Fran, welcome to the club! I got a laptop recently too (they ALL come with Vista nowadays by the way ), and mine happens to be a Centrino 2 Core 2 Duo P8400 with Windows Vista Premium 64bit, 4 Gigs of DDR3 RAM, 17" Widescreen, a 7200 RPM Western Digital HD, mini Firewire, an eSATA port for eSATA capable external Hard Drives, a DVD RW Drive, built in Wi-Fi, and the list goes on. And all for a terrific price I might add.

Funny.. right after I got my Laptop, Microsoft comes out with Windows 7 Beta 7000 and makes it available to the public for download. Since I've heard such good things about it I went ahead and downloaded it and installed it onto a separately created partition on my Hard Drive. So I'm running a Dual boot setup with Vista Premium and Windows 7 Ultimate. After installing Windows 7 I find I am using it more and more and "rarely" go into Vista at all anymore. Vista is a resource hog of course and I have found Windows 7 much speedier and overall a much better and user friendly experience to work with. It's not near the resource hog as Vista is either which is good. After installing Windows 7 I had to search my laptop manufacturers website for a driver for my LAN port because initially I wasn't able to get online using Ethernet. I got that resolved fairly quickly though. Everything else seems to work fine so far, at least as far as I can tell after having used it extensively for over a month now; and as far as I'm concerned there's really no looking back to Vista for me. When Windows 7 is released (some say by the holidays '09) I will then commence to re-format my Hard Drive and install Windows 7 Professional onto my Laptop. If the price is within reason I may spring for Windows 7 Ultimate instead, but I'll have to wait and see the price difference.

Glad you're enjoying your new rig Fran! But you really need to look into Windows 7 more closely and check it out if you can. It will be the OS of the future and, in my opinion, may cause droves of former Mac owners to come back into the fold. Regardless though, Windows 7 will be "thee" best OS ever from Microsoft and the sooner you get in the thick of things with it the better in my opinion. Vista will most likely hang around for quite a while and may get a couple more service packs, etc., but soon there is going to be a huge paradigm shift towards Windows 7 and you don't want to be left behind, if you know what I mean.

All the best,
Mike

[This message has been edited by keybplayer (edited 02-10-2009).]

Mike..I have no problems with Vista Premium...I am running a similar laptop to yours...but 13.3" screen...


And now I even have more good news...My older version of B4 is up and running..I had to do a little back dooring with the dll files..

Also for you guys that think Vista is hogging to many resources..set your CPU to background services...

My motto today..."If it ain't broke...don't fix it"..

A lot of it also has to do with the brand of laptop you buy. Vista runs great on some.., but others have so much extra bull&^@! applications running in the background specific to your brand of computer. I would advise people stay away from the HP Pavillion dv9XXX series. There are so many stupid programs that run in the background (so if you got one start shutting those dumb programs down). Also some of these background programs can be huge too.

We've shut down many programs running in the background that aren't needed and our laptop still has trouble doing simple things. I was told not too long ago that the Pavillion line's video card DESTROYS your CPU power..., HUGE CPU HOG! Our HP lags running IT'S OWN built in camer and software!

I'll have a MAC very soon (by the end of this month).... Redoing my entire home studio and the mother brain will be a MAC.

Fran, I'm glad you've found something to crow about. It's been a while since we've read so much from you.


Cass

In my experience and tonz of other Vista is still a nightmare in the music world,
i dont use it, i am on a Mac but i ordered an HP Bussines Notebook and had it downgraded
it to XP after i tasted it Vista.

I bought my son a Toshiba laptop, put 4 gigs of ram in it and it still runs like a hog in slop with Vista on it. He has never been able to get it to run without problems. On the other hand I have a new Sony Vaio with 4 gigs of RAM and Vista Premium and it is fabulous. Never a single problem with any software I run on it. Go figure.

Hammer

I do know a lot of HP Pavilion issues were narrowed down to crappy video cards and unstable HP software that had conflicts with the Vista OS. There were some serious failures with the "NVIDIA Graphics". HP even recalled many due to Video card and motherboard failures. Here's my problem.., my computer's serial number wasn't on that list for the recall, but this laptop suffers from ALL of the problems on the list. I know we're not the only ones too. There are many HP Pavilion owners out there who have units that aren't on the recall list but suffer from the same problems that caused the recall.

Looks to me like HP was only willing to fix SOME of their mistake and the rest of us who blew $800+ on these things got a big stick up the (you know what). Then HP releases a major system update that crashed 100's if not 1000's of laptops. Our computer hasn't been running right since that update. Word has it there's a possible class action going to be filed against HP regarding these Pavalions. If so.., our names will be on there

Hammer, what processor is on the Toshiba?

Maybe my Intel Core2 Duo P8400...is the reason my Toshiba is out performing my Pentium4's...

Fran,
I don't remember which processor the Toshiba had but I do remember it was an upper line of processor. It has been a year now and my son has never been able to get it to run much of anything without it hanging or having other problems. The techs are baffled too - probably should have had it replaced.

It is amazing how the various manufacturers have not complied with microsofts OS requirements and expected their products to run Vista. I work at a major national electronics store and sell computers. It is nearly impossible to guide some customers away from the "crap" and send them home with a reliable computer of any type. Many customers come to the store with only a price in mind as a guideline and very often go home with a system that will be a problem from day one.

I still like the Toshiba laptops and wouldn't be afraid to buy one - but my all time favorite has been the Sony Vaio line - they just seem to work for everything.

Hammer