Laptop Question

[Alpinestarhero]

Hello everyone, here I am with a product question :D

Saw a toshiba satellite U300-11V laptop in comet today (http://www.comet.co.uk/cometbrowse/product.do?sku=406961), looks exactly what I want - small, light, alot of RAM, big hard-drive. Not sure about the processor though, I havn't had experiance of the intel core 2 duo; also, I havn't had experiance of windows Vista.

Does anyone have one of these laptops? I trust toshiba, my current laptop is toshiba and I love it, except its too big and too heavy to carry about with me easily. Is Vista any good? I'm used to WinXP, and I've had no trouble with it.

Everyones thoughts please, and anything else you think I should be considering. Some sony laptops are the size and weight im looking for, although I don't remmber the models

Matt

[yorkie_chris]

I don't like vista, far and away prefer XP as all the bugs with that are fixed.

You can use simple software that actually works and is mostly free, harder to get hold of software that works with vista.

[Alpinestarhero]

This is my problem; ive heard alot of bad things about winVista; i would like to have the new lighter, seemingly more powerful laptop, with what I currently have on this laptop (WinXP)

That would be perfect

Hmm

Matt

[yorkie_chris]

Well buy it and put XP on it then :confused:

[Alpinestarhero]

Well buy it and put XP on it then :confused:

Then im paying loads for Vista, and not using it

Matt

[yorkie_chris]

See if they'll upgrade it to XP, dell will give you XP home for same price, XP pro you pay extra.

Otherwise, you're not paying a lot for vista, it's a couple of quid a time as they buy in bulk, just think as if you're paying for the hardware.
Oh and don't go do anything silly like buy a copy of XP either :-P

[tactcom7]

Matt

Hello mate, i have a toshiba satellite A-200 i think it is with Vista and an intel duo core 2 thingy. There not as bulletproof/reliable as i was told and vista does seem to have a lot of problems, a lot of my old driver cds (for ipod type things) simply don't work on it and a lot of the new vista drivers aren't available on the net yet. It also seems to be getting slower as time goes on for no reason and after having it about 4 months i had to reinstall the OS for no particular reason as the CPU was constantly running at 100%. That was after i'd spent about £200 on virus and spyware software (norton 360 etc.) but to no avail. Overall they're a good machine and the blue lights look pretty but don't be taken in by all the hype or people who say they never break, because they do!

Si

P.S My screen has developed a fault that has left some white cloudy patches in it, visible when you're displaying a dark image on screen :( FYI i bought it about 6 months ago...

[fizzwheel]

On the Vista thing, we've had two laptops now with it on and no problems with either, its a bit awkward to use if you are a geek like me as all the geeky stuff is hidden away and you have to go routing around for it. I've heard lots of horror stories about drivers but not as yet come across any myself, Liz's laptop runs vista and her Ipod and all her games etc that she wants to do with no trouble.A guy in our office uses it on his work machine again with no trouble.

I've been out of the retail side of things for ages, but Toshiba always used to have a good rep.

[Manguish]

Vistas awesome. Far better than XP - it's only the fanboys who don't like it.

Move on people. Vistas coming and XPs gonna be unsupported soon.

Or get linux :p

[Defender]

Hello, there's a big forum on moneysavingexpert.co.uk which may help.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1993

[Sean_C]

The processor is sound, don't worry about that. Got one in my macbook.
As for vista, I wouldn't have it personally, they might change it to XP though if you ask nicely :)

[Brettus]

I dislike vista so far, but then I disliked XP when it first came out.
If you buy a machine with Vista home premium I'm pretty sure you are allowed to downgrade to XP on the same license, (just need to find a kind soul with a spare copy of the corporate CD and a key (pretty easy with XP)) that way you have bought a future proofed license, you can put it back to Vista after they have got SP1 out the door and working well.
If nothing else you can try Vista when you get it that way, if you pay the same to get it with XP you are stuck with that.
Just my opinion anyway.

[tigersaw]

I bought an HP with Vista a few months ago, and hated its sluggishness from the word go. HP would not supply drivers for allowing me to upgrade to XP, but finally got them from Nvidia after a bit of detective work using the FAA numbers on the motherboard to ID it. I put on XP pro - from google research only pro supports dual core - and now it runs like it should. I have real world figures that show it runs more than 50% faster than before, using test progs with whetstones, dhrystones, 3d jiggerypokery etc.
Nothing about Vista felt right, it was always hammering the disk, always nannying and very annoyed when you try to install non m$oft utilities.

[muffles]

I just bought a HP laptop with similar spec to Matt's but not a small one (normal 15.4" screen type).

Vista on occasion seems a tad slower than I'd expect from the spec, and that's with (what I gather) is a better graphics card - though still integrated (GeForce 7100).

I've only had one problem so far - and it's relatively annoying for me - that is, Microsoft have removed the IPX/SPX protocol from Vista onwards (XP has it but you need to manually install). A lot of my older games won't work over the network without this. :mad: I couldn't get a hack I found online to work either, I don't think this has been solved properly yet.

I've only really been browsing the web, MSN, so far so not really using it (just wanted it so I can sit in the lounge lol).

Btw the model is the HP Pavilion dv6000 according to the label on it.

[lukemillar]

Just buy a mac :wink: and forget windows completely :)

[Mike2165]

I recently bought a HP G6000 with Vista on it. Bought mainly cause of what I heard about Toshiba. Had no problems with it at all, there are now another 2 of these that members of my family have bought, all good so far.

[Defender]

I know someone who bought a very nice Acer laptop from Comet today.

It cost £360 which included a case, wire mouse and 1gig flash memory.

[Alpinestarhero]

Thanks for all your replies guys, some food for thought there

I'll go away and research some more laptops aswell :D

Matt

[dissuade]

Just buy a mac :wink: and forget windows completely :)

+1, as windows is pants and makes me cry.