Setting up New Vista HP Box... Any Input?

K

KennyFlys

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I'm soon going to be setting up an HP 530 for my sister. It has Vista so this will be my first taste of that OS.

Anything I should consider? Any quirks, nuts or other weird things I should consider during set up and installing updates?
 
like the man said, RAM, RAM, RAM.

Fortunately you can now have a lot more -- 2^32 times more.

~ Christopher
 
I must confess, I have come to quite like a number of the Vista features.

And even without SP1 it is a lot more stable than XP on the systems I have tried it on.

~ Christopher
 
And then uninstall the mountains of trial software and spyware that HP packs on its new PC's.

Rich
 
Yeah, there is a lot of crapware on many new PCs, but HP seems to be a particularly bad offender.

~ Christopher
 
Smack your sister upside the head, have her return it, and get one with XP on it.
 
RJM62 said:
And then uninstall the mountains of trial software and spyware that HP packs on its new PC's.

Rich
Click to expand...
That's a regular ritual. I did order an extra gig of memory with it. I looked for an XP box but options were limited as it was being bought with her credit card and shipped to me. A few places gave me fits on the card as well as her address appears to be formatted weird with the card company.

Strangely, when I ordered from TigerDirect.com, it accidentally switched back to my address for the billing address. But, it still put her card through and shipped to me with no questions. That's kind of scary considering the potential for fraud.

The whole idea is for me to set it up, do the updates and provide some additional software then send it on to her in Phoenix. I'll also set up Logmein.com so I can do regular maintenance. She didn't want to deal with any of it, just be able to use it. So, this was the solution.

I'll start on it next week when I have some more time on my hands.
 
Mac leopard is a ponderous piece of crap! I have so many damn kernel panics on my Power Mac.

In addition I have had major upgrade pains.

~ Christopher
 
jwriteclub said:
Mac leopard is a ponderous piece of crap! I have so many damn kernel panics on my Power Mac.

In addition I have had major upgrade pains.
Click to expand...

Choose "Archive and Install" instead of "Upgrade."

I'll admit that I have mixed feelings about it. Features are cool, stability is still somewhat lacking, at least compared to Tiger which was utterly rock solid (Before the Leopard upgrade, I had 74 days uptime, which was simply back to the last time I rebooted after Software Update pulled down the 10.4.10 updater.)

Now, I get kind of a slow crashy thing that happens every several days or so.

I'd imagine they'll have it fixed soonish. 10.5.2 probably. Hopefully the logic behind Spaces will make more sense by then too... :dunno:

Still kicks the crap out of Windows tho. :yes:
 
I loved Vista...well except for the crashes whenever I gamed. :(

So it is back to XP for me. If it had stayed stable playing my games I would have had zero issues with the OS.
 
Vista is stable with games, just make sure you get the correct graphics drivers.

I do not have the stock catalyst drivers, I have one of the ones from the AMD support forums.

Also Vista's 64 bit support is much, much better than XP-64

~ Christopher
 
Advice?
Don't.

I loved Vista the first few months I had it. Went back to XP, never looked back.

Also - obligatory "Linux > Mac" plug.
 
tdager said:
I loved Vista...well except for the crashes whenever I gamed. :(

So it is back to XP for me. If it had stayed stable playing my games I would have had zero issues with the OS.
Click to expand...

Which games?
I gotta go set up a Vista box this very night.
 
Keith....I think it is actually the Catalyst drivers from ATI that is killing my system. I am going to use the Omega drivers now that I am back to XP, but they are not available for Vista at this time.
 
While you're doing the initial setup, turn off the user account security. It will save you many clicks and keep you sane. Once you're done, you can decide if you need to turn it back on.

"Yes I'm sure I want to click on that icon!!" after the fifth time it asked.
 
Instead of using third party ATI drivers, peruse the (now) AMD website, they have several Beta drivers which work much, much better under vista.

I have used Vista (Longhorn) for over a year now, and other than some device manufacturers who took a long time getting drivers out, I really like Vista.

~ Christopher
 
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