I went shopping for a laptop

[Guest]

I went to C-USA to look at the various Vista configurations. They had about 2
dozen of them on display. I figured the best way to judge performance would
be to start by looking at the performance/experience ratings.

on half of the laptops access to the control panel was outright Blocked.

on the other half the performance/experience ratings were disabled or did
not report any scores.

Sure, most of them had Aero turned on and functioning, but that's not the
only factor one should consider...

On most of them the screens would show digital scramble while trying to
figure out what to do.

Most of the laptops were popular name branded models and it didn't matter
what price group they were in, or what features they had.....

all in all, I ended up just walking away, shakng my head in disbelief....

My 3 year old desktop with AGPx4 runs Vista Ultimate with all of the
features, and doesn't seem to have any performance issues.

it 'looks' as if they're trying to work their way around Vista instead of
making them work with Vista...

 

[Mike Hall - MS MVP Windows Shell/User]

If you want a top performing laptop, be prepared to pay out big bucks.. if
you just need a reasonably capable laptop, pick out one based on how you
like the look, keyboard feel, screen display and built-in features..

I went to C-USA to look at the various Vista configurations. They had about
2
dozen of them on display. I figured the best way to judge performance
would
be to start by looking at the performance/experience ratings.

on half of the laptops access to the control panel was outright Blocked.

on the other half the performance/experience ratings were disabled or did
not report any scores.

Sure, most of them had Aero turned on and functioning, but that's not the
only factor one should consider...

On most of them the screens would show digital scramble while trying to
figure out what to do.

Most of the laptops were popular name branded models and it didn't matter
what price group they were in, or what features they had.....

all in all, I ended up just walking away, shakng my head in disbelief....

My 3 year old desktop with AGPx4 runs Vista Ultimate with all of the
features, and doesn't seem to have any performance issues.

it 'looks' as if they're trying to work their way around Vista instead of
making them work with Vista...

--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

 

[William]

If you absolutely MUST have a Vista laptop, make sure you get at least 2GB
667Mhz RAM, a fast 200GB drive, a 256M graphic card and a super hot
microprocessor. You'll probaby have to spend $2500 or more. For half that
money you can easily pick up a nice laptop running XP with twice the
performance. Good luck! -William

 

[Tom]

I think your minimum specs are a bit high. I am using Vista Premium on a
Dell Inspiron 6000d with 1gb memory, Pentium M 1.6, ATI 300x 128mb and a 60
g HD with more than adequate success. I'm sure one can find a newer Dell
laptop (E1505?) that will run Vista for almost any purpose at a price around
$1,400.

 

[Andy Bowen]

I think he did have it a bit high there. Im running a dual boot at the
moment but Vista Business is working fine. The computer is a HP compaq
nx6325 3500+ on a 256M card 1.8 Ghz 1G ram and an 80Gb harddrive partioned
into 2 40Gb.

Its working ok for me although im still mainly using XP at the moment. Half
of the drivers arent out for the hardware i use.