Well, you have an issue that may be Vista related, or may be related to
hardware and drivers.
(How is that for a catch all answer?)
Anyway, there were some USB related problems with Vista that were resolved
(more or less) with some patches.
If your vista installation is uptodate, it should have the patches (Various
USB modules were replaced)
So for a comparison to be valid, and give any useful info, you should
identify the processors and support chipsets, as well as the MBD models and
mfrs.
A concern with laptops is that they are often dependent upon mfr. and model
specific drivers and BIOS versions. The laptop mfr. is most often the only
source for updated drivers and BIOS versions. This can cause problems with
such things as video and audio drivers, since the laptop mfr's driver is
often several versions behind the generic drivers supplied by say Nvidia or
ATI. I currently have a related problem, in that my desktop uses generic
Nvidia drivers, and my laptop can only use model specific video drivers.
When it comes to audio drivers, the current audio drivers for the laptop
are actually more up to date that those available for my desktop, due to
differences in support chipsets and the audio chips. On the other hand, the
video drivers for the laptop are several versions behind the generic Nvidia
drivers, and are somewhat slower than the current version running on the
desktop.
