Gateway laptop w/ Vista -- ???'s

[JShelb]

I just purchased the Gateway MX8734 with Vista Home Premium for my wife. So far it's a great laptop, but I have some questions/concerns I need advice on.

I'm fairly knowledgable about XP, Vista is driving me nuts on the otherhand. 850MB of 1GB of Ram while sitting still is goofy. Plus, I can't get it to talk to XP machines on my network. I know this is more my lack of knowledge of Vista than Vista itself. My questions are:

1. I have XP Pro sitting at home, I can blow Vista up and install XP fresh. I have the recovery CD if I ever wanted Vista back. Is this recommendable?

2. I have Office XP as well, and it isn't compatible with Vista and I would prefer not to buy Office 2007 for Vista.

3. Is there any drawbacks I'm going to see why dragging Vista out and putting XP in? I.E. drivers for the hardware, tidbits of Vista laying around jacking with XP, etc....


BTW, for anyone wondering, out of the box, that laptop runs like a champ but by gawd Vista is harsh on a 1GB system.

Thanks in advance for the help. This is my first encounter with Vista and it's very pretty at a price from what I'm gathering.

Jason

 

[TheStu]

You will want to go to Gateway's website to make sure that you can get all the drivers for the system for XP. Then, drop the XP disk in, restart, and reformat. install the XP drivers and you should be good. Once that is done, there won't be anything left of Vista to mess with you.

If you want to keep using Vista...

Get OpenOffice (they should have a Vista version), or see if you can install Office XP by using WinXP compatibility mode (right click -> properties -> Compatibility)

See what programs are on there that are eating the RAM. Vista eats a healthy amount on boot, but not quite that much. See if there is any bloatware put on there by Gateway.

*edit: noticed that it was a gateway laptop, not an hp like I had originally written

 

[JShelb]

Thanks for the reply Stu.

I went home and ripped most of the bloatware out of it and it freed up a decent chunck of resources. It went from about 850MB usage on idle down to around 500ish.

I searched on Gateways site for drivers and there were only 2, the hd driver and the memory stick reader. I figured I'd give Vista a chance after the resources cleared up some at this point.

I was incorrect on my Office version, I actually had Office 2003. It installed fine with no problems and worked like a champ.

Since things were running smoothly now and my wife was happy with the current situation, I figured I'd go ahead and upgrade the memory to 2GB's to help Vista move a lil better. At times it still gets a lil choppy when switching windows. I looked around on newegg and found: Crucial 2GB on Newegg

I'm partial to crucial since it's never failed me so I looked there first. I'm not too familiar with other brands/prices, so if someone has better information, by all means please let me know.

One last thing, on long trips we were looking for something to plug her laptop into the cigarette lighters for power. Is there anything specific I need to look for in finding one, or will any device that gives me an electrical outlet be sufficient?

Thanks in advance,
Jason

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: JShelb
Thanks for the reply Stu.

I went home and ripped most of the bloatware out of it and it freed up a decent chunck of resources. It went from about 850MB usage on idle down to around 500ish.

I searched on Gateways site for drivers and there were only 2, the hd driver and the memory stick reader. I figured I'd give Vista a chance after the resources cleared up some at this point.

I was incorrect on my Office version, I actually had Office 2003. It installed fine with no problems and worked like a champ.

Since things were running smoothly now and my wife was happy with the current situation, I figured I'd go ahead and upgrade the memory to 2GB's to help Vista move a lil better. At times it still gets a lil choppy when switching windows. I looked around on newegg and found: Crucial 2GB on Newegg

I'm partial to crucial since it's never failed me so I looked there first. I'm not too familiar with other brands/prices, so if someone has better information, by all means please let me know.

One last thing, on long trips we were looking for something to plug her laptop into the cigarette lighters for power. Is there anything specific I need to look for in finding one, or will any device that gives me an electrical outlet be sufficient?

Thanks in advance,
Jason

You will need something that delivers about 75W of power, maybe a little more to be safe. Make sure you get one with a chip in it that can tell when it is running down the car battery. Mine is a few years old but works like a champ, can't remember the brand though.

