Topic: A Letter To Dell Computers (Read 5008 times)

KingSparta · « **on:** April 17, 2006, 05:49:55 pm »

It is sometimes good to Share.

After I sent a letter to dell about there XPS computers and Disappointment about the Windows Vista Delay, They Sent Me this Link For Info In regards To The Term "Windows Vista Capable" Logo that you may see soon

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&docid=0F9AA8D46EED9F0BE040030ABD623E0A&journalid=BF39A80CC89511DAAC29E1D994522B56&l=en&s=gen

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #1 on:** April 17, 2006, 05:57:12 pm »

Apart from the 1Gigabyte of Memory,
I believe the AMD K62 300 Which I put together about 6 years
ago meets their requirements for a Vista Machine.
It had a Pentium Class Proccessor in it.
An optical DVD Drive,
a 7200RPM harddrive,
and non integrated graphics (a Diamond Speedstar AGP card none the less...)

Some how doubt it would run Vista very well though, even with 1GB of Memory...
Or at least not in full Aero Mode

akak718 · « **Reply #2 on:** April 17, 2006, 10:46:16 pm »

KingSparta, I'm confused why you would send a complaint ot Dell about the Vista delay. They have nothing to do with it.

By the way, I think their Vista requirements page needs some serious clarification.

KingSparta · « **Reply #3 on:** April 18, 2006, 05:29:03 am »

Quote

why you would send a complaint ot Dell about the Vista delay.

I never said it was a complaint abut the Vista delay. I guess you got that part out of thin air.

I did tell them that I have delayed a purchase because of the delay of Windows Vista. The Letter contained other information and a request for information about the XPS computer, and another request was what made a computer "Windows Vista Capable" and they sent me a link for it.

glynor · « **Reply #4 on:** April 18, 2006, 08:09:45 am »

King -

Thought you might like to see this (as it is semi-related) from a few weeks ago...

The meaning of "Vista Capable" on Ars. (It means it'll run, but its far from ideal).

As far as I'm concerned, Vista can take it's time (or never come actually). I have no intention to ~~drm-grade~~ (oops) upgrade any of my machines to it anytime soon, and I'm not the only one. When I look through the feature-set, all of the cool stuff was dropped, delayed, or will be back-ported to XP (WinFS, DirextX10/Graphics Foundation, and on and on). And now, they won't even have it on any of the machines sold during the Christmas sales orgy....

KingSparta · « **Reply #5 on:** April 18, 2006, 09:48:50 am »

Interesting....

That was one of the reasons I was asking Dell about "Windows Vista Capable".

I figured it is or it is not capable, and that was one reason i put off buying from them or anyone at this point (unless something blows up here). I am never the one ever wanting the basic of anything.

They told me (in not so many words) that this delay by Microsoft is expected to have a impact on computer sales Thru out all computer companies this year.

I have been very disappointed in Gateways computers in the post 3 years. Gateways Stores were a joke and if they would have been properly run they would have been a good deal for the company.

Customers do not want to go to a store to only find out they need to order a computer and can't walk out the store with a computer, they sold nothing directly from the stores.

Now E-machine President is running gateway I really don't see the company pulling them self out of the hole they got there self into.

One of the things wrong with some companies, and this is true with "Netgear" they outsource there support to some place like India or so. I tried talking to 3 support reps and could not understand any of them, they never figure out the problem either. I had to work thru the problem my self only to find out the router was defective.

I would prefer that windows Vista would not run 32bit software and I have fears it will be slow like windows 95 supporting 16bit and 32 bit programs slowing the computer down.

when was the last time Microsoft put any OS out on time, I can't think of but one Dos 1.0

glynor · « **Reply #6 on:** April 18, 2006, 11:22:00 am »

FWIW, consumer-targetted versions of Vista will still be available in 32-bit versions just like Windows XP. There will be a 32-bit "edition" of each version of Vista, and a separate 64-bit "edition" for most. They couldn't possibly release it in x64 only, as that would rule out supporting all but the newest Pentium4 processors (and Athlon XP processors too).

It is unclear thus far whether when you purchase Vista Home Premium if the 32-bit and 64-bit versions will be both on the same disc or if you will need to purchase them separately if you want both.

Also, FWIW, I would probably look at an AMD Athlon64-based system instead of an Intel-based Dell right now (unless you wait for the new Conroe processors to come out in late-2006 or early-2007). Alienware (now owned by Dell) makes some nice ones if you want to go the pre-built route. Since Dell bought Alienware, many people expect them to drop the XPS line and focus their "hardcore" computer efforts on Alienware. I think their pricing has gotten a bit more reasonable since the Dell buy-out too (though I could be wrong).

