A early birthday present...

[daves87rs]

Tomorrow I get to pick my birthday present...a brand spanking new Gateway labtop..

Can't wait! Not looking foward to Vista though....

Usually I tell the wife not to get me stuff for my birthday, but this year she dragged my butt to the store (almost literally )

I needed one of these things anyway, since I was planning to head back to school soon. I was planning to borrow one, but this works out better...

Looks cool too...I'm not even sure what I want to do with it first....

[schuby87]

Congrats! I think that Vista is great if you have a computer that can run it to its full potential.

[Guest YellowJacket894]

Vista's security nannies are annoying. I remember when I was setting up my girlfriend's new PC with Vista, it would pop up the dumb little "Are you sure you want to proceed with this action" screen every other five minutes when I was installing iTunes (she can't download it, she has dial-up that's slower than a '79 Chevette fighting a head-on windstorm).

[caddycruiser]

I bought mom a new Gateway laptop before Christmas (screaming Best Buy deal), and Vista is a bit clunky...but works well if your machine is up to it, or at least decently.

Her laptop came with the usual 1GB memory standard, and from reading, it was said that Vista would tend to hang and be even slower with that, and to stick with 2GB as a minimum--so I popped in 2 new 1GB chips, and no issues. Seems quicker and more able to handle the hog of Vista.

But it's hers, so what does she think? All she wanted was something she could sit go wherever and be on the internet or play games...and it succeeds well at that. She's not at all computer savvy, and was only used to the usual Windows, but has yet to hit upon anything in Vista that stumped her--and apparently was able to go in and play with settings I never knew she'd know about. Biggest of all? She LOVES the new Vista (or maybe it's just a new version in general...) Solitaire...much more active and higher tech looking/operating.

Yeah, it's the little things...

Hope it works well for you! Playing with mom's, I sure am jealous over the dull Dell Latitude I have, given to me by my school.

[daves87rs]

Vista's security nannies are annoying. I remember when I was setting up my girlfriend's new PC with Vista, it would pop up the dumb little "Are you sure you want to proceed with this action" screen every other five minutes when I was installing iTunes (she can't download it, she has dial-up that's slower than a '79 Chevette fighting a head-on windstorm).

Yeah, my downloads are going to be slow.....

[04monteintimidator]

i like vista... altho i agree the security things can be annoying but they dont bother me too much since i rarely download things... so maybe its worse for other people... i could also just be really happy that i have a laptop that doesnt take 10-15 minutes for start up/shut down... damn Sony Vaio...

[daves87rs]

I bought mom a new Gateway laptop before Christmas (screaming Best Buy deal), and Vista is a bit clunky...but works well if your machine is up to it, or at least decently.

Her laptop came with the usual 1GB memory standard, and from reading, it was said that Vista would tend to hang and be even slower with that, and to stick with 2GB as a minimum--so I popped in 2 new 1GB chips, and no issues. Seems quicker and more able to handle the hog of Vista.

But it's hers, so what does she think? All she wanted was something she could sit go wherever and be on the internet or play games...and it succeeds well at that. She's not at all computer savvy, and was only used to the usual Windows, but has yet to hit upon anything in Vista that stumped her--and apparently was able to go in and play with settings I never knew she'd know about. Biggest of all? She LOVES the new Vista (or maybe it's just a new version in general...) Solitaire...much more active and higher tech looking/operating.

Yeah, it's the little things...

Hope it works well for you! Playing with mom's, I sure am jealous over the dull Dell Latitude I have, given to me by my school.

Yeah, it was a decent deal...

I have 2GB, I was afraid of what Vista would do to 1GB...though I could have upgraded it....

I liked the fact it had the next-gen wireless, and a good CD burner, and a dual core processor.....

Not bad for school and a little bit of fun....

[daves87rs]

Congrats! I think that Vista is great if you have a computer that can run it to its full potential.

Yep.

I've only played with Vista a bit, but after I get the hang of it I think it should be fine..

[Intrepidation]

I've used Vista on someone's Toshiba laptop, it wasn't bad at all. It wasn't too annoying when I went to install Avast and AdAware and FireFox...no worse than XP.

[Duncan]

I've used Vista on someone's Toshiba laptop, it wasn't bad at all. It wasn't too annoying when I went to install Avast and AdAware and FireFox...no worse than XP.

Good to see someone else likes the free software. Firefox, Avast and Spybot works for me, at least with XP. I haven't felt like taking the Vista plunge yet.

[Intrepidation]

Avast is an excellent antivirus program. I much prefer it to $h!ty Norton, for example. Ad-Aware has always worked very well for me too, and of course, Firefox rocks my socks

[daves87rs]

Avast is an excellent antivirus program. I much prefer it to $h!ty Norton, for example. Ad-Aware has always worked very well for me too, and of course, Firefox rocks my socks

They are all free?

