I have been working hard like a good little bunny and with my hard-earnt monies I have bought myself a laptop. I've been meaning to get one for years after all. :)
It's an Acer Aspire 5535, with a 220GB HDD, 4GB RAM, 2Ghz AMD Turion processor and Windows Vista.
Yes, that's right... Vista.
A few people have been asking why I'm running vista on it instead of just wiping and installing XP but here's my thoughts on it.
For one, Vista allows me to utilize that 4GB of RAM rather than the 2, or 3 with a little tweaking, that XP will take.
Secondly, this is a good opportunity for me to actually learn some basic Vista skills. I'm fed up of people coming to me with problems only to reveal they are using Vista and thus leaving me completely unable to help them. This way I am expanding my own knowledge, which is always fun. And if, in the end, I don't like it, I can just wipe and slap on XP. :P
But anyway, I have portability now, so that's just freaking awesome. :) It's working and that too is groovy and I've also just finished rebuilding my bro's new computer and that too is working! Hoorays all round. Things working = fun.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Wohoo! Congratulations on buying a really fine portable box :) You know what? Welcome to the club of Acer Aspirants hehe. I am a proud and satisfied owner of an Acer Aspire 6930G (pretty similar model to yours). Well what can i say? After using it for 2 months now day-in and day-out i can say it is a real sturdy and reliable notebook ...er laptop ( ;) we germans and our crude version of english :P calling cellphones handies.... and laptops=notebooks *g*)...okay different story, back to topic.
ReplyDeleteThe first days i had a little trouble with the DVD burner. But after reinstalling the driver in the device manager the issues vanished and i am a happy bunny now :)
Regarding Vista: well yeah.... i tried a few other laptops with Vista on them in the past and i was really annoyed with the sluggishness of Vista.... But well this machine is fast enough to handle the ressource hunger of Vista and after some twinking and deinstalling alot preinstalled software-crap it is almost as snappy and responsive as XP on my near stone-old (6 years) lappy.
Hmm what else? maybe some smartass comments concerning the specs of your Acer? ;P
You already know you cannot use more than 3gigs of Ram on a 32bit version of Vista. So if you wanna use the complete 4gigs you need either Vista as 64bit version or Windows 7 (which is awesome btw) ...On the other hand: I dunno about your graphics card and if it uses shared RAM as video ram (like my card does :S) ...1024 RAM less of main memory. means 3gigs instead of 4GB.
But that is not really a problem unless you use tons of applications simultanously or tend to play 3D video games with your browser open in the background downloading p*** :)
Oh a little hint if you have lying around some USB stick: If it is fast enough (>3Mb/s read ; >1.75Mb/s write) you can use it as a 2nd page file handled by Vista automatically (vista checks the capability also) . They call it ReadyBoost(tm). It works. Not much difference with 3 gigs of RAM. But well... we are Nerds so..everything helps. :D
I cannot wait until they release the RC of Win 7 in may. As soon they do i free up some space on the harddisk and will use that one 'til they timebomb it (june 2010):S
*thumbs up* Alot fun with your new shiny PC Charon!
Ches.
P.S: NWN1 works like a charm on an Acer Aspire laptop 5535 ;) With highest details and dynamic shadows and AA turned on and all that bling :)
hmm and iirc Untamec used to play on an ISDN connection too some years ago... so you might be good with 56kbit/secs... i checked it too on a network monitor and it rarelly exceeds 50kbit/s. Might be worth a try :D
You could use 64 bit XP... less bloat with the benefit of up to 128 gigs of ram.
ReplyDeleteAfter rereading my post i realized that my babble is a little too pompous/grandiloquent.
ReplyDeleteDoh.
Ches the overzealous Win7/Ubuntu/whatever fanboy. *rolleyes*
:) Wow. Major commentage. Allow me to address a few points.
ReplyDeleteDVD Burner. Not tried yet, but hopefully it works. If not, my desktop has a pretty badass Pioneer burner that hasn't failed a disc yet.
Tweaking and uninstalling of crap. Check. Removed some junk, disabled unnecessary bollocks, result equals pretty smooth running OS if I'm honest.
RAM. 32 vista only supports 3GB? :o I did not know that. For now I'm guessing 3GB is enough and saves trying to persuade 32 XP to take 3GB of RAM or, much harder, getting ahold of a copy of a 64 bit OS.
Solid State Page Files. Yes, I heard about this little trick. I actually have a 16GB flash drive so who knows, maybe I'll look into that, maybe I won't. All depends on how necessary it is. I'll have to install NWN and take it from there I reckon. I'm pretty new to laptop GFX so I dunno if my card is any good. It's a Radeon 3200 HD?
Nick, 64 XP. Yeah, if I can find a virus free version it's a possibility I suppose. Either way, when I chatted with the guy in the store he was of the opinion that the current setup should be more than capable of handling my current gaming needs, NWN and CIV mainly.
Win7 I'm not ready for. I just don't know enough about it yet to consider it a viable OS. And Ubuntu and Radeon don't go well together. On my last run in with Ubuntu I just couldn't get NWN working at all, not to mention the fact that all my peripherals are built around Windows meaning learning to use WINE and whatnot. It's just too much and I don't have the time.
Thanks for the input guys.