Hello everyone, this MAY be a long post if I do remember all the stuff Im craving to shout, so first of all, I just bought (2 weeks ago)a HP dv4 laptop, AthlonX2 2.3GhZ 4Gigs of Ram(came with 3 I added the extra gig) Radeon HD3200 graphics 512 mb vram. Well well, It came with vista home basic installed, and as the geek Iam, wiped it out completely, deleted the restore partition (what decent computer geek DOES need it anyway?) and installed vista ultimate. It DIDNT run as sweet as I thought long boot times ahead, not to talk about shutting down or even waking up from hibernation or sleep. so I was going back to homebasic, but I thought of the win7RC, so Downloaded it, and performed an upgrade from vista. one word: sweeeeet! all my programs went along with the upgrade, just had to reinstall 2 softs: Luxology modo 302 and adobe creative suit as the cs2 didnt work an win 7 dont know why and I hadnt come to any post regarding this on the whole intnet! solution juyst go with cs4!
anyway, win7 does it! boot times are significantly reduced, installation is pretty straightforward, no asking for drivers finally!!! everything went up fine. well after trying it for a week or so I decided it was time to take the next step, so again the weekly backup-format-reintall routine came up.
yeah I grabbed a copy of win7 x64 and 64ed my laptop. two words: wow-sweeet!
But not everything was as sweet as I thought, first of all I had 5 unknown "system base device"s first driver lack. came up to be the memory card reader, got updated drivers for vista 64 on hp's site andf voila.
}the softs that didnt went on win7x32 went right on win7, Specially for modo 302(Modelling+rendering software).
well I went to review my system specs and found that my radeon graphics now reports 1024 mbs of VRAM??? dont know why, Im truly clueless in this aspect.
as I installed the HP smart protect hard drive the computer went lolo. asked for a reboot, done, booting up it showed the windows us starting animation from vista!!!!! the bar with green blocks, strange. came up to be loading system repair. so the smart protect wont work, despite of posts you(HP users) may find telling ypu to download some xp version appp and vista driver, dont! as my computer restored to the firs restore point created ever. and the othe restore points dissapeared.
I installed agaaaain all of my programs, and hoping to have finally setup my machine, went online to find an AV prog. EVERY single antivirus I tried (ESET´s NOD and SMart security, Bitdefender, AVG and KAspersky) would not only make my computer boot like a vista machine, but also werent recognized by the so called action center. (before anyone asks yeah, I installed the 64bit versions). so Im without AV protection.
So to pair up things and end up here:
Vista: DOESNT totally suck, really, if you are confident and skilled on tweaking and pinpointing problems youll find your way around most issues on vista, except for the booting-shutting speed and some minor compatibility issues. but My advice: move up to 7 (BTW I Installed vista on my desktop just when it came up availibvle on your preferred torrent site, so Ive used it for a loong time)
WIN7x32: Hp says. the computer is personal again, MS could say "the OS is fun again!!" yeah really I had my time fooling around and discovering little tweaks on the UI and performance that just make your life easier, every single thing you plug into works, the interface is soo clear, windows auto resizing, fitting on screen, pairing is awesome, also I loved the fact you can drag a maximized window without having to click the restore button. the pinned jumplists are very MAC-esque I know but they REALLY do their job on making yer life easier. Libararies! these is something sweet you can add anyfolder to any library, so organazing your information is not limited to copying pictures to the pictures folder music to the music folder, you can arrange your stuff however you want just referencing folders to libraries. said so go ahead get 7!
WIN7x64: dude, if you have 64bit capable software, go for it, you may not notice the performance boost, but believe me its there, and more on, more and more 64 bit native progs are hitting the market, if you work with video/sound editing, 3d modelling and or rendering this is the way to go, truly! 64 bit drivers are readily availible from almost all pc vendors since the past few years so theres no lack of support, anyway I had my Graphics card running on a microsoft driver (cause my internet died for a day or so) and it did run OK.
yup done. dont even know if someone will take his her time to read thru all this stuff I JUST NEEDED to expresss my satisfaction.
even though Ive got no Antivirus :( but hell, are there a lot of 64bit viruses?? I dont think so!)
