[PCWorld]

Post your comments for How to Get and Keep Windows XP After June 30 here

[coastie65]

Hah, I've been buying XP and will probably get one more copy of XP Home. When I do a build, i want to be sure to have the OS I WANT not something someone else wants me to have. It is called choice and I WILL EXERCISE MY RIGHT TO CHOOSE. coastie65

[mjd420nova]

My local Fry's Electronics has the OEM XP HOME for $87. Normally runs for $150. I've gotten two more and will keep for future builds. The VISTA craze seems to last about as long as it takes to install and then the users find it doesn't work and want to get their XP reloaded. This is where backups become so important. Once you load VISTA over XP you can't go back to XP. A clean wipe and reload is needed to get back to what works. I have never been one to jump on a new thing until it becomes proven to be any good and so far VISTA has been a failure.

[coastie65]

Hey mjd, Newegg has it for $79.95 for XP Home w/ SP2b or $99.95 for XP Home w/ SP3 AND FREE SHIPPING. I just had a what if thought. What if this is a marketing ploy by Micro$oft. They announce the the demise of XP on a certain date, and a lot of folks ( like me ) start buying up copies of XP thus creating a surge in sales of XP. At the end of the time period, Micro$ft "has a change of heart" and announces that they will continue to sell XP. They have thus created a demand for XP, increasing their already bloated profit. Just a thought. coastie

[Flashorn]

Hey mjd!!



As you might be aware, I bought a new HP notebook going on two weeks now

with Vista SP1 installed.

To tell you the truth I wasn't looking forward to loosing my XP machine.

But, now that I have been working with it for a little, I find that Vista is pretty fast and good to work

with. Maybe It's the fact that it came with the SP1 and I didn't have to fiddle around to get it working.



This new notebook is much more powerful than my XP notebook and that might also have something to do with it.

I have installed all of my previous programs , utilities and tools. All , with ought exception, have Vista versions and work flawlessly.



As everyone with Vista has told me , it takes a little while to get your bearings back but, once you are familiar

with, what is where, well I'm very satisfied with this OS.



So, maybe now that third party support is more present and the fact that SP1 has probably helped it along,

more people will get to enjoy it.



I have to say that HP did not bundle garbageware with this notebook except Norton which did not have the chance

to even ask me if I wanted to install the 60 day trial.



You can have a look at the specs of my

notebook here



FLASHORN.

[JimH443]

Quote from article: January 31 of next year is also the last date you'll be able to buy XP on a machine from a "system builder"

What's MS going to do, send the police out on system builders who install XP on new custom systems after Jan 31??

[coastie65]

Hey Flashorn, Nice! Seems to have a little muscle for a laptop. My Brother-in-Law bought an HP just before Christmas to replace an older one. I don't which one he got except it was one of the "Top of the Line" jobs and he maxed out the upgrades that could be done. He is happy with it and Vi$ta. My 82 year old mother is entertaining the idea of getting a laptop, so she can check her e-mail, surf, & shop. I can run it wireless to the router, so I might break down and get her one, as much as I don't like the idea of Vi$ta being in the house. LOL coastie

[coastie65]

Hey Jim, :D Good question. As much control as Micro$oft tries to exert over the industry, in my opinion, I don't think they can really exert any control over non commercial builders, at least not legally anyway. If I choose to build a computer and I have a copy of XP, I will install it, as it is my choice of OS. coastie

[Flashorn]

Hey coastie!!



I don't think you'll have to fear Vista. I was besides myself when I came back from Future Shop

with this one . I was really afraid that I had made a big mistake. But so far, nothing but praise.

It boots in about 1 minute , has not hung up on any one program . I have installed and uninstalled

about 5 programs so far with REVO and no consequences. Like I said , ALL of my previous utilities and tools are now

supported under Vista.

So. my advice is to get Vista but make sure it has the SP1 already installed . Don't try and install it yourself

This is what I was most afraid of, having to install SP1 myself.

Also make sure it has enough power to spare . Dual Core , at least 2gigs ram , and maybe dedicated video card.

And if someone tells you that you don't really need all of that power, well don't believe them.

you will need more with Vista no doubt about it. If you get enough

this should make for an enjoyable experience.



FLASHORN.



PS> now, I have to get to your thread.

[coastie65]

Yeah, you're right about the power issue, the more power and memory the better with Vi$ta. The 8400 GS is a good Video package, but not for games ( 64 bit transfer rate for one thing ). That is an issue I have with Vi$ta, I am a gamer, and so far it doesn't seem to play well with those things for the most part as there seems to be some major compatibility issues. I have one game that was written for both XP and Vi$ta and the Vi$ta players are having problems. In all fairness, everyone was having problems intially until they got the bugs out. Looks like you got a winner with that laptop. I was a little surprised to see that the HDD only ran at 5400 RPM instead of 7200, but I don't think that is a big issue anyway. Have fun with your new "TOY". coastie

[Flashorn]

Hey coastie !!



