[AccessD] Interesting Laptop / Vista commentary

Subject: [AccessD] Interesting Laptop / Vista commentary

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2222303,00.asp?kc=EWKNLBOE120107STR1

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com 


John:

"Interesting" article indeed.  About six months ago I bought a
top-of-the-line HP dv9500t which I had "custom configured" [upgraded] to 2
GB of RAM, an enormous amount of hard drive storage, a super accelerated
graphics processor, and other "bells and whistles" that came with that
particular model.  By the time all the costs were added up, the whole rig
came out at just over $3,000.00.  In short, I bought a [very expensive]
laptop hot rod.

Now, you would think (for that much money) that I wouldn't have any major
problems.  Think again.  The sales folks at HP "recommended" that I go with
Vista Ultimate for my operating system, since the "Ultimate" version of the
OS was compatible with the dv9500t's 64-bit CPU.  It was only when I
unpacked my "hot rod" and attempted to load (and run) some of my existing
32-bit [XP-compatible] software - such as Wilson Software's poker simulation
program - that I discovered Vista "Ultimate" won't run a lot of existing
32-bit applications developed for Windows XP!!

This was infuriating - to say the least.  The sales folks at HP failed to
point out this pretty little fact - all they seemed to care about was making
the sale.  So now I'm stuck with a virtually worthless piece of $3,000.00
hardware that I'm not using.  I just put it back in its box and said to hell
with it.

Hewlett-Packard constantly sends me emails asking me to participate in
"surveys" intended to help them "improve their customer service" and the
"quality" of their products.  Their concern and "caring" is very touching,
but I have probably bought my last computer from HP.  I consider it
unforgivable that they failed to warn me about software compatibility issues
with the "Ultimate" version of Vista.

If I start doing a lot of traveling in the future (and actually need to use
the laptop), I will probably take it to a local computer shop and tell them
to get rid of "Vista" and replace the OS with XP-SP2.  (On the other hand,
since this is [partially] Microsoft's fault too - prior to "Vista" all
previous operating systems had been backward-compatible with existing
software applications - I may just decide to try Linux.)

Alan C. Lawhon