Dell 15" Laptop Deals
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2 out of 3 people found this review helpful
1.5 stars
"More "Flash" but not nearly as refined as XP."
Pros: Superficial flashiness (that does not translate into usefulness)
Cons: Drivers less capable than XP; Some useful existing hardware will never be supported
Summary: It is infuriating to have a great printer (Lexmark C524dtn) with duplex capability and not be able to duplex under Vista but have to go to an XP machine to do the duplex printing. This is a driver issue that should have been ironed out before Vista's release. It is even more infuriating to see that detachable disk drives by major manufacturers (e.g. Iomega) are not supported under Vista but are supported under XP. Furthermore, the web sites for these devices state that these devices will not be supported in the future because of "major architectural changes" between Vista and XP. This is absurd. We shouldn't have to upgrade peripheral hardware every time there is a "major" OS upgrade. Even worse: The hardware requirements for basic satisfactory operation are substantially greater for Vista than for XP. XP will run reasonably well on 500 MB or even less. Vista is intolerable on 500 MB and becomes comparable performance wise to XP only at about 1.5 to 2.0 GB of memory. Ridiculous. Vista would never have been released in its present form if Microsoft has serious competition in the OS business. I think XP is superior to Vista in its present form and will be serviceable for almost all applications for many years to come. Microsoft should not be allowed to drop support for XP.Updated
How would you feel about not being able to re-read a book on your bookshelf because the letters have expired and to read it, you have to purchase new letters? If you own a large Type 1 font library (as I do), you will not *ever* be able to use these fonts under Vista. You will either have to purchase Type 3 versions (Adobe is phasing out Type 1) or will have to pay $300 - $1,000 for a font converter (which may or may not render the fonts correctly). XP implements Type 1 fonts flawlessly and seamlessly. There is no reason that Vista cannot support Type 1 fonts other than Microsoft's (and Adobe's) refusal to provide this support.
I have used vista for 5 months now on a new laptop (2.5 GHz, 1.5 GB) and can honestly say that that the "improvements" over XP are marginal at best (and annoying at worst) and that the backward incompatibility with even recent hardware and software is intolerable. I do not want to spend the time and effort doing it, but I feel compelled to install XP over vista.
Where to buy
Windows Vista Business:
$131.98 - $299.99
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$159.99 | Yes |
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$299.99 | Yes |
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$179.98 | Yes |
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$183.47 | Yes |
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$131.98 | Yes |
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