[WardABWE]

Thanks, Kellie for your kind, complete response.

Not only do you own the bats, balls, & bases, but you own the entire ball park -- so you can make all the rules!

I still prefer to evaluate a fellow comunity member by their reasoned arguments -- not their large snappy, colorful signature logos. I hope your interpretation works out for PCW.

Again, thanks.

[rgreen4]

Actually, if you want to equate the OS to the engine, the car is more like Apple than Wintel. You go down to the local car dealer to buy a new (for the sake of discussion) Ford engine. What brand of car does that engine come in?
With Mac OS/X, what brand of computer does it come in?

With Microsoft, you want to buy a new Vista or XP machine, your choice - what brand does it come in - or maybe we should ask how many brands does it come in?


There are what, four major manufacturers, dozens of smaller manufacturers, hundreds of specialty custom build manufacturers and then hundreds of thousands of people who have built their own computers by assembling the parts they have bought at a variety of suppliers. And we expect the OS to function properly on perhaps five hundred or so motherboards (per current Newegg listing) and another 400 or so video cards (same source) and in addition to that support tens of thousands programs written by someone that MS has absolutly no control over and do it flawlessly.


To use the car analogy again, it is not the function of the engine to modulate the transmission, but to provide power to the input shaft of the transmission. It is the job of the transmission to function behind the engine. Or to put it another way, when you install a different engine, you must modify (update anyone?) the transmission input to be able to bolt up to the new engine. You never modify the new engine to work with the old transmission.


I can see you trading in your 6 year old car, and during the deal you want to be able to use the transmission out of your old car in your new one, but you want the engine to accept the change. I don't think any of us need to imagine too hard to envision the car dealer's reaction. But that is what you are asking of Microsoft. Their new OS should work flawlessly with older programs, many not even written to the proper XP standards or even the NT4 standards. If they had been written to the standards set forth when NT4 was the "professional" Microsoft OS, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Yes the drivers would have to be written to the new OS, but the old programs would run fine.

[hanna95404]

I am just now using my old, beat-up XP notebook because my shiny new one has Vista on it & it drives me crazy. Within the 9 months preceding purchase of my Vista, I purchased a Palm Treo, Quickbooks 2006 and a Lexmark wireless printer. None of these products is compatible with Vista. I also have a problem with vista's boot up time. Yesterday, I completed the crossword puzzle, cryptogram and word jumble in the newspaper all while waiting for Vista to start and load a single application. No, I am not a happy Vista user!

[MasterGuru]

In case no one has realized it yet, MACWorld and PCWorld are lovers (both run by IDG). They live for this type of hype as it gets your attention. PC's are still and will continue to be the prevailing format...and a MAC is really a PC now anyway - so the laugh is on you!

Vista is and has been stable for a long time. Many hardware and software vendors have decided not to update products as they were for Vista to make $$ for themselves with NEW products and leave you in the cold - again, the joke is on you. MS can only do so much as far as third parties go. Blaming MS for this is not responsible journalism but the stuff of tabloids it is. Shame on all of you.

[rgreen4]

hanna95404 said:

Within the 9 months preceding purchase of my Vista, I purchased a Palm Treo, Quickbooks 2006 and a Lexmark wireless printer. None of these products is compatible with Vista. I also have a problem with vista's boot up time. Yesterday, I completed the crossword puzzle, cryptogram and word jumble in the newspaper all while waiting for Vista to start and load a single application. No, I am not a happy Vista user!

While I cannot address the Palm Treo and whether it does or does not have programs to allow it to connect to a Vista PC, but what I am curious about is that you purchased Quickbooks 2006 in 2007 and after Vista was released. Have you contacted Intuit about the problem. I had initial problems installing Quicken 2006 on my Vista installation in May after receiving my manufacturers upgrade disc. They informed me of a go around and it installed and worked beautifully except for the cash register ka-ching. I later upgraded to 2008 as part of my regular pattern (every two years) and the 2008 version of Quicken is better and is fully compatible.

In a similar vein, have you contacted Lexmark. A printer sold that recently should have had Vista drivers available. I know that the drivers for all my HP lasers were dated in January before Vista was released.

Since you have chosen not give any printer details, it is impossible to give you any support. If you are interested in possibly getting it to communicate with your Vista laptop, consider posting under the printing discussion. That's what the various discussions are for, support and help. Exceptions are the General Talk, News Discussion, and the PC World Magazine and Web Site discussions.

As to booting, once I used PC De-crapifier and removed the "free" and "trial" software, and used the Norton's Removal Tool to rip Norton's out by it roots, the system functions better and boots as fast as my desktops and my old XP laptop, all in about a minute. Again, if you would post details in the laptop discussion, perhaps we could may your Vista experience more pleasant. I have a Vista laptop and love it, of course I was not a newbie to Vista, having installed the upgrade on my Media Center in May and then build a new system from components and installed Vista from the OEM install disc in Sept and then ordered my Vista laptop.

