Vista, Microsoft are avin a larf.

[Nigel Goodwin]

Is that a fact? This source says MS-DOS was purchased from a Seattle company:

I'd read it in a number of computer magazines, but certainly google says Tim Paterson in Seattle!.

 

[Pommie]

In case anyone was wondering what the final outcome was,

I spat the dummy with Vista.
I installed XP Pro.
It ran abominably due to no drivers.
I went to Compaqs site to get drivers.
Compaq (hp) do not support XP on this machine - only vista.
I phoned Compaq and was told that if I installed XP then they would not provide any support whatsoever.
I ended up tracking down the various drivers via Intel, nvidia, realtek etc.

I now have a nice new fast machine. The best bit is not even the computer, it's the monitor. I bought a 22" acer LCD monitor which is just fantastic. I can have MPLAB on one side and a data sheet next to it. It runs at 1680x1050. Bloody marvelous.

Mike.

 

[Hero999]

I don't get you, did you get your money back on your Vista computer?

If it's that bad they should either give your money back of fix it for you. The thing that annoys me is you don't have a choice of operating system when you buy a new PC nowadays.

 

[Pommie]

No, I didn't get my money back for Vista. I'm ashamed to say, I bought a copy of XP Pro to install. Hopefully, in a year or two if Vista becomes usable I can reinstall it and use the XP license on another machine.

What a great marketing ploy. Sell a pile of pooh as an operating system, make sure none of the suppliers will downgrade and force your customers to buy your older OS. Hopefully, people with more time will make more of a stand on this.

In a month or two, when I get time, I will attempt to install Linux as a dual boot OS. Hopefully, Linux won't be too alien as I use to work on SGI unix boxes a few years ago.

Mike.

 

[Hero999]

Youshould have taken the computer back and they should have given you a complete refund! Oh well as long as you're happy with it now, that's all that counts.

When I buy my next computer I'll get it witout an OS installed so I can install Linux.

 

[Sceadwian]

Hero maybe at big box stores, but there are at least a half dozen stores around here locally that you can purchase hardware from a decent list of components and have them assembly and they'll install any OS you want on it. There are many online sitse as well I'm sure that will gladly custom build you a PC with any OS you want on it.

 

[Hero999]

There again I could build my own.

But I'm not bothered about a new PC as my current machine more than fulfils my needs.

 

[Sceadwian]

I gave up on building my own from scratch a long time ago, with modern PC's there's just no point unless you're a glutton for punishment. I use a local company that has a large variety of parts without much bias and they do compatability/stability testing with the various components they source, if they get complaints on parts they stop carrying them and their warranties are good. I'm still using a machine I bought from them over 4 years ago and it's still doing just fine.