs successfully change the bootloader for my quad-boot environment (XP, Vista, Gentoo and Arch, with XP and Vista installed last).
It's definitely no GRUB.![]()
<span style="color:#FFCCFF">Originally Posted by Grinenshire
Smacks head several times. It was that the stupid thing didn't come with a CD or a DVD player so I used my Dell Latitude's DVD player to try and use the CD which by the way doesn't read CD's[we are not sure why it won't but it just really don't like them, sometimes you may get something from trying to play it, but generally you don't, and that is how it was when I got it new].
I totally f'ed that up that story of an experience. As for it happening the other way around I have seen that as well. Or else they give you a driver floppy(not anymore, but several years ago) and it doesn't come with a floppy drive. I have had SOO many bad experiences with them.
As for the boot loader as I said, I have only *heard* that... I think</span>
Meh, never had a Dell. But thumbs up for Sony and Toshiba. Never had a problem with them. I've only got bad experiences with Samsung notebooks. While Samsung does make great vacuum cleaners, their graphical card burned out within 2 weeks of use. In two different models. Not sure where the chip came from though, might have been an Intel Graphics.
My new laptop is an HP that came preloaded with Vista. I had to fuss with a lot of my old programs to get them to run, but I do a lot of video editing and such. She might be ok for regular use.
PS: Vista is complete crap for sound recording.
I believe in the power of humanity.
No, it's not. I have worked with Mac's, XP and Vista for my audio engineering and I see no differences whatsoever. I blame it on the (probably) crappy software and hardware you are using.
If you really wanted proper sound recording, you'd use a mixer (I use Mbox2) and proper microphones (I just use a normal cardiod and dynamic), and something like Protools, Cubase or Logic for software.
Anyways, that's just ramblings.
Edit: Roogle, it's no problems, what hardware and software do you use? Because most of the better sofware (such as Protools) is compatible with Vista now, as well as most small home mixers.
"... and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written."
I am not a professional in the sound industry.
I use a simple microphone for the purpose of recording my voice to create funny sound clips to send to friends. I use Adobe Audition 2.0. That would work on Windows Vista, wouldn't it?
I believe in the power of humanity.
Whether professional or not, it is still useful information. I haven't tested that piece of software on Vista yet, but every other Adobe product I've used on Vista has worked just the same. So I don't see why it wouldn't.
Edit: And as long as the sound card's drivers have Vista support -- most would but you never know. If that's the case, it won't be long until they would bring out drivers for Vista.
"... and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written."