[ladymoneypenny]

I certainly agree with hanna.


I am so discouraged am thinking of returning my new computer to sony because i am beginning to think it is a lemon.


I have had nothing but problems in the three months -nearly-that I have had this rubbish!


I have an HP printer one year old and DID go to HP to ask for advice before installing it. I was told to download new compatible software


as the original would not work. I did so. No problem at all with HP who were very efficient and kind-via email. (Very different from the


service???? I originally received!) BUT, it took about one hour to get this beastly machine to print one measly letter from the computer.


Today i tried again to print one small item with the same result. Almost an hour later it did print. BUT who has this time to waste? I do NOT!


Is it the printer or is it this VISTA? I suspect VISTA as it has been nothing but a problem since I bought it.


I found out that my very old Sony with OS 98 second ed. did not have a broken monitor after all but some electrical thing at bottom of scrren which was not working. $75 later I have my old thing which works as fast at 450mhz as this new one does at 1ghz


vista stinks and has driven me crazy!

[Northlite]

My thoughts on HP have degraded quite a bit over the past year. I purchased a new $400 model all in one for work and it has been nothing but problems with paper jams and the ink low system that forces you to change the ink when it decides it needs it and will not operate past that point unless you install the cartridge(s) is says are low, I can no longer use partial sheets of paper as they jam, any slight wrinkle in the paper used causes a jam. At home I had an older model 6110 all in one and when I got Vista HP suggested I purchase a new model that supports Vista or just plug it in and use the generic drivers it supplied to Microsoft and do with out some functionality, the up side to this was I didn't have all the HP software on my hard drive that I didn't use or need. That all in one since died of scanner click death, same as my previous one did and I purchased the cheaper 5610 which is Vista ready but is a very cheap printer with lack luster print quality and it appears HP has done away with the envelope slot I used regularly so now I have to remove paper stack, insert envelope and move guider slide over just to print an envelope.

It may not be completely fair to blame an operating system for not being compatible for every piece of hardware and software consumers can choose to purchase. It seems very easy to slide the blame down hill to Vista rather then blame the vendors of hardware and software for using this as a time to have their customers purchase new products.

[rgreen4]

ladymoneypenny, Vista is not the problem. There may be something else that causes the delay, the like of which I have never seen on any PC system. I suspect that you have one of the "free" all-in-one anti-malware suites by either Norton or McAfee that could be the culprit.

Many times I have invited those that post in this tread to list the problems they are having with their machines on the appropriate help threads rather than just this one which is an opinion thread. The experience you are having is not normal and should not be suffered through. Yes, Vista is different, it has some of the settings in different places, but after 6 months of using it primarily and having it on three machines, I don't like going back to XP on my old machine, which is turned on now only to research a question about XP.

I have never had a document take more than just the normal print spool time on any of my machines, (5) with either Vista or XP, regardless of the application. Now, if I print something off the internet, it has to go through the security and I have to click OK on the security software message, and then it prints, but we're talking about 2 min, not 60.

Please review the posting in the Windows and Printers discussions, and post the detail of your problems in the appropriate discussion. You machine should be a pleasant experience to use, and the forum members are ready to help you, but few will find your listing here. Please be sure to list machine make, model, OS, memory and printer specs. We stand ready to help.

[rgreen4]

You comment on the $400 AIO printer and then the HP OJ5610AIO, which most definitely is not the $400 printer. Yes, the HP OJ5610AIO is a cheap printer, but then it has a cheap price.

As to paper jamming, I have found over the years, that paying attention to the direction of the paper and the leading edge condition when inserting paper, pays dividends. Many time when opening a pack of paper, the edge may have a crimple in it, and I just turn it to the trailing edge on the printers at work. At home, since all my printer are duplex I throw away paper with a crimple since I know its going to jam. I also never buy the very lighweight 18 pound paper that is popular, but the 20 pound or better. This was advice give me years ago by a friend who is a printer.

I have the Laserjet P2015 higher speed B&W, the Color Laserjet 2605dn, and the Photosmart 6180AIO, and am pleased with all of them. In the closet back in its box is a Photosmart 8250 that uses the same ink cartridges as the 6180 (6 colors) and will be set up in the bedroom with my laptop over this weekend. All but the 8250 duplex (as its adapter was put into the 6180).

If paper does not solve your problem on the $400 printer, then I would let an Authorized HP Service Center look at it if its still under warranty. There could be an internal adjustment that is not correct and of course the online help and forums cannot solve that.

Yes, envelope slots seem to be disappearing. My 2605 has a slot at the very bottom that is a pain to use. I searched for a laser that has a drop down manual tray and found the P2015 which does a good job. All of my printers are networked, so they are of the slightly more expensive variety. The basic 2605d and P2015 are more reasonable, but they are printers not AIO's, which have their own quirks.