im considering switching to apple.

Getronics  Who are you with?
We also have problems with IE7.  But we have problems with Firefox to.  Bad coding on our part really.  We have a few apps that are tieing users to MS's JAVA virtual machine too.  Lessons learned, ya know.  Running your apps in compatability mode doesn't help you with yoru core apps?

I did a clean install and found that for day to day use it ran as well as my 2 year old XP.  But any clean install works better than 2 years worth of crap.

Because of the memory and video card I had,  the GUI was scaled back to non-aero but as soon as I got upgraded it scaled up.

Not all the time (yet). 

There is no need to be upset.  Use whatever OS does what you need to do at the price-point you are willing to pay.  Apple doesn't run the apps *I* run and is more than I want to pay to dual boot.

(and if you are going to buy a new OS [and new hardware] . . why NOT go with Vista?) 

Right, and whats to say smaller companies dont? You think there are more large corporations or more small businesses?

Cant say I have ever heard of Joe's PC Barn, they any good? I prefer newegg, a little more reputable I think.

Tell me Astyanax,
Why would a small or large company have someone build a custom box for them when you can get a business class Dell Optiplex 3.4Ghz Duo Core, 1GB RAM, 80GB Hard drive, DVD/CD-RW, etc for less than $700. This price includes a 17" UltraSharp FP Monitor AND a 3 Year, Next Business day, ON-SITE warranty. Small computer shops and newegg cant compare with that. Having the NBDOS warranty is a great value. It doesn't make sense for a business to go custom box anymore.

Oh, Zubaz..
I'm with Perot Systems....

No way in hell.

Most small businesses generally like to pay as little as possible. And to many of them buying 20+ 700$ machines is unacceptable, trust me I've been there.

Just out of curiosity, if the OS you have now runs the applications you need then why would you ever want to change? I mean its a tool not a toy. I've been doing this since '85 and and to me my computer is like any other tool.

And thus the bitterness is explained.    

Are you trying to tell me that you are going to get a "Home built" system that will run Vista, nicely, with all the specs that I provided (Including ON-Site Warranty and OS)for under $700. No way, now how.. If so, it's going to be using junk parts and will cost more in the long run.

We have a similar deal with Dell.  And the real value they bring is the service.  PC breaks, call Dell, new part same day.

No other shop can beat the mass production price plus service.

You bet your ass I am, www.newegg.com can be your best friend when shopping for computer parts.

Not every business wants to spend craploads of money to go thru contracts with dell, most of these companies I deal with have a problem forking over 1500 for an extremely low end server.

You seem to think that every small business is made of money. And im sure your next arguement will be Vista's price, well it aint that expensive for home premium.

I just think its complete bullcrap that some of you think upgrading to Vista is not only a hassle but it actually performs worse than XP. With the current memory management Vista has thats impossible. Perhaps you need to sit down and actually try Vista rather than going to a store like CompUSA and clicking around for 2 minutes, on a low end, left over XP based machine.

And with that I will no longer be part of this discussion as its going no where pretty fast.

It's a sad shame that you fail to actually READ and UNDERSTAND what people are trying to tell you. No, you won't get that pricing without a service agreement, but it won't break the bank by getting it through the normal channels either.
In either case, it's the company's decision to make (based on your input). Good luck to you.
I've been doing this work longer than you've been alive and I've yet to make a business decision or product evaluation from a 2 minute trip to "CompUSA". I also do independent service contracts and consulting with small businesses (one of which happens to be a mortgage funding office). I would NEVER steer them into a "Home Built" system either unless it was for one or 2 systems ONLY. I've been down that road before and it doesn't work in the long run and will cost the company more in the long run. Don't be so short sighted, you'll get farther in your career.

If XP didn't run very well on this machine (or its previous hardware setup)...it probably wasn't XP's fault entirely. Doing a new install of Vista on a machine with years of crap loaded into XP...yes, Vista will probably outperform it right out of the box. However, all the benchmark/testing sites showed Vista was slower than XP clean install vs. clean install. With all the crap loaded into Vista and all the heavy handed memory hogging graphic eye candy thats about 6 years too late...yeah I'll stick with XP...or go back to Macs.

Right now I'm running Ubuntu Linux 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" Beta on my laptop with a dual boot to XP and with all the 3D graphics/transparency and window effects type eye candy you get with the Beryl manager software for Linux...it still runs pretty well on 512MB RAM. Supposedly you can't even consider running the Aero interface with less than 1GB.

When I login to ubuntuforums.org I see so many people switching to Linux, that were previously terrified by it but have now seen the interface come around to a point where its now more user-friendly. However, you still have to do some manual work in the command line, but the plug and play and hardware detection is superb. For example, there aren't any Linux drivers for the cable modem I'm using, but just plug it in and it still works anyway. You can't always say that with XP and apparently you really can't say that for Vista just yet.

This doesn't surprise me and it doesn't worry me..

many vendors (Dell chiefly) already use Vista exclusively on their new machines. A machine built for vista, have it 64 megs of video memory or 256, and 512-1 gig of ram, runs the OS beautifully. I can't speak for some cheap retailer somewhere, but a new computer from compusa or best buy with vista preloaded on it, on hard ware made for vista, is a good product. It's faster than XP, its more secure, and these new computers don't cost much more than their previous generations on XP.

