Windows Vista & all things Computerical!
Aug. 18th, 2007 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaSo, I've been a bad LJer lately, but in my own defence, my computer broke. I should have known its horrible crisis crash of a few months ago as a portent of doom, but I happily attempted to ignore that fact and soldiered on, installing everything at least one subsequent time.
Then the keyboard stopped working and began refusing to allow me to use certain keys such as "g", "h", "'", "esc" or "backspace" which was...irritating. And the last straw. I know it's a luxury item, but I'd be lost without my computer and, the system was becoming so unstable I was fearing it'd crash every day.
So I upped and bought a new laptop.
I feel terrible for my old computer (Mark), but my mother has promised to provide him with a good home as she did my last abandoned laptop (Harvey). She doesn't really mind that the disc drive no longer works, or that the keyboard is screwed or that doing anything particularly taxing is liable to make it crash. Because I have an external keyboard and she's got an external disc drive somewhere and she doesn't want it to do anything taxing. Plus getting parts for Mark was a nightmare because he's an RM laptop (exclusively used by educational facilities) but I got him from my mother's work (a University) so she'll probably tote him down to the in-house fixit shop (she works in IT - not the technical side though) and get him fixed up for cheap.
So, yeah. My new puter.
I feel horribly guilty because I really can't afford it, but I had some birthday money left over and a little bit of spare savings and hopefully I'll recoup something at Christmas? I know...horribly mercenary of me.
Ultimately, I ended up getting a computer from the states because the exchange rate is good.
Specs are - 512 Ram, 1.5 Ghz Intel Celeron M, 60gig HD, DVDRW and Windows Vista. Plus it has a widescreen.
Which I think is pretty darned good for 270 pounds. Though I have to type "pounds" as this is still set up with an American keyboard! It ended up closer to 300 though after I paid for shipping/wiring the cash etc.
Yeah, I know that for about a hundred squid more (seventy now that Toys R Us have decided to have some crazy sale!) I could have gotten a better system, but I don't have 100 squid more; 300 really was about the absolute upper limit of my budget, so I'm reasonably impressed by my resourcefulness.
Anyways, that's where I've been lately - fighting with my old computer and setting up my new computer and having my external hard drive which was damned expensive die on me too; with a bunch of stuff I wanted on it! Gah! It's enough to drive one to Buddhism!
I'm trying to get used to Windows Vista.
The main issue is, my going for a cheaper computer with the minimum specs means that it's a little sluggish which is irritating as I'm used to a computer that could more than handle its OS. In retrospect perhaps I should have stuck to XP. But at least this way I won't be horribly out of date since I hope this computer will last me a while.
It's very shiny and flashy in a lot of ways that make no sense.
Like the media player - why would you ever confusingly default to NOT showing the menu buttons like, say, File --> Open?! Who's genius idea what that?! Some freak who wants to force you to update your whole media library and only use playlists from there?! Fools I say! Plus (and again it could be my minimum spec issues) I've been having issues like it dragging and losing the synch with the audio files. Easily remedied by making sure the option to drop frames to keep video and audio synched was checked in Tools --> Options (once I FOUND that menu!) but still...not great. Fortunately VLC player solves all ills.
In spite of myself and my initial fear-reflex, I'm quite enjoying the Sidebar. All the gadgets are addictively fun! For instance, I know now that in the Bottom of the 4th Detroit levelled with the Yankees! (Not that I'm happy with that fact...) I have a virtual fortune cookie, and a dice roller and a Calvin & Hobbs strip presenter, and something that makes an electronic voice say whatever you type into it, and something that produces the sound of either waves or rain, and something that shows the phases of the moon, and a mini octave-long piano, and a PandaCam with a sleeping Panda and a currency exchange converter thing and a CPU & Ram monitor (It's my RAM more than my CPU speed that's really too low for this system I think...). And that's just what I have on there at the moment!
I really wish there were more things like this, but I don't think it's quite taken off yet as I can only really find the official site to download more from.
