Author Topic: Anybody Using Vista? (Read 9684 times)

Dichotomy · « **Reply #120 on:** February 04, 2007, 12:37:55 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Dell is better than some. HP/Compaq are the worst.

And OEM's have to switch to shipping to Vista as MS will not allow them to do anything else. They usually have a small grace period to rid themselves of the previous OS before being forced to ship the new OS.

However, you might call Dell and ask them if you can still get XP on a new computer.

Wow Skuzzy

That's the first time I've ever disagreed with you. Every machine in my office is Dell excepting mine. I loathe and despise the Dell machines with every fiber of my being because every single one of them has had a hardware fault within a year of purchase. Whereas my Compaq here at home and at the office have never given me a bit of trouble.

That said I'm not even in the same sport much less the same league with your knowledge so I'm just going on base experience here.

Why do you say HP / Compaq are the worst?

Skuzzy · « **Reply #121 on:** February 04, 2007, 12:46:24 PM »

Heck, all the OEM computers are crap hardware.

Dell has a much cleaner installation of the OS than HP/Compaq and that is about the only distinction I will make between the OEM computers.

Wes14 · « **Reply #122 on:** February 04, 2007, 12:51:04 PM »

did i forget to mention that all all the pc's in our school(except the Mac's) are dell.and they seem to die after a year of use

my Compaq at home is a "problem Child" pc:mad:

Skuzzy · « **Reply #123 on:** February 04, 2007, 01:01:19 PM »

Uh,school's get the bottom of the line hardware as they want it cheap. Not really a good point of comparison.

By whatever OEm computer you want. They are all crap as far as I am concerned.

republic · « **Reply #124 on:** February 04, 2007, 01:10:09 PM »

I generally have found Dell Optiplex systems to be very reliable. I currently have a lab which hasn't needed a single hardware repair (other than a few stuck floppy disks) in 5 years...with heavy teenage use.

However, I also have a Dell Poweredge server which has chewed through 2 hard drives in 6 months. Never seen anything like it. I dunno whether it was just a freak of nature and I had 2 faulty drives in a row...or maybe the sata controller on the Poweredge is killing them...very frustrating. On my 3rd system drive...thank goodness for drive imaging.

As a one man IT "department"...I have no choice but OEM.

Wes14 · « **Reply #125 on:** February 04, 2007, 01:11:08 PM »

the Main lab Pc's here at my school r pretty good..all the other dells got P.O.S hardware

the macs r about a month old ,but as they stand i think they will last a few years:D

my pc's got a P.O.S Processor and graphics card..everything else is good

republic · « **Reply #126 on:** February 04, 2007, 01:29:19 PM »

Just wanted to chime in saying that AH is working fine on my system with Vista, so if you think you might get stuck with it...there is hope.

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
RAM: 2GB Mushkin DDR-400
Motherboard Chipset: nVidia 6100/410 using vista default drivers
Video Card: GeForce 7800GT using 97.46 drivers
Sound: Audigy using Creative Labs 2.12.001 beta vista drivers

Irwink! · « **Reply #127 on:** February 04, 2007, 01:35:19 PM »

I've worked with Dell servers, Dell desktops, HP servers, HP desktops and never experienced any extraordinary problems with any of 'em. That is only my experience.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #128 on:** February 04, 2007, 01:39:46 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by republic
As a one man IT "department"...I have no choice but OEM.

Uhmm.. I am also in that same boat. I build our servers so that if anything goes wrong with one, we can usually get it fixed far faster than any OEM server. It also gives us control on the quality of hardware used in the servers.

HTC has never had a production server failure of any kind. I can go all the way back to the 1980's, when I started building and maintaining servers and have never had a hardware failure of any server I have built.

Wes14 · « **Reply #129 on:** February 04, 2007, 01:50:24 PM »

My old 98 wasn't a OEM machine..it was a good pc..it don't run now cause of a virus wiped the start up files off the pc

not to go off topic but would overclocking my Celeron-D processor help with AH performance any?

Krusty · « **Reply #130 on:** February 04, 2007, 04:28:20 PM »

The thing about HPs and Dells isn't that they don't work. It's that they don't upgrade. They go out of their way to make proprietary hardware so that you have to go out of your way to get compatible parts if you want to do anything to them.

Sounds like it's not a big deal, right? Only my family had 3 HPs once. They had very low RAM as default, and we tried to get more for one of them. Nobody had it. We had to have it ordered from a compUSA or a Best Buy or something and then wait for it to come in. Then it was very expensive. We ran into similar problems down the line trying to upgrade the other computers, only the RAM we got was bad, so we had to wait even longer for more.

[Edit, left out the word "nonstandard" in the following sentence. Fixed.]