Theres nothing wrong with pushing a new OS on better hardware, especially to people new to computers, looking for the easiest to use machine, while phasing out - a still good and fast - yet harder to maintain - product like XP. I think XP is a wonderful OS, in fact i prefer many things in XP over vista. But we're in a new generation, people can still buy it on their own, new computers shouldn't have it.

I know I wouldn't comment but I have to reply again to this:


I showed my dad this (everything I know about computers I have learned through him) and his responce was, "What *ucking planet does this guy live on?" In other words, the majority of small businesses will not fork over 700$ for a desktop computer when they can purchase a custom built one for 500$

Incase you try to question the fact that saying every small/large business should have 700$ Dell machines in all their offices, here is a list of his certs;

CCNA CCA 4,CCA XP MCSE IIS 4.0 Solaris 8 SCSA CNA NetWare 5.0 MCSE TCP/IP 1.0
MCSE NT 4.0 Server, MCSE NT 4.0 Workstation, MCSE Networking Essentials Microsoft Windows Accelerated Exam MCSE Windows 2000 Security Design
MCSE SQL 6.5 System Administration MCSE NT 4.0 Server In The Enterprise SYSTEM MANAGEMENT SERVER 2.0 LCP Sair Linux Installation and Configuration Certification MCSE Implementing and Supporting MS Exchange Server 5.5Installing, Configuring and Administration Windows 2000 Server
Installing, Configuring and Administering Windows 2000 Professional
Designing a Microsoft Windows 2000 Directory Services Infrastructure

This is what he's currently up to: Currently implementing and managing a Citrix 4.0 server farm for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Boston.




I see you had edited you're post since I last looked here (your most recent one), whats wrong? Not enough hair on your chest to leave up something you think is insulting/witty?

My Dad is a retired Royal Navy SAS Commander.. doesn't mean he can kick my ass.   

Right, but having all those certs and me working for small businesses for a living means I dont know what im talking about? If you had bothered to read my previous posts you'd would know that already.

It's like telling a morbidly obese guy what food tastes great, HE ALREADY KNOWS!!




@Ghostrider359: I never said I had problems with XP, I said due to Vista's advanced memory management it beats XP in day performance capabilities. Im not talking about gaming, ATi's current benchmarks are roughly 3% lower in performance?? OHH NO! GIVE ME BACK MY 2FPS!!!! :/


And with that, I bid you all good-night.

Well, Honestly I dont know WHO is right, my point was just qualifications sometimes count for nought..doesn't make someone auto-right. I have read the whole thread btw.   



Not on my box it doesn't

IMO, good for them. Vista doesnt have any trouble with any of my programs or hardware so I think it is good that they are getting people to move on.

No, I took it down because I decided it better to not be a complete asshole to you.
Hope that's acceptable to you.

So I took a look around Newegg. I don't see anything that meets the specs I pointed out for $500. I found similar, with AMD Processors, but this did not include a monitor.
I see that they do offer Next Business Day on Site.
Also, as I said, a small office with 2-3 pc's, Ok. You can deal with supporting that on home built boxes. On multi-location offices the home build PC quickly loses it's support ability. Now, how does this relate to the original question...
In YOUR particular circumstance, it's ok.. Vista runs your software. In many others, Vista will not run the clients software (yet) and you are not going to be able to get an OEM copy of XP. That is going to add additional costs because you are going to have to pay full retail.

Just FYI, not 2-3 PC's, roughly 20-30. By the way thats more than just one business.

i was getting so frustrated at the utter lack of functionality a windows xp computer allows that i just quit using it three days before my new vista loaded pc was delivered. after ahving used xp extensively for the past 4 years and having only used vista for a few days, i have to say vista is a far superior product. i have had absolutely no hardware problems and only one software conflict, and that's only because the company is no longer around and the product hasnt been updated for several years now. my vista computer runs like a charm. i would never in a million years trade it for some piee of crap xp system. plus vista is about 98 million times better looking. xp always looked like shit. now i dread having to go do my internship work on some damn xp computer, id jsut take my laptop with me if the stupid college would fix the network so it could work with vista.

Here in Oz Dell is advertising 'personalised' computers.....a friend recently bought one without an OS because he didn't want an off the shelf one with Vista installed as standard. He then installed his own copy of XP Pro and is dual booting with Ubuntu.

Seems to me, though, given how many are complaining about having to upgrade their hardware, there's an awful lot of people still running some pretty old machines that'd be pushing it to run XP at full potential as is....so obviously Vista's not gonna run on them, and maybe
for some (to have a truly functional machine, even with XP) a PC upgrade is long overdue anyhow.





I agree! However, my mother has Vista experience of 3.5 on an 6 yo custom built rig with a 2.8 P4, a 256mb nvidia 6200GS GPU, 1gb of DDR400 RAM and an 80gb IDE HDD that runs Vista quite well, even with Aero and dreams enabled....so Vista does not require an expensive top end machine to run effectively. In my mother's case it was a relatively inexpensive RAM upgrade at AU$85.00 to run Vista, so it doesn't necessarily cost an arm and a leg.