Quick Question .

[Fusion]

Hi Guys. I have a Dell Dimension E520 Pentium 4 HT . It has a sticker on it that say designed for XP (which i'm running ) and below it says Vista Capable . So is it as simple as installing it or will something else need to be done ? Thanks :).

[hodgo]

Stay with xp

Hodgo

[incisor]

Hi Guys. I have a Dell Dimension E520 Pentium 4 HT . It has a sticker on it that say designed for XP (which i'm running ) and below it says Vista Capable . So is it as simple as installing it or will something else need to be done ? Thanks :).

you will need to check the dell site to see if they have vista drivers available for that model.

download them prior and unpack and burn to a drivers cd or dvd so they are available when you first boot into vista.

[dmdigital]

Stay with xp

Hodgo

Best advice of the lot!


you will need to check the dell site to see if they have vista drivers available for that model.

download them prior and unpack and burn to a drivers cd or dvd so they are available when you first boot into vista.
I went down this track with my wife's Toshiba, it said Vista compatible and we diownloaded several hundred MB of driver updates to enable Vista to install. From then on it was nothing but grief and after 2 months of headaches I put it back to XP and its been fine ever since.

If you want a world of grief install Vista but be warned. Vista's bad enough on a pre-install like my Sony Viao. Next laptop will be a Macbook!

[mickashay]

hey mick vista is ok but is very slow compared to xp,i have 2 laptops and now only use the one with xp the other just seems to take forever when doing anything

[lro11]

Download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor 1.0 and it will tell you.

[dmdigital]

Download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor 1.0 and it will tell you.
Its a marketing tool.

It will tell you if it should work if everything is perfect. Reality can very different. We ran this on my wife's Toshiba and it said everything was fine. Then we had the install crash because the SCSI controller firmware needed updating (from Toshiba - found out after an hour of googling) and I can keep listing the issues. Aaaaaarrrgghh!

[lro11]

I would be against setting it up on a P4 anyway too slow

[B92 8NW]

Its a marketing tool.



I was waiting for it, but Derek, I never dreamt it'd be you:p. As soon as one buys a Mac they start to believe that the world is a malevolent corporate machine, existing solely to suck money from the hands of its inhabitants, and that they ought to develop a "global conciousness".

[dmdigital]

I was waiting for it, but Derek, I never dreamt it'd be you:p. As soon as one buys a Mac they start to believe that the world is a malevolent corporate machine, existing solely to suck money from the hands of its inhabitants, and that they ought to develop a "global conciousness".
Don't worry Apple's just as slick with their marketing;)

[djam1]

Nothing wrong with a P4 but stay with XP.
Vista is allright with later hardware even then a pain with old hardware it isnt worth the trouble

Dm

[David Read]

Hi Guys. I have a Dell Dimension E520 Pentium 4 HT . It has a sticker on it that say designed for XP (which i'm running ) and below it says Vista Capable . So is it as simple as installing it or will something else need to be done ? Thanks :).

Hi
Micro$oft has a Vista upgrade advisor for download
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx

Cheers
Dave
South Oz

[PaulP38a]

The Dimension E520 was and still is a great PC - SATA drives, 7.1 channel audio and NVIDIA graphics if memory serves?

"Vista Compatible" was a marketing term that hardware vendors used in 2006 to keep customers buying PC's instead of waiting until Vista went to production in late 2006 and early 2007.

Vista (Home Basic or Home Premium) will run "adequately" on a Dimension E520 P4 if you have at least 2GB of memory and don't want the Aero/glass features of Vista Ultimate. As I recall, the E520 has a NVIDIA 256MB graphics card, so it will handle Aero/glass but it still takes resources away from memory and the CPU itself.

Truthfully, I'd suggest that XP is a better option on a E520.

If you do decide to make the move to Vista, go to dell.com.au and download the Vista device drivers for your E520, save them to a memory stick or write them to a CD. Then do a fresh install of Vista rather than an upgrade - make sure you back up all of your personal data first!... e.g. pics, music, email, financials etc - to a memory stick or CD (twice to be sure) then do a clean install of Vista, re-formatting the hard drive. In the longer term, this is a better option than trying to sort out all of the incompatibilities with installed applications if you try to do an upgrade.

Best wishes, Paul.

[Pedro_The_Swift]

wait 12 months and buy Windows 7???
:o:o:o

[mjm295]

wait 12 months and buy Windows 7???
:o:o:o

LMAO - I'll be waiting 36 months before even considering Windows 7.

Just bought a new laptop - 3gb memory, dual core, etc ,etc, running vista.
But it cannot run sims 2 for the mrs!!!!

If only these games would run on Linux.

[Pedro_The_Swift]

LMAO - I'll be waiting 36 months before even considering Windows 7.

Just bought a new laptop - 3gb memory, dual core, etc ,etc, running vista.
But it cannot run sims 2 for the mrs!!!!

If only these games would run on Linux.


you left out the important part of that spec---

on board graphics???

[series3]

I was talking to an IT bloke about vista and he said there is nothing wrong with it, just because it is a bit more complex and nice-looking, it soaks up a lot of memory and has heaps more processes at any one time compared to XP. if the computer's credentials aren't up to scratch (meaning quite modern i think) it will just drag it down.

