Dell Laptop with Vista - WOW!

[gkarris]

A wonderful lady her at work brought me her new Dell laptop with Vista from home so I could take a look at it so she can use it on her home wireless for work.

1.86 Core 2 Duo
2 Gigs RAM
Don't know the hard drive space
15" Widescreen Monitor
Windows Vista Home Premium
Discreet graphics card.
DL DVD Burner

Turn it on - waiting, for over 5 minutes! "I don't know why it takes so long to boot" (Heck, my 384 Meg iBook G3 with 10.4 is tons faster).

Need to go into "Control Panels" to check wireless settings - takes over 3 minutes to open...

She says "It seems to take a long time to do a lot of stuff, can I get more memory?"

Me: "I think these can only take up to 2 Gigs, the newer laptops in the fall can take up to 4 Gigs, talk to Dell"...

I was just on other websites and Dell fans are touting how great the Wal-Mart relationship will be and of course, Macs stink.

This other guy I know has Vista on an Acer laptop - no problems...

I WILL NEVER AGAIN WORK ON A DELL WITH VISTA...
(there, I said it...)

 

[Eraserhead]

The thing is that one of my friends has a network with some computers on Vista and some on XP, FWIW it seems fine on a P4 3Ghz with 2GB RAM, and is about as fast as a P4 3Ghz with 1GB RAM under XP.

It sounds like crapware is probably the real problem with the Dell, as my experience is with a retail licence (ie no crapware).

But Vista doesn't seem to offer many benefits (other than Aero) over XP, so it's not great.

 

[MagicUK]

Alpha....Beta....RTM....and then I switched to a Mac.

Hey you know something, it just works! Now share the contents of your favourites folder, I have run out of things to pretend to do and SWMBO has a list of jobs.....

 

[plinden]

Although I hate my Dell laptop and wish I could just tip it out the window, and Windows does take a long time to boot compared to my Macs (about 3 minutes), and it runs Windows, and the laptop has some of the issues that some MacBook and MacBook Pro users were complaining about ... it's hot despite fans being on most of the time, and it whines which makes it a relief when the noisy (I can hear them in the next room) fans drown out the whine, and on top of that it runs Windows, and it's heavy, and the screen has uneven lighting which is very obvious when viewing a dark DVD (not that I ever do any more), and when I disconnect it from the external monitor the keyboard starts thinking the shift key is being pressed meaning I have to restart, and it's slower than my wife's MacBook that cost half as much, and did I say it runs Windows?

Where was I?

Oh yes, despite all that, I do know that slow booting and application start up, especially with 2 GB RAM, is likely due to some issue with the software that can be fixed. Even with Vista, a correctly configured PC shouldn't take 5 minutes to boot or 3 minutes to load the wireless settings. It's doubtful it's full of spyware or virus infected, but you or someone else should check what's running in the background.

 

[gkarris]

Although I hate my Dell laptop and wish I could just tip it out the window, and Windows does take a long time to boot compared to my Macs (about 3 minutes), and it runs Windows, and the laptop has some of the issues that some MacBook and MacBook Pro users were complaining about ... it's hot despite fans being on most of the time, and it whines which makes it a relief when the noisy (I can hear them in the next room) fans drown out the whine, and on top of that it runs Windows, and it's heavy, and the screen has uneven lighting which is very obvious when viewing a dark DVD (not that I ever do any more), and when I disconnect it from the external monitor the keyboard starts thinking the shift key is being pressed meaning I have to restart, and it's slower than my wife's MacBook that cost half as much, and did I say it runs Windows?

Where was I?

Oh yes, despite all that, I do know that slow booting and application start up, especially with 2 GB RAM, is likely due to some issue with the software that can be fixed. Even with Vista, a correctly configured PC shouldn't take 5 minutes to boot or 3 minutes to load the wireless settings. It's doubtful it's full of spyware or virus infected, but you or someone else should check what's running in the background.

Actually, it took over 3 minutes just to open the "Control Panels".

Deep down I wanted to go off - but it was her money...

 

[mkrishnan]

Actually, it took over 3 minutes just to open the "Control Panels".

There's something not right about that. There's no way Vista should be that slow on a computer with that processor and that much memory, unless there's either defective hardware or something set up very strangely.

 

[gkarris]

There's something not right about that. There's no way Vista should be that slow on a computer with that processor and that much memory, unless there's either defective hardware or something set up very strangely.

Defective hardware = DELL

 

[mkrishnan]

Defective hardware = DELL

It happens occasionally with Macs too.