Issues in General (Dell D400)

[Guest]

I'm trying to run Vista on a Dell Latitude D400 (basically it's marginal, and
this is the general class of machine that it'll have to run on)

Specs:
Centrino 1.4 GHz
512 Meg RAM
40 Gig HD
Intel Wireless NIC
Intel integrated video (I know this will have performance issues)

In general, I like the way Explorer (not IE) works and behaves - it has a
few quirks to get use to, but it runs fairly well. The one thing that is
driving me nuts however is that when installing new apps, it takes forever!
I've installed Visual Studio Express Edition to test it out on the .Net 3.0.
In XP, I had no issues installing, but on Vista, it took 3x as long.

I've set the "eye-candy" down to Windows Classic, and set Adjust System
Performance for "best performance". It still takes forever to install, and
it if you delete files, it REALLY takes a long time.

Another real pain to me is the DEP... or what I assume is DEP... the
constant warnings from UAC forcing me to hit Continue. I agree that security
is important, but is there a way to turn off so many prompts?

I have three other machines available to test it on, but I'm afraid to...
Anyone else have experience with these issues? As a IT Professional and a
part-time repair tech and consultant, I need to play and be prepared, but so
far it is a frustrating experience.

 

[Guest]

I'm trying to run Vista on a Dell Latitude D400 (basically it's marginal,
and

this is the general class of machine that it'll have to run on)

Hello,

Unfortunately, your computer is in the low-tier category for Windows Vista.
Right now, Vista tends to use more than 512 MB of RAM just out of the box (at
least it does on my x64 system), so I'm sure this is slowing you down
tremendously.

I would recommend at least 1 GB of RAM.

Memory usage will get better before RTM, as will performance of drivers and
such, so this is not how bad things will be in the end ... but your system
will still be the lower tier for Vista performance-wise, and you should not
expect Vista to perform as well as XP on these systems.

it if you delete files, it REALLY takes a long time.

Yeah, file operations tend to be pretty bad right now ... especially working
with ZIP files using Vista's built-in tool.

Some of this could be caused by the Indexer, which runs in the background
indexing your stuff, although it's not supposed to make a huge impact. It
shouldn't be as active after the first few hours (days?) of using your system.

Another real pain to me is the DEP... or what I assume is DEP... the
constant warnings from UAC forcing me to hit Continue. I agree that security
is important, but is there a way to turn off so many prompts?

This is UAC, which (Microsoft says) will be overhauled in the next public
release to be not so annoying.

You can turn it off from Start -> Control Panel -> User Accounts and Family
Safety -> User Accounts -> Change Security Settings.

Good luck!

- JB

 

[Guest]

Unfortunately, your computer is in the low-tier category for Windows Vista.
Right now, Vista tends to use more than 512 MB of RAM just out of the box (at
least it does on my x64 system), so I'm sure this is slowing you down
tremendously.

Thanks for the response. Just based on the "proposed" requirements I knew
that this machine was marginal, and from what you are saying, it would run a
LOT better on my primary desktop (Athlon64 3000+, 2 Gig RAM, 250 Gig HD,
nVidia6600 w/ 256 Meg). My other two machines would be slightly not as good
as my Desktop (each with 1 Gig of RAM and being a little slower [about 2.0
GHz]).