Is It 2010 2011 2012 Yet?
July 22nd, 2008 - 9:46 am
What else does Windows Vista suck at? Running solid state hard drives.
Turns out, the reason SSD-equipped laptops get worse battery time than ones with plain old hard drives is because Vista doesn’t know what it’s doing. Windows 7 can’t come soon enough — although OS X is already here.
I’ve actually been using a version of Windows called “XP” for years. It works pretty well. Maybe you should give it a try.
XP is NT with a shiny new coat of consumer-grade paint. Not that there’s anything wrong with that — NT was and is a fine OS.
Especially considering NT is 1990s technology. Doubly especially considering that the “new” paint was applied seven years ago.
Me, I like having a fully modern, fully 64-bit OS.
Fair enough. We’ve got Vista on one of our three desktops machines in the house and I haven’t noticed a ton of difference. Then again, it’s our least used machine.
Over the last 20 years, I’ve replaced my computer every four years or so, often with many incremental upgrades along the way. The computing experience was always awful and I was constantly tweaking.
Not so much over the last few years. I pretty much use the computer as an appliance now. The only reason I replaced my last computer was that I had a serious hard drive failure and it was about as cheap for me to buy a new box than to replace and outdated drive.
Really, my only complains nowadays are that Firefox crashes too much. And I could always use more Internet speed, even though I’ve got FiOS at home now.
I’m in pretty much the same boat you’re in — except that I’m using OS X rather than XP. That is, they’re appliances.
I was on the not-quite-three-year upgrade path, although I did keep my last PC a record four years. After two years, my machines would start to feel slow. After about 30 months or so, the upgrade itch would get unbearable, and I’d buy a new box.
My first Mac is coming up on that 30-month mark, but it feels as fast as ever. No plans to upgrade any time soon. Same goes for my bottom-of-the-line Macbook. It’s got worse specs than the desktop machine, but still feels plenty fast.
Can’t say if that would still be true if I hadn’t switched — but I do know my wife’s 30-month-old Dell laptop is feeling (and looking) pretty ragged.
Interesting. I’ve always rejected going the Mac route out of sheer convenience because I use multiple machines, including those at the office.
Well, I used to buy top-of-the-line PCs. The combined price of a middling iMac and a el cheapo Macbook wasn’t much more than I used to spend on a single desktop PC.
And (I think) they’ll last me longer.
If Windows-specific software is the issue, James, then you can go the VMWare or Parallels route. Run the software inside of OS X. Best of both worlds. It will cost you a little bit more ($99 for Parallels, if I remember correctly), but you get to use your already existing Windows software, inside of a lickable OS!
I’ve never like Mac, but that’s only because I’m used to windows. That may change if the only Microsoft choice is Vista when I need a new machine.
I’ve considered going that route, Steve. Still, it means working in an Apple environment on one box and a Windows environment on all the others. Or buying three Apples for the house, plus a Mac notebook, and still having a Windows machine at work. Since I do most of my computing tasks intuitively, I very much like having the same setup everywhere.
XP-64, Steve.
Mojo,
Buy a second OS which almost no one supports to get fewer features at a higher price than I have already?
Thanks, but no.
Give Ubuntu a whirl…its free…its easy and its super lightweight. Although there are still a few things that you can do with XP that you cannot do with Ubuntu…it is catching up.
You can run Ubuntu easily straight off the demo CD (which you can download the ISO file at their website) to test it out. Secondly, you can run Ubuntu within Windows for a larger look at it…and finally, if you want, you can use the simple partition program included to divide your hard drive and dedicate space to Ubuntu. After loading it on to my hard drive…the entire OS takes up less than 5G of space. It’s sweet.
GZ –
I’m a Mac user. People who drive Boxsters don’t trade them in for kit cars.
I’ve considered going that route, Steve. Still, it means working in an Apple environment on one box and a Windows environment on all the others.
It’s not that difficult. I do that, maybe the first week or two is awkward, but it’s really not that big of a deal. I think it’s more than worth it.
Yeah, Ubuntu is catching up to XP, which is a couple of light-years behind OS X.
I tried Boot Camp, but never used the Windows partition. So I erased that and bought Parallels, but never installed it.
