This article was written by Don VanSyckel, the club president, as a part of "The President's Pen". This article appeared in the September 2007 WYSIWYG newsletter.
Adventures with a New Laptop
by Don VanSyckel
You know about best intentions and all that don't you? After I got the laptop configured and actually started doing things with it, it quickly can back to me why I had popped for a new laptop. Between the lower resolution, the USB1.1 ports, and the processor speed and memory the laptop drove be crazy. Now you might think he's being overly critical. Let me just say this, USB 2.0 is 40 times faster than USB1.1. So what does this mean? It means when you're on vacation and your wife's ready to walk out the door in the morning for the day's outing there is a HUGH difference in doing that last file transfer with USB2.0 taking 30 seconds versus doing it at USB1.1 at 20 minutes. Do you have any idea how truly long 20 minutes is when your wife if waiting and ready to go??
OK so I decided to not wait and started looking around. First at the ads. It appeared as though I'd have several choices. I wanted:
| 1) as fast as I could get without paying premium |
| 2) one Mbyte memory |
| 3) 17" screen |
| 4) 1200+ X 1000+ resolution |
| 5) full or near full size keyboard |
| 6) CD and DVD burning - don't care |
| 7) memory card/stick reader - don't care |
It became apparent that I'd have to give on some points but all in all things looked good.
I wasn't actually looking in the stores yet but I happen to be in the computer section and allowed the sales person to convince me that all the new computers were being shipped with WinVista and this really needed 2 Mbytes. Also after looking at the 15" and 17" screens I decided that the 15" would be easier to use during travel. Besides down sizing the screen covered the cost of up sizing the memory. I was disappointed about having to get WinVista instead of WinXP but not bothered.
So now I'm home with the new laptop. It's out of the box and running. Different than WinXP but OK. Then I got down to business and started doing things or at least trying. And that's what WinVista is trying. It'll try your patience, it'll try your skills, it'll try anything and everything. Let me sum up my opinion of WinVista this way: I predict that WinVista will be the single most cited reason for buying a MAC in 2007 and 2008. Can I be any clearer than this?
After I started complaining about WinVista to everyone who would listen, I was told that 1) some of the computer companies that sell business computers offer WinXP on some business models and 2) a couple stores offer reconditioned computers that have the original WinXP on them.
So much for my big Summer computing adventure!
End of Article