| The Vista Operating system continues to be a problem child. The other day, I had a second level MS engineer take over a Vista laptop to fix an update problem (would not do certain updates) and he concluded that the OS needed to be reinstalled from the restore DVD, which we had to purcahse separately. If you buy any Vista Computer, make sure you get the optional Restore DVD and don't lose it. If your hard drive breaks, you will obviously need it. You most likely will need an original DVD from the manufacturer as backup copies often do not work, unless they are recorded at extra slow speed. Vista also has strange esoteric problems, such as CD ROMs disappearing. You cannot get into the administrative account without special tricks, and if a virus resets your security levels, it is pretty much reload from scratch. Vista is not as repairable as XP. We have ordered a limited number of Original Microsoft XP Home OEM operating system softwares to sell with new computers as Microsoft is stopping the shipment of XP this month. June 18th (today) was the last day to buy it from Dell. It remains to be seen whether the Service Pack 1 Release of Vista will make it viable. Asked why XP is more reliable than Vista, the Microsoft engineer replied "XP has been out for 8 years, so most of the issues have been fixed." Hmmm...so we have to wait 6 years perhaps for Vista to be perfect? Well, XP is not perfect, but we understand it pretty well, how to repair it and fix it without having to redo from scratch, and without mysterious things happening. We are also selling Ubuntu as a Vista alternative, for those who bought laptops that will not run XP, because there are no XP drivers perhaps for sound, video, and wireless card. We installed Ubuntu on a laptop from Acer and it ran everything, including the wireless card. We have installed Ubuntu on a number of computers of "problem child" customers, those who repeatedly mess up their OS, and they have had much less need to bring their computers in for service. For one thing, Ubuntu is not plagued by viruses and Trojan horses. So for children and teens, and whatever addicted adults, Ubuntu may save you some money. XP still runs faster on old computers than Ubuntu, but on new ones, Ubuntu runs faster than Vista. Tom Lacey |