I was annoyed to discover that a number of programs that ran find on XP wouldn't install on Vista. One was my spyware debugger thingy. One was a program I really can't complain about as it was originally intended to run on 98 and it's not Microsoft, but dammit, that program was LOYAL! And saved me from having to get Microsoft Office. Ah well, I guess Lotus WordPro just lost its last loyal user. Irritatingly that meant I had to go through most of my documents saving them as .rtf files because nothing else opens .lwp files. *sigh* And finally, it's a program I no longer need because the accompanying piece of hardware broke (my external drive/portable media centre) but if that HADN'T happened, I'd have been a little screwed. So yeah. Not aces on back compatibility issues.
Other things about Vista? I guess I don't hate it, and I really like the Sidebar thing. But it's very sluggish (computer issue I'm sure) and seems to be pretending it's a lot more different than it is (though I have no idea about the technical side of things?)
So, um, yes. There's my review. Cautious thumbs up but preferably with more RAM than I have.
Normal blogging to hopefully resume soon!
Then the keyboard stopped working and began refusing to allow me to use certain keys such as "g", "h", "'", "esc" or "backspace" which was...irritating. And the last straw. I know it's a luxury item, but I'd be lost without my computer and, the system was becoming so unstable I was fearing it'd crash every day.
So I upped and bought a new laptop.
I feel terrible for my old computer (Mark), but my mother has promised to provide him with a good home as she did my last abandoned laptop (Harvey). She doesn't really mind that the disc drive no longer works, or that the keyboard is screwed or that doing anything particularly taxing is liable to make it crash. Because I have an external keyboard and she's got an external disc drive somewhere and she doesn't want it to do anything taxing. Plus getting parts for Mark was a nightmare because he's an RM laptop (exclusively used by educational facilities) but I got him from my mother's work (a University) so she'll probably tote him down to the in-house fixit shop (she works in IT - not the technical side though) and get him fixed up for cheap.
So, yeah. My new puter.
I feel horribly guilty because I really can't afford it, but I had some birthday money left over and a little bit of spare savings and hopefully I'll recoup something at Christmas? I know...horribly mercenary of me.
Ultimately, I ended up getting a computer from the states because the exchange rate is good.
Specs are - 512 Ram, 1.5 Ghz Intel Celeron M, 60gig HD, DVDRW and Windows Vista. Plus it has a widescreen.
Which I think is pretty darned good for 270 pounds. Though I have to type "pounds" as this is still set up with an American keyboard! It ended up closer to 300 though after I paid for shipping/wiring the cash etc.
Yeah, I know that for about a hundred squid more (seventy now that Toys R Us have decided to have some crazy sale!) I could have gotten a better system, but I don't have 100 squid more; 300 really was about the absolute upper limit of my budget, so I'm reasonably impressed by my resourcefulness.
Anyways, that's where I've been lately - fighting with my old computer and setting up my new computer and having my external hard drive which was damned expensive die on me too; with a bunch of stuff I wanted on it! Gah! It's enough to drive one to Buddhism!
I'm trying to get used to Windows Vista.
The main issue is, my going for a cheaper computer with the minimum specs means that it's a little sluggish which is irritating as I'm used to a computer that could more than handle its OS. In retrospect perhaps I should have stuck to XP. But at least this way I won't be horribly out of date since I hope this computer will last me a while.
It's very shiny and flashy in a lot of ways that make no sense.
Like the media player - why would you ever confusingly default to NOT showing the menu buttons like, say, File --> Open?! Who's genius idea what that?! Some freak who wants to force you to update your whole media library and only use playlists from there?! Fools I say! Plus (and again it could be my minimum spec issues) I've been having issues like it dragging and losing the synch with the audio files. Easily remedied by making sure the option to drop frames to keep video and audio synched was checked in Tools --> Options (once I FOUND that menu!) but still...not great. Fortunately VLC player solves all ills.