I don't play games(no time yet) so, i don't have worry about a big video card . What I was looking for were the options that came with the card,

namely the extra ports and especially the HDMI. It has all of the entertainment options that I need plus some extra that are just gravy.

BTW. this is an entertainment notebook and has part of XP MCE along with Vista. So, when rgreen said that MCE was the little Vista , he wasn't far off.



As far as the HDD , I was looking for the biggest I could find in a notebook. I could've had a 200GB HDD @ 7200 rpm for the same price

but, that would've been eaten up in no time. On the HDD I also have the Recovery partition D: drive so, that would've left me with 12 GIGs short on a

smaller drive.



All in all coastie. I'm very much surprised and happy with this one and Vista.

The only issue I have with Intel duals is that they heat up . Fast and Hot.

Unlike AMD's.

Put it up on a cooler and that solved the problem.



Having Fun!





FLASHORN.

[coastie65]

Hey Flashorn, All in all, it sounds good. As for the procesor heat thing, The Pentium D in this thing runs at about 46C, but it sure do eat up the power ( 95w ). The only way I've found to check the CPU temp is in bios which isn't all that great. Guess I'll look for a utility. Glad I got AC, as they are calling for a high of 96 tomorrow, 100 Saturday, and 101 Sunday. coastie

[Flashorn]

Hey coastie!!



I don't know what kind of utility you are looking for but, I was supposed to do a Doc. on these two and it

compeletly slipped my mind.(sorry rgreen). This one is for a PC and notebook,

it's HDTune . This will do a complete ChkDsk . report the health of your HDD,

has a heat monitor for the HDD. and also benchmark the HDD. On the left hand side of the page you'll

see Download. This will take you to the download where you can use the free one.

.

The other is unfortunately for notebooks and will give the temperature of the Proc. and the HDD. plus

other readings. this one is called Notebook Hardware Control . Scoll down to

the middle of the page for the download.



The last one is from Piyush. he uses this one for the temperature of the processor and if you have two

it will report on both Core Temp .



So, if this is what you are looking for well, you have three choices.





FLASHORN.

[piyushsingh]

hi coastie

Ask from a vista gaming enthusiast. Even my older games work fime with vista but after applying all the updates and patches available. Ya , i do get about 7-8 frames less than Xp but you are missing on the dx10 details. And most of the new games have dx10 details . So it has both sides.

btw- currently its summers peak here , so my cpu idles at about 50C. hot na hehe. Normally it does at about 40C. And i use coretemp for monitoring , it also has a feature of logging temps in case you play and want to monitor simultaneously.

[coastie65]

Hi piyush, Just got back. I was outside talking to my neighbor. He bought an HP with Vista sometime back and is still grumbling. After he told me what was going on, I realized he still had the UAC enabled so I told him to turn it off, as it wasn't really all that necessary anyway, in my opinion. Flashorn sent a link for core temp, so I guess I'll give it a try. The only way I can get a processor temp is by going into bios, you would think it would be somewhere outside of bios. So much for Engineers. UPDATE: I just went over to the site. Core Temp doesn't support Pentium D. coastie

[piyushsingh]

If you check the temps in bios , then you will always read the temps under no load or when the thing has just started. That would be lower than actual running temp . So bios temp isnt that accurate.Core temp is the best i could find and its free too. Takes only about 1 MB ram usage. I didnt like speedfan as it wasnt that accurate and was a bit heavy. There is another utility that you normally get with the mobo software CD named IDU (intel desktop utility). That thing gives much more detail than any other utility but that slows down the startup very much . But it shows everything - all temps , fan speed, all voltages, hdd errors etc.

Have you used that IDU thing. If yes , was it slowing down yours too or was it only in my case. Might want to give a try. :-)

[coastie65]

Yeah I know, that's why I figured it was a waste of time to check the temp in BioS. As I said, I checked core temp and it didn't support Pentium D and this mobo won't support C2D. (Max. 800 Mhz FSB) Oh well, I'll just make do, as I'm not in the market for another computer just yet. I'm still trying to fill the hole left in my bank account after buying the HDTV. LOL coastie

[Adama]

OFF TOPIC:

Hi Flahorn,

I'm so glad you got your awesome new laptop! See? didn't I tell ya that Vista was going to grow on you? ;)

[piyushsingh]

coastie65 said:

Yeah I know, that's why I figured it was a waste of time to check the temp in BioS. As I said, I checked core temp and it didn't support Pentium D and this mobo won't support C2D. (Max. 800 Mhz FSB) Oh well, I'll just make do, as I'm not in the market for another computer just yet. I'm still trying to fill the hole left in my bank account after buying the HDTV. LOL coastie

L :-) L

[JimH443]

While it would be a pain in the butt, how quickly does the CPU cool down? I ask because if you're curious, why not just reboot and enter BIOS? Wouldn't it be relatively close to the same temp it was just before you began the reboot process?