[PaulP38a]

If only these games would run on Linux.

be careful what you wish for...:)

Try WINE WineHQ - Run Windows applications on Linux, BSD and Mac OS X (http://www.winehq.org/) - it will allow you to run many Windows apps on Linux. Will Sims 2 work with WINE? no idea.

Another option for Linux users is to run Windows inside a virtual machine using something like VMware Workstation, Xen or VirtualBox.

For example, your PC or laptop could be running Ubuntu as its primary operating system with OpenOffice for documents and spreadsheets, Firefox for web browsing, and Thunderbird for email - all for the cost of a download.
Then you load up VirtualBox, create a VM for a Windows XP installation and off you go. Will Sims 2 work in this scenario? No idea.

Windows users have the same options for running Linux inside a VM too.

Geez, the ramble above makes me sound like a Linux geek... I'm not, but I do like to play with both Linux and Windows systems hence my interest in virtualisation software.

[95_ES]

be careful what you wish for...:)

Try WINE WineHQ - Run Windows applications on Linux, BSD and Mac OS X (http://www.winehq.org/) - it will allow you to run many Windows apps on Linux. Will Sims 2 work with WINE? no idea.

Another option for Linux users is to run Windows inside a virtual machine using something like VMware Workstation, Xen or VirtualBox.

For example, your PC or laptop could be running Ubuntu as its primary operating system with OpenOffice for documents and spreadsheets, Firefox for web browsing, and Thunderbird for email - all for the cost of a download.
Then you load up VirtualBox, create a VM for a Windows XP installation and off you go. Will Sims 2 work in this scenario? No idea.

Windows users have the same options for running Linux inside a VM too.

Geez, the ramble above makes me sound like a Linux geek... I'm not, but I do like to play with both Linux and Windows systems hence my interest in virtualisation software.

Far and away the best post of the lot...

On the subject of running Windows inside a VM on Linux, I suspect that would be a (much) better alternative than doing the opposite.

At least with a (large) number of Linux distros around nowadays, you can actually live boot the CD/DVD to see whether your hardware "likes" the OS (ie. All devices found etc).

My Mrs has recently "acquired" :rolleyes: our DRP HP laptop (2GHz dual core/2Gb RAM etc), so I've "acquired" her old Acer 1.6GHz dual-core laptop as a "spare". That will ultimately replace my identical notebook which is currently running XP (quite well, I might add), when I find a Linux distro which will go on with minimal fuss. (Fedora 10 is looking good so far).

Steer well clear of Vista...

[Pedro_The_Swift]

Steer well clear of Vista...



why?

[aew849]

Am not a computer whiz so I'll leave any techno numbers and specs out of it.

Currently run an Acer Laptop with specifically requested XP when I grabbed it 18 months ago. Many colleagues and family had nothing but drama's when 'upgrading' to Vista.

Never fly, drive or compute with the Mark 1 of anything...let the gripes get ironed out!!

Loved my Apple iBook when it worked.....but they don't tell you about the $1100 bill should the logic board goes belly up.

There's my 2 bits.

aew849
04 130 HCPU

[95_ES]

why?

Anyone else remember Windows "Millennium Edition" (or ME)?

It was brought out as a "gap filler" between the outgoing 98SE, and the yet to be released Windows 2000.

It was absolutely diabolical. So much so, that MS were forced to fast track the release of W2K (which is why it actually released in '99).

XP was released in 2001, and is still available today (albeit increasingly difficult to get hold of). XP is actually not too bad, which is why so many people are sticking with it.
Vista, on the other hand, would appear to be heading in a similar direction to ME, with Microsoft having to fast track the release of "Windows 7", following a stack of complaints from the user community.

It's not only flaky in respect of driver support etc, but is classic MS bloatware, given it's (exorbitant) hardware requirements. The term "Wintel" - coined as an amalgam of Windows and Intel - wasn't invented without reason...)

[Pedro_The_Swift]

If you are gunna do comparisons,,
try the Edsel,

absolutely nothing wrong with the car,,
early media anti-hype successfully killed it.

XP had the same problem with drivers, as will ANY first edition software used by 95% of the worlds population,,

you cant keep expecting PC's to run on celerons and 2meg sticks of ram,,
if you dont like it due to media reports, dont use it,,

but dont condemn the ones that are,,

FAR superior to XP IMHO,,

[95_ES]

If you are gunna do comparisons,,
try the Edsel,

absolutely nothing wrong with the car,,
early media anti-hype successfully killed it.

XP had the same problem with drivers, as will ANY first edition software used by 95% of the worlds population,,

you cant keep expecting PC's to run on celerons and 2meg sticks of ram,,
if you dont like it due to media reports, dont use it,,

but dont condemn the ones that are,,

FAR superior to XP IMHO,,

I think you are being a little disingenuous...XP had nowhere near the issues with Drivers that Vista does. Nor did the user community at large have anywhere near the issues using it that users have had with Vista. XP had something like a 6-odd year run before MS brought out Vista. Vista's been out for ~2 years, and they are already looking at replacing it?

By all means, use it (and subsequent MS OSs) if you're happy to replace your hardware every couple of years.

As an aside, where have I condemned anyone who uses Vista?

[hodgo]

I think over all the vote is with XP.

Hodgo