In spite of myself and my initial fear-reflex, I'm quite enjoying the Sidebar. All the gadgets are addictively fun! For instance, I know now that in the Bottom of the 4th Detroit levelled with the Yankees! (Not that I'm happy with that fact...) I have a virtual fortune cookie, and a dice roller and a Calvin & Hobbs strip presenter, and something that makes an electronic voice say whatever you type into it, and something that produces the sound of either waves or rain, and something that shows the phases of the moon, and a mini octave-long piano, and a PandaCam with a sleeping Panda and a currency exchange converter thing and a CPU & Ram monitor (It's my RAM more than my CPU speed that's really too low for this system I think...). And that's just what I have on there at the moment!
I really wish there were more things like this, but I don't think it's quite taken off yet as I can only really find the official site to download more from.
I was annoyed to discover that a number of programs that ran find on XP wouldn't install on Vista. One was my spyware debugger thingy. One was a program I really can't complain about as it was originally intended to run on 98 and it's not Microsoft, but dammit, that program was LOYAL! And saved me from having to get Microsoft Office. Ah well, I guess Lotus WordPro just lost its last loyal user. Irritatingly that meant I had to go through most of my documents saving them as .rtf files because nothing else opens .lwp files. *sigh* And finally, it's a program I no longer need because the accompanying piece of hardware broke (my external drive/portable media centre) but if that HADN'T happened, I'd have been a little screwed. So yeah. Not aces on back compatibility issues.
Other things about Vista? I guess I don't hate it, and I really like the Sidebar thing. But it's very sluggish (computer issue I'm sure) and seems to be pretending it's a lot more different than it is (though I have no idea about the technical side of things?)
So, um, yes. There's my review. Cautious thumbs up but preferably with more RAM than I have.
Normal blogging to hopefully resume soon!
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-18 09:53 pm (UTC)actually, i may be able to help out with that, if you have the right kind of memory on there...
go to http://www.crucial.com , and do a scan with the tool there, and tell me what memory modules you have.
if youre lucky, theyll match the ones im going to be replacing in my mac, and you can have the old ones (2*512Mb PC5300 SO-DIMM).
i would also suggest picking up a copy of XP - theres far too many problems with vista...
no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 02:23 am (UTC)I wouldn't blame the computer for the sluggishness. The basics of your system are very similar to mine and I don't feel that it runs slow. Friends of mine who know software have told me that Vista is still a bit buggy and that may be what is causing your system to run slow. I'm sure they are working on updates for the issues though.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 10:38 am (UTC)*runs test*
Okay, I feel a little daft because I don't think I can see the information I need. Basically I have on 512 slot filled up and another empty slot. But I can't see it saying anything about err, any specs for the specific memory. Here, I'll copy-paste:
Maximum Memory Capacity: 4194304 MB
Currently Installed Memory: 512 MB
Available Memory Slots: 1
Number of Banks: 2
Dual Channel Support: N.A.
CPU Manufacturer: GenuineIntel
CPU Family: Intel(R) Celeron(R) M CPU 410 @ 1.46GHz Model 14, Stepping 8
CPU Speed: 1462 MHz
Err...does that make sense to you? I'm absolutely not a techie. I can handle software issues usually, but technical ones? Nope... :(
no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 10:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 10:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 05:55 pm (UTC)on the underside, just below the battery pack, theres a hatch cover (4 8 15 16 23 42... :D), probably secured by a couple of TORX screws, so youll need a screwdriver similar to the ones you use to tighten a pair of glasses - theyre cheap enough.
make sure the laptop is turned off, remove the cover, and remove the single stick of RAM from its slot, and replace with the 2 sticks youll get in the post - youll double your memory, and have a stick left over you can pass on to someone else who might be able to use it, or just flog on ebay.
for more detailed instructions, see here.
all you need to do now is send me your snailmail addy (mad@madcam.co.uk), and ill post some memory goodness ASAP!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-20 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-20 05:30 pm (UTC)As it's something I noticed when I first started up the computer and before I'd really installed anything and had about two icons on my desktop, I doubt that's the issue, but I will experiment with removing some of the gadgets from the sidebar and see if that helps. :)