RadioShack sells them though, maybe $30-40 for some pretty decent ones. Don't let them try to talk you into getting the iGo system since that is much more.

 

[zig3695]

you might try disabling transparancy in the 'windows color and appearnce' section, it can really help speed on integrated video.

i have found 1gb more then sufficient for vista, as long as you dont play games of course. 2gb is a bit quicker, but with people that use the expensive ddr ram its not a big deal to stay with 1gb if you just do basic stuff.

 

[Gibson486]

office 2007 is not compatible with vista??? how can that be.... office XP is.....I have it installed on my mom's computer.

that said....I have Vista on my mom's computer and it is driving me nuts. Networking is a pain on on it.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Gibson486
office 2007 is not compatible with vista??? how can that be.... office XP is.....I have it installed on my mom's computer.

that said....I have Vista on my mom's computer and it is driving me nuts. Networking is a pain on on it.

No, he said that Office XP is not (or at least he thought so) and didn't want to buy a copy of Office 07 just to write a document while running Vista.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: TheStu

Originally posted by: Gibson486
office 2007 is not compatible with vista??? how can that be.... office XP is.....I have it installed on my mom's computer.

that said....I have Vista on my mom's computer and it is driving me nuts. Networking is a pain on on it.

No, he said that Office XP is not (or at least he thought so) and didn't want to buy a copy of Office 07 just to write a document while running Vista.

Open Office works fine in Vista..so far

 

[JShelb]

Yea, I had Office 2003 instead of XP. 2003 worked fine and like Stu said, I had heard rumors/thought Office XP didn't work on Vista. But thanks to this forum, I now know otherwise. I checked out OpenOffice and it looked pretty cool, but since I had 2003, I didn't try it out.

Just another question, this one pertaining to services. I read the sticky about Vista tweaks to help performance, but didn't see anything specifically relating to the 32 billion services running on this laptop. I mean, most of the services I see running I wouldn't think need to be, like DHCP/DNS to name a few. Those are normally server services, not workstation.

Is there a list or somewhere I should be looking so as to turn some of these services off? I understand some will still need to run, but I don't want useless services running that could possibly compromise my network and/or laptop.

Thanks again,
Jason

 

[Gibson486]

Originally posted by: JShelb
Yea, I had Office 2003 instead of XP. 2003 worked fine and like Stu said, I had heard rumors/thought Office XP didn't work on Vista. But thanks to this forum, I now know otherwise. I checked out OpenOffice and it looked pretty cool, but since I had 2003, I didn't try it out.

Just another question, this one pertaining to services. I read the sticky about Vista tweaks to help performance, but didn't see anything specifically relating to the 32 billion services running on this laptop. I mean, most of the services I see running I wouldn't think need to be, like DHCP/DNS to name a few. Those are normally server services, not workstation.

Is there a list or somewhere I should be looking so as to turn some of these services off? I understand some will still need to run, but I don't want useless services running that could possibly compromise my network and/or laptop.

Thanks again,
Jason

office xp works fine on vista......

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: JShelb
Yea, I had Office 2003 instead of XP. 2003 worked fine and like Stu said, I had heard rumors/thought Office XP didn't work on Vista. But thanks to this forum, I now know otherwise. I checked out OpenOffice and it looked pretty cool, but since I had 2003, I didn't try it out.

Just another question, this one pertaining to services. I read the sticky about Vista tweaks to help performance, but didn't see anything specifically relating to the 32 billion services running on this laptop. I mean, most of the services I see running I wouldn't think need to be, like DHCP/DNS to name a few. Those are normally server services, not workstation.

Is there a list or somewhere I should be looking so as to turn some of these services off? I understand some will still need to run, but I don't want useless services running that could possibly compromise my network and/or laptop.

Thanks again,
Jason

Much like there were XP tweaking programs out there, I am sure there are some out there for Vista, but since I don't use Vista... or XP... I can't help you too much. Check google.