Uh, the wow doesn't begin now.

[princealfie]

Hello there guys,

Sorry if I wasn't on lately but I have been extremely busy installing Vista Business Edition on my Alienware 2650P laptop (from 3-4 years ago) rather than Boot Camping it with my black MacBook and I finally got it on that durn PC. I found that the 160 GB couldn't be read completely as there was a 48-bit addressing limitation on that particular model. But I got 127 GB total on it which is to be expected from my speedier Seagate drive (replacing a Travelstar 40 GB slow as heck).

I had to install Windows 2000 SP4 first before applying the Business Edition upgrade (free version from the powertogether promotional). Everything went rather smoothly and Vista was awesome at identifying all of my drivers for video card and sound without a hitch. In fact, I am glad that it is on right now. However, I went to test the online activation and it failed completely. I had to call in Microsoft for what seemed to be a 36 digit activation number which I hated but glad that I managed to do it now .

I installed Picasa and Adobe Photoshop CS2 without any trouble (had to change the date to now because it kept on saying 1998 for some odd reason). Everything was rather fast and I was glad.

However, when I went to get the Vista Experience Score, I found that Vista rated my laptop as a 1.0! WTF??? Seriously, that's an insult to my Alienware laptop which is still top of the line with a P4 chip, etc. etc. What's really startling was that I found that my graphics card which was a ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (same as the Powerbook G4 15") got a 1.0 rating which was why my Experience Score was so low. Okay, I can't run Aero but I can't believe that Microsoft would afford to call my Radeon 9700 as a separate (not integrated mind you) graphics card a piece of junk?

I don't like the Vista scoring system but everything runs smoothly so far in fact. No hitchs on installing although there is a slight lag on some of the fancier graphics stuff. The design is cooler than XP but the OS doesn't seem to be as snappy as before when I had XP on my 40 GB old drive.

Oh well, just wanted to tell you guys that I just joined the Vista bandwagon. It's not as bad although I can't still get over the fact that Microsoft rated my Alienware laptop as junk??? WTF??? Oh well.

 

[EricNau]

Well, your computer's rating is only as high as your lowest component rating.

Just don't pay any attention to it - it's stupid.

 

[someguy]

What does this have to do with Vista and it's "Wow!"?

You said yourself that your laptop is 3-4 years old, what did you expect from an OS who's manufacturer recommends upgrading nearly all PC's, or simply buying a new one altogether before running it?

 

[JNB]

Welcome to the World of Vista. If youre hardware is oh, say, more than 18 months old, it's (in Microsoft's esteemed perception) crap. You MUST perform surgery or buy a new machine altogether to fully enjoy & appreciate all that is Vista, even though it's not all it was supposed to be. (Can you imagine if MS was able to actually build the OS they were promising? The hardware required to support it won't be built for two years yet!)

Now, I would be the last one to suggest collusion between MS and the OEM's, but system sales HAVE been a bit flat before now...

 

[princealfie]

But the thing is that I got a very low experience settings and yet my Photoshop and Picasa work smoothly (for the most part except need more RAM) and the graphics card doesn't stutter on Vista.

The scoring system is pointless. Thank goodness none of my Macs are rated like that.

 

[princealfie]

What does this have to do with Vista and it's "Wow!"?

You said yourself that your laptop is 3-4 years old, what did you expect from an OS who's manufacturer recommends upgrading nearly all PC's, or simply buying a new one altogether before running it?

But why do I need a new laptop when a P4 processor is good enough to run even this bloated OS? I don't feel any excitement about running Windows on my MacBook either (which has W2K actually) but it is what it is.

The experience of Wow is yeah, it looks better than XP and hides a lot and that's about it.

 

[someguy]

My point is that you can't expect Vista, an OS released in 2007, to rate your hardware, which was top-of-the-line in 2004, very highly considering the advances in technology that have taken place in that three year time lapse.

Sure you're machine is still very much a usable piece of equipment, but as far as MS is concerned, your machine is bottom of the barrel when it comes to what it takes to run Vista.

If I were you, I'd stick with Win2K.

 

[apfhex]

I guess if your gfx card doesn't support Aero they just give it a 1.0 rating.

 

[princealfie]

I guess if your gfx card doesn't support Aero they just give it a 1.0 rating.

But the Radeon 9700 is the same graphics card as the one on higher end Powerbook G4's back in the day. I question this rating system dissing the PB G4 series.

Are they expecting us to purchase the Nvidia GT8800 SLI enabled graphic cards then? Hmm...

Okay seriously sad.