Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1 Upgrade

I finally upgraded to Vista and it was a long time coming. I must admit for the longest time I felt envious of people who were operating on a system newer than mine, but I also felt secretly satisfied that XP was more secure and faster. No eye candy though. However, as both a Mac and a PC user, I had all the eye candy one would want with Leopard and it doesn't slow anything down.

What I don't understand is why Vista has to come in so many editions:

Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Business
Windows Vista Ultimate

Plus all the upgrade versions. Why not just one version that does it all, you know, the way they do it in the Mac world.

Okay, all that aside, I have two PCs, both desktops, one at work (which is actually mine, not my employers) and one at home. At work I installed Home Premium and at home I installed Vista Ultimate. I didn't time the installation in either place as I was doing other stuff during the process, but neither install took more than an hour.

I did not do clean installs in either case, instead opting for the upgrade option, just to see if it worked. Besides, I have lots of back up hard drives so I wasn't worried and it appears I didn't need to, because both installs went swimmingly. I understand others have not been so lucky, but I was.

After choosing my local time, currency, keyboard layout, user name, icon, wallpaper and password Vista decided my computers were good to go and they were.

Right off the bat I have to say, I like the Aero interface. Is it better than Leopard's, not really, but it's not worse either, just different. I've got four gigs of ram in both computers and though maybe Vista might have been a tad slower doing some photoshop work than XP, it wasn't all that noticeable. Some things may have been a bit slower opening, but not enough to make me miss XP. All in all, I have to say I'm okay with Vista.

Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1

I thought I would write this review since a lot of people seem to be wondering if some games will work with vista. Just a short list of games I have played on Vista with no problems. All played great with no crashing problems installing problems or otherwise.

1.Half Life Orange Box
2.Far Cry (original version)
3.Stalker
4.The Witcher
5.Quake 4
6.Crysis
7.Oblivion IV
8.Planescape
9.Fear
10.Unreal Tournament 3 (gold / 2 / and original ut)
11.Alien vs Predator 2
12.Doom 3
13.Portal
I went from win 98 to the windows Vista so for me it has been an incredible improvement. I really like Vista and haven't had any problems worth mentioning. I wonder if people having problems with vista don't have systems strong enough to run it. (just a thought I really don't know).
I'm running an HP Media center w/ AMD 64x2 3000+ / EVGA Gforce 9600 oc / with 4 Gig ram. Sorry to here about all the people having problems with it we all know how frustrating a quirky computer can be but all in all I'm very happy with vista.
Added note: My Vista home premium came preinstalled when I purchased computer. I have always felt I would just be fooling myself to think I could put a system together that would be as good as one put together with the combined efforts of 1000's of very intelligent people. I give both Vista and HP 5 stars.

DELL LATITUDE C640 1.8GHZ 512MB 40GB XP WIRELESS LAPTOP

I have owned the 1.8 P4 version for 2 years and I am considering buying one just to have should anything happen to this one. Even by today's standards this is a very good laptop. The ONLY drawback is that there is only 1 USB port and it is 1.1 but that is very easily solved with a $15 PCMCIA card with USB 2.0 ports. This is not a "gamer" laptop but it is a serious workhorse that you can adapt in so many ways to your needs that you can't with most even today. For example, if you tend to need more battery time than the DVD drive (I upgraded my CD to a DVD burner) then just pop out the DVD and pop in an extra battery. Or like in my case I wanted more hard drive so I bought a 100 gig to replace the main hard drive and by doing a little surfing online I found a parts place that sells an enclosure for a second hard drive that fits perfectly into the DVD slot, so since I do not need the DVD very often I have another 100 gig drive in most of the time, how cool is that!? Add to that that it has S video out, vga out plus a keyboard port in case you prefer a regular keyboard when at home. The video is a respectable 32 meg ATI and I have run some games and applications that were not suppose to be able to run on it according to specs. This laptop only accepts 1 gig total memory but under XP that is fine and will keep you moving along smoothly. I ordered mine with the wireless networking card (802.11b but you can buy very cheaply a G card that will go right in to replace the B card or if yours doesn't come with a card you can add one VERY cheaply) and the speeds are so close to my G PCMCIA card that I use the B card built into mine with my G router.

When you really look at just what your getting for a comparable price these days, for everything this one is capable of I cannot recommend grabbing one of these enough, it is sturdy, nice size screen (14.1) and just an overall feeling of confidence in this laptop because it "feels" durable. When these were brand new I'm told you could not by them as an individual as they were only meant for business purchasers.

Bottom line: you want something worth the money this is it no question. Admittedly I put another $200 into mine but that was all upgrades to the memory and DVD and adding another hard drive. As it comes it is an awesome deal in today's market will run rings around many laptops in the same price range.

In case you missed it through all the techie talk, buy this laptop!