They go out of their way to make these things nonstandard: cases, fans, mounts, plugs, and a lot of other things. If you do get one with an AGP slot (or PCIe nowadays) you can stick a video card in it, but that's the one thing they CAN'T make proprietary, because nobody would make anything for a custom-format AGP slot, or a custom-format PCI slot.

Anyways, I tried to upgrade my sister's PC. She had a Dell. It was too old to simply pop in another chip, so I swapped out the motherboard. Only the case wasn't standard ATX. The fan placement for the vent out the back was nonstandard, oh and it was missing some of the screw mounts for standard ATX, and the case pins (pwr, LED, HD cables) were non-standard and I had to cut them apart and manually re-attach them to the proper mobo pins.

Hell they went out of their way to make the standard USB header had an extra row in it. Yes, it should have 1 row of 4 and 1 row of 5 pins. Only they added an unused row (without pins -- just a gap) so that only their case would work with their motherboards. Further they switched the pin order around IN that plug. I had to chop the front-panel US plug in half, grind the excess plastic down, and reverse the plug halves left to right (at least they used universal USB colors on the wires).

These folks are paranoid. They don't want you to do anything, ever, with their stuff. They want you to turn it in and get a completely new machine at the first sign of trouble. We all see how well that works for Macintosh, don't we?

So, yeah, if you're just going to use it and nothing else, they make a decent PC. If you ever want to do anything that involves opening the case, get something else.

Krusty · « **Reply #131 on:** February 04, 2007, 04:30:41 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Wes14
not to go off topic but would overclocking my Celeron-D processor help with AH performance any?

You might want to start a new topic. That's a new subject entirely. Include the current specs you have, because it depends on how fast your CPU is right now.

Dichotomy · « **Reply #132 on:** February 04, 2007, 06:03:01 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Heck, all the OEM computers are crap hardware.

Dell has a much cleaner installation of the OS than HP/Compaq and that is about the only distinction I will make between the OEM computers.

ahhh we're talking about OEM here... okay then your post makes sense. I'm not going to attempt to build comps for my office because if something happens to go wrong I don't want to deal with the bovine excrement if something goes wrong. Let them buy the 3 year extended warranties.

Only recently have I considered building my own box as I only use it for web browsing, personal finance, light photo or music editing, and most importantly AH.

Posted about that a while back and got some great responses.

Thank you for clearing that up sir.

MrRiplEy[H] · « **Reply #133 on:** February 05, 2007, 01:00:59 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Krusty
The thing about HPs and Dells isn't that they don't work. It's that they don't upgrade. They go out of their way to make proprietary hardware so that you have to go out of your way to get compatible parts if you want to do anything to them.

Sounds like it's not a big deal, right? Only my family had 3 HPs once. They had very low RAM as default, and we tried to get more for one of them. Nobody had it. We had to have it ordered from a compUSA or a Best Buy or something and then wait for it to come in. Then it was very expensive. We ran into similar problems down the line trying to upgrade the other computers, only the RAM we got was bad, so we had to wait even longer for more.

[Edit, left out the word "nonstandard" in the following sentence. Fixed.]

They go out of their way to make these things nonstandard: cases, fans, mounts, plugs, and a lot of other things. If you do get one with an AGP slot (or PCIe nowadays) you can stick a video card in it, but that's the one thing they CAN'T make proprietary, because nobody would make anything for a custom-format AGP slot, or a custom-format PCI slot.

Anyways, I tried to upgrade my sister's PC. She had a Dell. It was too old to simply pop in another chip, so I swapped out the motherboard. Only the case wasn't standard ATX. The fan placement for the vent out the back was nonstandard, oh and it was missing some of the screw mounts for standard ATX, and the case pins (pwr, LED, HD cables) were non-standard and I had to cut them apart and manually re-attach them to the proper mobo pins.

Hell they went out of their way to make the standard USB header had an extra row in it. Yes, it should have 1 row of 4 and 1 row of 5 pins. Only they added an unused row (without pins -- just a gap) so that only their case would work with their motherboards. Further they switched the pin order around IN that plug. I had to chop the front-panel US plug in half, grind the excess plastic down, and reverse the plug halves left to right (at least they used universal USB colors on the wires).

These folks are paranoid. They don't want you to do anything, ever, with their stuff. They want you to turn it in and get a completely new machine at the first sign of trouble. We all see how well that works for Macintosh, don't we?

So, yeah, if you're just going to use it and nothing else, they make a decent PC. If you ever want to do anything that involves opening the case, get something else.

*hint* a new case is $40 at any hardware shop *hint*

Mini D · « **Reply #134 on:** February 05, 2007, 07:43:07 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by MrRiplEy[H]
*hint* a new case is $40 at any hardware shop *hint*

Case? You mean case, motherboard, memory, power supply and so forth... right? It's not unusual for most of this to be proprietary on HPs and Compacts (from what I've seen... haven't worked with Dells).

Making them upgradeable is not in the manufacturer's best interest.