How good is Vista Home Basic

[KanishK]

I just bought a Compaq Presario AMD Turion 64x notebook. It came along
with a pre-loaded Vista Home Basic. Though I have a 1 GB RAM, the
system seems to be running slow. The windows media player is installed
successfully but there is no sound output when I play files from the
hard disc. The sound output is realised when a streaming is done from
the Internet. A few softwares like Divx and winamp are not compatible.
I want to know the following :

Is it advisable to do a dual boot. I mean load XP along with vista and use dual boot mode.

What are the softwares that arent compatible with Vista and that were running on XP.

 

[John]

I just bought a Compaq Presario AMD Turion 64x notebook. It came along
with a pre-loaded Vista Home Basic. Though I have a 1 GB RAM, the
system seems to be running slow. The windows media player is installed
successfully but there is no sound output when I play files from the
hard disc. The sound output is realised when a streaming is done from
the Internet. A few softwares like Divx and winamp are not compatible.
I want to know the following :

You are asking in the wrong group.

Try:

alt.os.windows-vista

John.

 

[TJ]

I just bought a Compaq Presario AMD Turion 64x notebook. It came along
with a pre-loaded Vista Home Basic. Though I have a 1 GB RAM, the
system seems to be running slow. The windows media player is installed
successfully but there is no sound output when I play files from the
hard disc. The sound output is realised when a streaming is done from
the Internet. A few softwares like Divx and winamp are not compatible.
I want to know the following :

This is a printer group. You need to go to a Windows group. That said,
from what I've heard, Vista Home Basic is darn near worthless. Try
reading this article:
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/04/04/windows_vista_marketing_deception/

Dell describes Vista Home Basic as "good for booting, but not for
running applications or games." I heard recently that Dell has stopped
shipping computers with Vista installed, going back to XP. Check that
out for yourself.

But go to a Windows group for better information than I can provide.
Please. I'm a Linux user, and have had nothing to do with Vista, nor will I.

TJ

 

[measekite]

I just bought a Compaq Presario AMD Turion 64x notebook. It came along
with a pre-loaded Vista Home Basic.

It is total trash. Does not even have total networking and complete
network security.

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

Dell describes Vista Home Basic as "good for booting, but not for
running applications or games." I heard recently that Dell has stopped
shipping computers with Vista installed, going back to XP. Check that
out for yourself.

On CERTAIN models, they are allowing users to choose XP instead of
Vista. They are NOT dropping Vista totally (MS would probably sue the
crap out of them).

Also, do you have a link where we can verify the Dell quote about how
useless Home Basic is?

 

[Andrew Rossmann]

[This followup was posted to comp.periphs.printers and a copy was sent
to the cited author.]

I just bought a Compaq Presario AMD Turion 64x notebook. It came along
with a pre-loaded Vista Home Basic. Though I have a 1 GB RAM, the
system seems to be running slow. The windows media player is installed
successfully but there is no sound output when I play files from the
hard disc. The sound output is realised when a streaming is done from
the Internet. A few softwares like Divx and winamp are not compatible.
I want to know the following :

Is it advisable to do a dual boot. I mean load XP along with vista and use dual boot mode.

What are the softwares that arent compatible with Vista and that were running on XP.

Is there any way to tweak the system for better performance in terms of speed.

What can be done with the Media Player issue?

Make certain your audio is properly configured and recognized by
Windows. Double-check any media player setting to verify that outputs
are being sent to the audio in the notebook, and that you don't have
mute enabled or something silly like that.

Vista is a memory hog. Consider upgrading to 2G of RAM if possible.
Basic doesn't support the Aero interface, but you can help things by
further turning off various effects. Notebooks don't typically have very
powerful video, and the extra Aero features can greatly reduce battery
life.

As for 3rd party software, you need to check their sites for the latest
versions, and if there are any support notes for Vista.

 

[TJ]

On CERTAIN models, they are allowing users to choose XP instead of
Vista. They are NOT dropping Vista totally (MS would probably sue the
crap out of them).

Also, do you have a link where we can verify the Dell quote about how
useless Home Basic is?

I quoted Dell from memory, and I didn't get it precisely correct. Dell
actually describes Vista Home Basic as "Great for booting the operating
system, without running applications or games." I still think I was
close enough. The actual document is a comparison chart of the various
versions of Vista. The link I saw is:
http://regmedia.co.uk/2007/04/04/dell_vista_pc_basic.pdf

The same chart can be found on this page at Dell's site:
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/.../en/winvista?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&redirect=1


As for Dell not shipping with Vista, I saw that in a blog from a usually
reliable source, though admittedly he's a Mac advocate. I have no idea
where he got his information. Not being at all interested in Vista, I
didn't bother to look further.

TJ