[Dclug] Interesting Experience with Vista

[Chuck Divine]

All,

Back in September, after getting fed up with Dell's nonshipment of the
Ubuntu laptop I ordered from them, I went to Best Buy and picked up a
Compaq laptop at under $500.  It came with Windows Home Vista.  The
salesman in the store gave me no warning about what to expect.

OK, I get the laptop home and do basically nothing with it except turn
it and become a bit familiar with it.  I carried the laptop to
California for a conference in September.  I used the laptop to check
e-mail, a few websites, etc.  I hadn't bothered to load Linux on the
machine at that point.  I did use the machine to occasionally try taking
notes using Microsoft Works.  I gather that is a simpler, free version
of Office.

In October I used the laptop again for a conference in New Jersey.
Again, just very simple stuff.

Last Friday I took the laptop to a local conference.  It's behavior
seemed a bit odd -- the display wasn't quite right. I did manage to get
the thing to do what I wanted, though.  This was the third -- and last
-- experience with using wireless.  I had also used the machine a few
times hooked up to my land line at home.  I wasn't using the machine
very much on the Internet at all.  

Saturday I decided to check out laptop while I waiting for some friends
to show up for dinner.  The display had definitely degraded
considerably.  Colors were off, fonts were unreadably tiny, etc.

Yes, I had ignored the machine's demands to go to various sites for
virus protection, etc.  I wasn't exactly using the machine in a heavy
duty fashion.  My current Linux box has run for thousands of hours on
the net with no problem.  I figured a Windows machine could go for a few
hours until I bothered to load Linux on it.

Well, Saturday after my friends had left, I turned on the laptop again.
This time it was unusable the display was so bad.  Hmm, I thought to
myself, why don't I try loading Linux at this point?  OK, some good beer
had been consumed by all at dinner.  That might have influenced my
decision.  That plus the fact that I was bored.  Anyway, I inserted the
Suse Linux 10.2 DVD into the appropriate slot and fired up the
installation.  The first thing I was asked was whether or not I wanted
to delete Windows.  I threw caution to the winds (hmm -- Guinness Stout
and Sam Adams might have had something to do with that)  and said yes.
Windows was wiped off the laptop.  I now have a bare bones version of
Linux on the machine.  I haven't tested out its networking abilities as
yet.  I need a place where I can get free WiFi for awhile I gather.
Everything seems fine -- at least for simple stuff.

Have others reported this kind of thing happening with Windows?  Right
now I'm wondering if Windows sabotaged the laptop because I hadn't
signed up for anything that would cost money.

I will say installing Suse Linux 10.2 was very easy.

Best,


-- 
Chuck Divine <chuck.divine at comcast.net>