KingSparta · « **Reply #7 on:** April 18, 2006, 11:34:04 am »

Quote

Alienware (now owned by Dell)

Interesting, I did not know that

glynor · « **Reply #8 on:** April 18, 2006, 11:38:28 am »

Quote from: KingSparta on April 18, 2006, 09:48:50 am

when was the last time Microsoft put any OS out on time, I can't think of but one Dos 1.0

Also, FWIW, PC-DOS (the CP/M clone we all know and love-to-hate) was not Microsoft's first Operating System. The first operating system Microsoft brought to the world was Xenix. Amusingly enough, Xenix was a UNIX clone which Microsoft built with the help of Santa Cruz Operation after they acquired the license to distribute UNIX from AT&T. This, of course, was the seed that brought forth all of the current SCO v. IBM/Novel/linux/everyone debacle as Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) eventually acquired the rights to Xenix (which they renamed SCO-UNIX).

Quote from: KingSparta on April 18, 2006, 11:34:04 am

Interesting, I did not know that

Dell to buy Alienware

KingSparta · « **Reply #9 on:** April 18, 2006, 11:49:01 am »

Billl Gates Looks So Young, Kid Like

marko · « **Reply #10 on:** April 18, 2006, 12:07:24 pm »

you mention Bill Gates, and remind me of something I happened across this this morning. The look on Bill Gates' face is priceless!!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3877405527381660901&q=bill&gates&pl=true

KingSparta · « **Reply #11 on:** April 18, 2006, 01:28:08 pm »

He don't look too happy

LonWar · « **Reply #12 on:** April 18, 2006, 02:56:18 pm »

That is funny!!

Hopefully he didn't work for Microsoft at the time....

glynor · « **Reply #13 on:** April 18, 2006, 03:15:17 pm »

Well, considering that he founded Microsoft with Paul Allen back in 1975 (and is still "working" there as the Chairman and "Chief Software Architect"), he most certainly did work there when that video was shot. I remember seeing that clip on old TechTV. Pretty funny stuff.

He was also working there when this photo was taken, much to his chagrin I imagine....

He did remember to smile pretty for the nice police officer though!

Jaguu · « **Reply #14 on:** April 18, 2006, 03:18:14 pm »

Quote

Xenix

I remember Xenix quite well. I have been using it for about 5 years in the second half of the 80ies (skipped most MS OS up to Windows 3.1). It was a great operating system, less sophisticated than later Unix flavors, but very fast and reliable. We used it on Altos Microcomputers and we could boot directly from tape somewhere in 1983 and was running on very small resources.

It was always amusing when the DOS users found some new sophisticated way of solving simple problems and then you explained things like "grep" or "find" and "grep xenix ./* | tr "x" "X" >>file &"

It would have been another world if Bill Gates would have sold Xenix to IBM

Jaguu · « **Reply #15 on:** April 18, 2006, 03:26:52 pm »

There is a good story about Bill Gates when he looked like in the picture below.

A new secretary was hired by Paul Allen and got her desk in the same office as Bill Gates. She got a shock when a young student came in and sat on Bill Gates desk, but as she was new, she didn't dare to say anything. After a while Bill left again and later on she asked Paul Allen: "Hey, do students here have no respect for the boss. There was a young student that just entered the office and sat on Bill Gates desk." Paul Allen asked the lady to give a precise description of this student, so she described in great detail this young man. Paul Allen just smiled and said: "Dear lady, that was our boss!"

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #16 on:** April 18, 2006, 05:16:06 pm »

Quote from: Jaguu on April 18, 2006, 03:18:14 pm

It would have been another world if Bill Gates would have sold Xenix to IBM

A world where Media Center would be started by a terminal prompt. (undoubtedly very quickly, and securly).
The command would probably look like this
./bin/usr/mediaCenter/MC11.exe -exec >> outputDisplay1 & outputDisplay2

KingSparta · « **Reply #17 on:** April 18, 2006, 05:29:56 pm »

This Is The Song Bill Gates Was Listening To When He Formed Microsoft

Listening to: 'I'm Your Captain' from 'Vietnam Songs From a Divided H' by 'Grand Funk Railroad' on Media Center 11

Charlemagne 8 · « **Reply #18 on:** April 18, 2006, 08:38:39 pm »

President Hu Jintao of China came to visit Bill Gates today. He didn't come to see W., he came to see Bill.

