Yesterday marked the fifth time in the little over three weeks since I purchased this computer that I have reinstalled Vista. It’s no fault of HP or Vista really it’s just my own indecisiveness. The first format was to install XP but text looked like crap on my screen even with the drivers from HP. So, I formatted and installed Vista again. Next time I tried to triple boot, XP, Vista, and Ubuntu which totally fried my MBR and a full factory restore was the only option. From there I got frustrated with paying for an XP license then not using it, so the decision was made to wipe Vista, install XP and figure out the ugly text problem. The ugly text problem was figured out quite easily by downloading the original drivers from the nVidia website. All was well for a good week, I was more than satisfied with my XP/Ubuntu dual boot setup.
Until I tried to burn a DVD as part of my weekly backup procedures. It appears even though XP recognizes, installs from, and reads discs from my DVD-RW drive it won’t burn to it. XP just plain won’t recognize any blank media in the drive. For me, this is a deal breaker as I need to be able to burn. A quick chat with HP’s live technician tells me what I thought there is no drivers under XP for this drive.
Now, I find that a little out of the ordinary. Ubuntu burns to this drive why cannot a commercial OS? HP even has a whole page dedicated to “downgrading” to XP while it warns that downgrading may limit functionality, HP still felt the need publish an entire document on it. Obviously the “may limit functionally” warning is a CYA maneuver. My issue is there were Light Scribe DVD-RW’s before Vista came out, why cannot they just provide drivers for it to keep their customers happy?
Nonetheless, No DVD burner means no sale for me. Time for a format and reinstall of Vista, everything went smoothly. I downloaded all the Windows Updates, my favorite sidebar gadgets, and programs. In fact I’m posting from Vista right now. Overall, I like Vista sure it’s a bit of a resource hog but it’s eye candy accounts for that. With 3 GB of RAM, I have rarely gone over the 50% mark of RAM utilization even with Open Office and Firefox with 30+ tabs open.
All in all, I’m satisfied with Vista. Sure, I’ve installed Ubuntu and still use it but for now Vista is my primary OS. What are you thoughts on Vista in comparison to XP or any other OS?
I purchased Vista Home Premium when it first came out and have used it on my home machine (built ground-up, so I was expecting a driver nightmare).
However, I’ve had the same installation running for over a year without any sort of issue that would make me consider downgrading to XP. Performance in a few games makes me tempted to dual-boot, but the effort make the slight performance boost less attractive.
All in all I’m extremely pleased with Vista (due to the pleasantness of having great hardware support and driver management, stability, etc.) and am just now looking at doing my first reinstall of the OS (I always worry when the same installation runs fine for over a year!). I still use linux, but only on a separate fileserver as Vista fills every one of my needs, and does it well.