So a few weeks ago my laptop died, and my desktop is getting older so I need to replace them. So last week I went out and picked up a new Gateway MT6452 Notebook. Now I figured that I am a linux guy and don’t really like Windows but I would give this new Vista a try right? Well so far I must say it is not that bad. No it is not really good, but it is not as bad as I thought it would be. Please note I upgraded to 2GB’s RAM instead of the factory 1GB

So let me break down my setup and configuration. The first thing I did was turn off that stupid User Account Control, which is that annoying pop up. Do you want to install, Continue/Cancel are you sure? Continue/Cancel, Do you want to do this, Continue/Cancel OMG what a totally annoying feature. So now with this turned off, I am sure that I in someway or somehow will die. What a load of crap… However now when I boot the machine, it tells me that there is a problem that needs looked at in my User Account Settings, um like no duh I turned it off STOP BUGGING ME!

Visually Yes Vista is pretty, and I do like the totally rip’d from Apple the “Switch Between Desktops” it looks pretty. Outside of that, well Vista is another OS that MS has to shove at us.

Software that I have installed on this machine.

• Windows Vista Home Premium. 32Bit
• Office 2003
• Dreamweaver 8
• Adobe PhotoShop CS2
• Firefox 2
• SmartFTP
• Divx
• iTunes
• QuickBooks Premier 2003
• Skype
• AVG

Hardware I have added – Desktop Replacement.

• Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 3000
• USB Keyboard
• Logitech Communicate STX WebCam
• Western Digital 500GB USB MyBook
• HP DL1420 Printer
• Samsung SyncMaster 204B
• iPod 4GB

It found 100% of my hardware and installed it . Very interestingly the webcam, Windows connected to Logitech found the drivers and downloaded them. This was a cool little plus in my book.

Now for some of the glitches I have found so far.

• It is slow, yes it is a laptop, but for some reason I expected that a 64bit 2GB system would be a little faster.
• I disable my AVG Email Scanner, this does not stay disabled. Every reboot it re-enables.
• Dreamweaver does not save the usernames and passwords for the reboot ftp servers.
• QuickBooks had a registry fonts issue during the install but continued anyways, and works minus the X button is missing.

Outside of that software wise, everything I use works. This was nice to find out, we have all heard of the software issues with Vista. Who knows, maybe I am one of the lucky ones.

Now to Vista, and some of the things that suck so far.

Zipping

Wow, WTC, that is just wow, I don’t even know what to say. I let the first one run and yes it took the full 25 minutes to unzip a 4.95MB file.

Burning a CD/DVD. I tried to burn of a simple burn. A single 600MB file to disk just using the old drag and drop idea. Well the burning took a few minutes nothing out of the norm there, however the disk I burned will on work on this laptop. I tried two other PC’s and nothing. So I either missed a very important step or this just does not work right. Looking for my Nero Disk, it work and worked always.

Memory usage, man I am glad that I upgraded the memory in this thing. A clean boot with just AVG uses up about 630 MB’s or RAM. Ouch. Now to is plus I am able to open Outlook, FireFox, Dreamweaver, PhotoShop, Firefox, iTunes, Skype, and MSN without any problems or lag. So maybe, just maybe MS got this one right? Hard to say yet.

Crashes. If there is a PC built, I can crash it. I am the reason that Windows Cries. I only crashed this box once, and trust me I tried hard to crash it. The crash happened last night, I was cleaning up the Recycling Bin, which had files from the MyBook, and I opened the MyBook at the same time. It tried honestly for about 3 minutes thinking, thinking, and thinking before the machine just locked. Locked so hard I had to pull the powercord out. However outside of that, nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero crashes.

So all in all to my surprise, at this moment I am satisfied enough to keep Vista on here for a few more hours..

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