I have managed to avoid Vista so far and with any luck, I will continue to do so. I have heard all the horror stories and have tried to help people who have it do something that is so simple with XP but is a marathon of jumping through hoops with Vista. My conclusion was that I will avoid it just as I did with Windows ME.
My XP laptop is almost five years old and in laptop years that is very old indeed considering the amount of use mine gets. It had one major repair under a warranty that Gateway was good enough to extent for me. That trip to the OR replaced the top lid and screen and got another two years out of it. Now the screen is giving me problems again. The screen dims for no reason and I can fix it by working the hinge a little until it comes back to life. It is then good until it happens again which is usually when I get up to get a coffee or something and move it the wrong way when I have to do the giggle the screen again to get it to brighten again. It is probably a loose wire or connector and something I should be able to fix myself so I opened it up for a look and moved some wires with no effect. Today I took it in to my local friendly computer shop for them to have a look. If I can get one more year out of it, I will replace it with a Windows 7 machine. But I will wait until that system has proved itself before I jump into the deep end.
We've been in Mazatlan almost two weeks.
9 hours ago
Interesting. I've been using Vista for 2 years, without problems. What types of problems have your friends been having? Vista has a much better media and photo viewing programs.
ReplyDeleteThe most complaints see to be that programs bought and paid for for XP will not work on Vista. Printers, scanners - same thing. Drivers were not available to make them work on Vista because, guess what, they want you to throw away the ones you bought last year and buy a new one this year.
ReplyDeleteMy son was here and wanted to make an MP3 DVD to use in his new truck. After an hour or so of trying to figure out how to do it on his Vista machine, I finally made one on my XP machine in a few minutes.
I guess if I had to I could go through the learning curve and learn how to do this stuff but I had better things to do when it came out so I avoided it.
For photo viewing I use Picassa, Nikon View and PhotoShop. For playing music, Spider Player and for videos, all the free Windows or Apple applications. There is nothing I cannot do or any of my older programs or equipment that I cannot use with my XP machine. If I was to go to Vista I would have to invest a lot of money upgrading many programs that I use every day like Quicken and PhotoShop, not to mention a new printer, flatbed scanner and film scanner. It would cost me hundreds. Thanks but no thanks Bill Gates!
Hi Croft,
ReplyDeleteI just bought a new lap top a year ago and told them I wanted an XP as I had heard too many tales of woe about Vista. They ordered it for me and I had it in a couple of days. They seem to be still available if you request them. I got mine at Uforik in Ladysmith.
Cheers!
Elaine in Saltair BC