That's real. The following is just speculation:

Aide - "Mr. President, the President of China wants to come and see you."

George - "Who?"

Aide - "That's right."

George - "Stop yankin' me, Skippy. Who is the President of China?"

Aide - "Right as usual, Mr. President."

Well, you get the idea. The visit just never materialized. So on to Bill and a tour of Boeing.

runemail · « **Reply #19 on:** April 19, 2006, 09:24:38 am »

I installed the latest vista on my osx86 / win2003 machine this easter.

Specs:
Intel 915G + ICH6 chipset
onboard Intel GMA 900
512mb ram
3.06GHz Celeron D

It was a mixed experience

I know its still about a year or so away from RTM and will surely run smooth on next years hardware...
I found it very slow on my system witch is essentially a normal centrino laptop (adding more ram would help a little).
(It wouldnt even install on my regular centrino 1.73GHz 1024MB laptop, the installer crashed due to some bug caused by my bios(latest) and some ACPI error.)
But the bigest problem was that the aero interface would not run with this hardware. But then again, would you really use it when running your laptop on battery? (does anyone have a benchmark comparing battery-time on Vista vs. XP?)
And would it not be very confusing to have a different interface on your desktop than on your laptop?
osX86 10.4.5 runs like a dream with eyecandy on the same machine(s).

I also tested the new Vista Media Center but I still dont like the interface and it didn't like me (crashed a lot).

The only pleasant surprise was the new WMP11.
It was very fast compared to WMP10, I imported about 65000 files and it was actually faster than MC11.1!
This was most likely because it refused to to recognize most of my cover art (in tags). And i only played with it for a couple of hours. But still, fast. And the new interface looks alot like MC11.1 by some strange

I'll post some screenshots later.

glynor · « **Reply #20 on:** April 19, 2006, 10:56:19 am »

Quote from: Charlemagne 8 on April 18, 2006, 08:38:39 pm

President Hu Jintao of China came to visit Bill Gates today. He didn't come to see W., he came to see Bill.

Well, you know, he probably wanted to visit with someone who actually has some real power.

glynor · « **Reply #21 on:** April 19, 2006, 11:00:54 am »

Quote from: runemail on April 19, 2006, 09:24:38 am

The only pleasant surprise was the new WMP11.
It was very fast compared to WMP10, I imported about 65000 files and it was actually faster than MC11.1!
This was most likely because it refused to to recognize most of my cover art (in tags). And i only played with it for a couple of hours. But still, fast. And the new interface looks alot like MC11.1 by some strange
I'll post some screenshots later.

Yeah. I just read that WiMP 11 is supposed to be released for XP in June. They're going to cripple it somehow (unannounced) by disabling some features that will only work on Vista of course.

What I noticed from the article...

Quote

Albums can be viewed in "stacks" of album art, kind of like looking at a stack of CDs or a milk crate of records.

Hmmm... Where have I seen this implemented before? Oh yeah, now I remember...

runemail · « **Reply #22 on:** April 21, 2006, 03:25:10 am »

Just to illustrate how difficult it is to tell what hw will run Vista:

Notice how 503 mb ram gives the highest rating ...
And the average becomes 1 after some Ms-math is applyed to the ratings..

The performance rating tool can be useful, but i get the feeling they are trying to push/help customers into buying new stuff (Hw or Sw). The link on top tell you what hw you should buy..

The link at the bottom takes you to Windows marketplace where you can spend some $$
I could only find Media Jukebox and not MC there...

Explorer have some eycandy:

Networking have more options (remember to take a deep breath be4 you say: "Link-Layer Topology Discovery Mapper I/O Driver"):

AustinBike · « **Reply #23 on:** April 22, 2006, 02:17:28 pm »

Having worked for Dell in the past, might I recommend that if you really want to run Vista, you look at an AMD-based system instead

The Athlon 64 has an integrated memory controller, no front side bus, so memory transfers are significantly faster. If you are doing a lot of multitasking or running memory-intensive applications, you'll find the best performance on an AMD system. Intel only has the advantage on their newest processors when you don't have heavy memory or I/O. With heavy memory or I/O the systems tend to bog down.

What, you ask, is almost all processor-bound? Why benchmarks! That's why the newest Intel processors may show better performance in SPEC CPU benchmarks, but choke under real-world application loads.

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Author Topic: A Letter To Dell Computers (Read 5008 times)