Tugger5000

and their stupid Dell Media Direct that continually corrupts the bootmaster... NTLDR missing on Vista? Really? Every 6 months?

Piece of sh*t.

thearkatek

Usually a check disk will fix that... but every six months is a little excessive tongue.gif

EMGTelecaster12

Dell and Windows Vista go together like peanut butter and toothpaste. I guarantee your OS is done for.

Windows 7 is sooo much more stable or go back to XP (MCE).

iheartmyrd

i had a dell inspiron that i put vista on, it ran great. I sold it 2 or 3 years ago to a friend that still uses it and runs good.

however when i bought this laptop my friend from school was impressed and bought the same model with more ram, he had the worst problems ever.

i think the problem with dell isnt that the product with all functional parts fails but, that the quality assurance is so terrible that bad parts get put into good computers.

DTN

Install ubuntu, its free and there are instructions on the ubuntu.com website. It installs from within windows. Next boot you will be presented an option to go into windows by default or go to ubuntu Linux. symlink your documents, music, pictures and even limewire folder. Then never use a Microsoft program again, because Linux is faster and more reliable then windows.

I'd recommend every windows user have ubuntu installed as a backup for when windows crashes.

iheartmyrd

i have used unbuntu and have no problems with it, i cant remember the name of the software that made it a cube that you could spin around between 6 different desktops.

But of course it didnt stay installed long because it really wasnt useful to me at all.

radu_rd2

First step when you buy any laptop is wipe out everything and reinstall. I'd get Windows 7 as was suggested.

Windows 7 (without crap add-on software) is very reliable, IMO much more so than ubuntu which seems to break something every other time it installs updates.

DTN

Every time I get an update, something new works... Such as side scrolling on the touchpad, or extra function keys.



Comparitively, windows 7 starter edition runs about 1/2 speed, wastes more battery power, and has far less functionality then Ubuntu netbook edition. You would have to buy about $500 in software to get the same functionality out of Windows (Microsoft Office, Virus scanners, other software). Of course, Windows would run even slower because everyone wants their software to load some updater on startup, while Ubuntu has a software center where the manufacturers of software upload their packages to be updated neatly by the Update-Manager in Ubuntu.



This is straight out-of-box experience, no virus scanners installed (on windows, Linux needs no virus scanner), nothing except the bare OS and what it comes with.

Tibbi

I gave up on dell after my 3 month old laptop fried because in their infinite wisdom the "exhaust" fan SUCKED in air from the bottom of the case and had no exit points. After a nice class-action law suite a bunch of us got them fixed..... 4 and a half years later. Great, what good is a Pentium 4 to me NOW?! They have been nothing but a pain since the turn of the century.

I work for Lenovo and we're going down the sh*t path at an alarming rate too.





I say asus or home built (if it's a desktop)

Though I wants to give gscreen a try when/if they ever release the spacebook