It’s all about the cult of Apple.
GZ –
For me, it’s all about a computer that does what it should, without making me jump through hoops.
If there’s cultish behavior going on, it’s the *nix cultists who will go to any extreme just to install and run an OS which then forces it’s true believers to go to even greater extremes just to find drivers, software, etc.
Steve, just what extremes are you talking about? I have 3 friends who all within the past few months installed Ubuntu on shiny new Lenovo T61 laptops, no issues.
The old story about driver difficulty is just that — old. I won’t say that you’ll never run into an unsupported device, because it does happen, but it’s not the big issue you seem to be claiming it is.
As far as finding software, what are you looking for?
Really. Linux is ready and easy to use for a whole lot of people and uses.
I have two new-ish laptops that came with Vista. One is a tiny Sony that is just a wi-fi surfing machine. Vista’s tolerable on that one.
The other is a mid-range HP which I dealt with for about five months before getting fed up and scrapping Vista for XP. Took about two weeks to get everything that I needed running, and I will not buy another computer with Vista. If that’s the best Microsoft will give us then I’m done.
And I’m not going Mac either (I spent too much time as an IT tech supporting, among others, the PR flacks on Macs – I’m sure not going to be one of those guys). My next computer is going to be running Linux, probably Red Hat. I’ve flirted with it for years but never gone fully over. That’s all changed.
When I went to NT 3.5 in ’95 I decided that I’d do without anything that wouldn’t run on it. It turned out to be far less painless than I expected – especially after I figured out how to make the original Doom run on it. I feel the same way about Linux vs. Vista at this point.
Far less painful. Or alternately, far more painless.
What. Ev. Errrrr.
I’m sure not going to be one of those guys
Because we all know it’s the computer that made them that way.
Sheesh. We aren’t all getting stuck on stupid, are we?
Not gonna take the chance, Nukem. If you spent much time working around corporate PR flacks trying desperately to prove they weren’t corporate PR flacks you’d steer clear of anything they did, too.
Appreciate the stuck on stupid remark. Guess an ox got gored, huh? Hope it wasn’t a stupid one.
My little iBook G4 is still purring along just fine. 800 MHz chip with 640 MB of memory, a relic. And the apple on the back of the raised screen glows at people. That’s important. I’d like to test drive one of those 7″ Asus machines.
I’m currently running XP on my Medion laptop, and as soon as I get my hands on an external hard drive or something to back up ~25 gigs of files I’m switching to Ubuntu. It’s a Unix system (like OS X, I’m told), but it’s free, and I’m willing to learn how to use it properly.
“I’m a Mac user. People who drive Boxsters don’t trade them in for kit cars.”
See, you say that, but all it takes is one Caterham or Westfield blowing you away on a track day to start making you wonder…
To be fair to Microsoft, Vista was written before solid state hard hard drives existed in the market so to blame Microsoft for not optimizing for technology that existed only in laboratories is a little extreme. Also, even more importantly, according to an article on DailyTech (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=12458), Sandisk seems to be having a lot more trouble with solid state hard drives than everybody else. This seems to more of case of Sandisk blaming there own problems on Microsoft and hoping everybody goes off before verifying the facts. And a lot of people did.
Richard –
I could be wrong on this, but I believe the MacBook Air uses SanDisk SSDs. But even if that’s not the case, OS X has been around far longer than Vista (it’s about the same age as XP) and gets slightly improved battery time running from an SSD.
I don’t have any real Vista time to speak of, but I understand it is an order of magnitude more secure than XP, so I can only imagine Vista must suck pretty darn hard to keep pee cee users clinging to the security nightmare that is XP. I mean seriously. I’ve watched my brother going through his weekly ritual of scanning and decontaminating his Windows system and it makes me wonder why every pee cee user in the world isn’t demanding Vista as a free upgrade from Microsoft.
Anything that can be done on a Mac can be done with Vista and vice versa.
So it really comes down to a style/lifestyle choice.
If you are a female, get a Mac.
If you are a male and the number of hair product bottles in your shower outnumber your toes, you will also be happier with a Mac.
Otherwise, just flip a coin.