[Cory Wolfe]

I like XP.. it doesn't give me any problems. But this virus pretty much means upgrading.

[Intrepidation]

They are all free?

Yup, they all work with Vista too. You can get them at http://www.majorgeeks.com

[Duncan]

They are all free?

Firefox has always been open-source and entirely free to download. (Their e-mail client, Thunderbird, is also top-notch.) All kinds of great features, numerous plug-ins and add-ons, full compatibility with (from my experience) about 99.5% of all websites - it has become my first choice in browsers. (I only use Internet Explorer to run Microsoft Update, because Microsoft requires it.)

Avast Antivirus is free in its "Home" edition, which may only be installed on one computer (never had a problem separately downloading to each of my PCs, though). The pro version (intended for use by IT services, etc.) costs money. Either way, the program updates itself about twice a day and works seamlessly in the background without stealing all kinds of RAM. Having used both Norton and McAfee, and having been underwhelmed by their outright rape of my system's resources, I'm very impressed with Avast.

Spybot: Search and Destroy (yes, that's the full name) has also been free forever, though it doesn't update itself like the other programs do. You have to periodically download updates, but the program does remind you to do so when you load it up. It's absolutely thorough in its scanning, though, and has a background function to let you know when programs or websites try to screw with your registry settings.

I don't use AdAware personally, but I hear good things. It too is a free download.

[daves87rs]

Yup, they all work with Vista too. You can get them at http://www.majorgeeks.com

Cool! I'm going to check it out!

[daves87rs]

Firefox has always been open-source and entirely free to download. (Their e-mail client, Thunderbird, is also top-notch.) All kinds of great features, numerous plug-ins and add-ons, full compatibility with (from my experience) about 99.5% of all websites - it has become my first choice in browsers. (I only use Internet Explorer to run Microsoft Update, because Microsoft requires it.)

Avast Antivirus is free in its "Home" edition, which may only be installed on one computer (never had a problem separately downloading to each of my PCs, though). The pro version (intended for use by IT services, etc.) costs money. Either way, the program updates itself about twice a day and works seamlessly in the background without stealing all kinds of RAM. Having used both Norton and McAfee, and having been underwhelmed by their outright rape of my system's resources, I'm very impressed with Avast.

Spybot: Search and Destroy (yes, that's the full name) has also been free forever, though it doesn't update itself like the other programs do. You have to periodically download updates, but the program does remind you to do so when you load it up. It's absolutely thorough in its scanning, though, and has a background function to let you know when programs or websites try to screw with your registry settings.

I don't use AdAware personally, but I hear good things. It too is a free download.

Thanks for the info....

[Intrepidation]

Firefox has always been open-source and entirely free to download. (Their e-mail client, Thunderbird, is also top-notch.) All kinds of great features, numerous plug-ins and add-ons, full compatibility with (from my experience) about 99.5% of all websites - it has become my first choice in browsers. (I only use Internet Explorer to run Microsoft Update, because Microsoft requires it.)

Avast Antivirus is free in its "Home" edition, which may only be installed on one computer (never had a problem separately downloading to each of my PCs, though). The pro version (intended for use by IT services, etc.) costs money. Either way, the program updates itself about twice a day and works seamlessly in the background without stealing all kinds of RAM. Having used both Norton and McAfee, and having been underwhelmed by their outright rape of my system's resources, I'm very impressed with Avast.

Spybot: Search and Destroy (yes, that's the full name) has also been free forever, though it doesn't update itself like the other programs do. You have to periodically download updates, but the program does remind you to do so when you load it up. It's absolutely thorough in its scanning, though, and has a background function to let you know when programs or websites try to screw with your registry settings.

I don't use AdAware personally, but I hear good things. It too is a free download.

Norton completely sucks from my experiences and McAfee hasn't really impressed me either, plus their subscriptions seem to last like a month. Every computer I built or work on I put Avast on it. It works very well. I've put it on and used it on at least 10 computers. My record so far is 1,835 viruses/trojans/worms that it found and eliminated.

Ad-Aware works great, Spybot is good too, I've used it in the past. They work well in conjunction with each other because they can find a few things the other program misses.

[daves87rs]

Norton completely sucks from my experiences and McAfee hasn't really impressed me either, plus their subscriptions seem to last like a month. Every computer I built or work on I put Avast on it. It works very well. I've put it on and used it on at least 10 computers. My record so far is 1,835 viruses/trojans/worms that it found and eliminated.

Ad-Aware works great, Spybot is good too, I've used it in the past. They work well in conjunction with each other because they can find a few things the other program misses.

Yeah, I have Norton now, and it doesn't impress me much...

The labtop has Trend Mirco on it....it took like an hour and a half to do a scan....

If Avast if faster(besides prob being better), I'm thinking about changing that soon...

How good is Trend Mirco Antivirus? (the stuff from best buy..)