Since Vista is really giving me the s***s (speed issues mainly, not crashing or anything - opening control Panel for instance takes forever, takes several seconds to display a picture when you double click on it etc) I thought I might buy a newer larger hard-drive and chuck on XP.

Is it the same as a desktop machine to install new hardrive? ie: just pull the old HD out and install the new one, throw the XP disk in the drive and I'm away?

I've never done a laptop so I dunno if there's anything I need to be aware of...

Also, the F Functions on the keyboard (such as volume, screen brightness, wireless on/off, external screem toggle) will these just automagically work still after a new harddrive an OS is installed?

It's an Asus if that makes any difference to anything.

Cheers

get ssd.

you install stuff like the software for f keys. go to asus website.

ssd = solid state drive? Don't they cost a s*** load? I currently have a 160gig and really want 320 minimum.

Probs go a 320 as that seems to be the biggest 7200rpm.

I would get 10000rpm hard drive... you find a massive difference in speed or even 7200rpm... but i would put on Windows 7

7200rpm or 10k rpm in a laptop? kiss goodbye to a heap of battery life.

btw, you can get 2.5" 500Gb 7200rpm drives, they sell for about $220Aus

Yeah, I'd imagine heat would go up with a 10k RPM HDD too.

ok maybe I should stick to 5200rpm as battery life is reasonably important.

I'm also a bit dubious about installing W7 as it is out primary computer and I hate stuffing around with s*** to get it working, it could make me cry, I just want it to work!

I really don't need anything more than XP.

i would be fixing vista, before buying new hardware and f***ing around with a new os:

(2 second google)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/30/speed_up_vista_tips/

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENAU304&q=slow+menus+vista&btnG=Search&meta=

mission - I installed Windows 7 on a mate's laptop last week. It was so painless it wasn't funny. It picked up the wireless chipset, I slapped in the network security details and it grabbed all the drivers and s*** on the first run of Windows Update.

Since Vista is really giving me the s***s (speed issues mainly, not crashing or anything - opening control Panel for instance takes forever, takes several seconds to display a picture when you double click on it etc) I thought I might buy a newer larger hard-drive and chuck on XP.

How much RAM do you have? This doesn't sound like a hard drive issue, aside from the fact that it might be thrashing its face off in VM.

Vista is a hungry bitch for RAM unfortunately - I wouldn't like to run a machine with less than about 2G. DWM is silly in Vista - every explorer window you open draws all its own resources for example.

7 is much nicer, and you can get away with about 1G depending on what you are doing with the machine. XP is always an option if you have a handy license, but support for it is dropping soon so you will eventually need to look at 7 anyway.

last edited by Hogfather at 14:35:05 22/May/09

I've formatted to windows 7 twice on my laptop (dell m1530) without any troubles. Pretty much installed a few vista 64 drivers off the dell site and then ran windows update.

All good now.

It's a Asus 1.8 dual core 2gig RAM 160gig HD.

It was fine when it was new but it has just got slower and slower and that's withput really installing much except Office and other essentails.

Another option is upping the RAM to 3gig but I'm not sure if that will make a big difference.

I don't think it's a HD issue but I could do with more room anyway as it is now basically our primary computer and 160 isn't enough to store all my music/photo's etc. So a new HD with more room and put XP back on seems to solve my current issues!

Opening control panel for instance takes 30 seconds or more for it to populate, browsing photo's is painful as they take a few seconds to load to fullscreen. Even browsing music can be slow as it tries to populate album covers etc (but this is a big folder on an external HD).

Sigh...

EDIT: Also by going the new HD route it means my current one stays intact so should the s*** hit the fan (likely) I can pull the new HD and put the old one back in as back up.



last edited by mission at 14:45:41 22/May/09

It was fine when it was new but it has just got slower and slower and that's withput really installing much except Office and other essentails.

Another option is upping the RAM to 3gig but I'm not sure if that will make a big difference.

Check the system resources panel and see how much memory is being used.

When you do these basic ops is the hard drive going apes***? Vista's memory usage got progressively got worse on my wife's laptop - it was OK at first with 1G, then I had to upgrade it to 1.5 which didn't really fix things until I gave it 7.

Opening and populating the Control Panel isn't really a disk intensive task unless it needs to read and write to VM.

spook is so wrong for so many reasons;

firstly, xp > vista
and secondly, plasma > lcd

meh, i like my vista (i liked xp before)
as for plasma, lulz

When it's idle about 1gig is used and the graph says ~800mb.

I do like Vista, nothing really wrong with it, except the speed. I just expect a new computer with decent specs should be at least as fast (really it should be faster) as my old p3 700 512mb with XP!

My desktop which is basically the same spec as the laptop but with XP is wayyyyy faster (BTW keep your eye peeled for mission's mega sale including this desktop)

I'm swapping out my lappy's 100gb 7200rpm hdd for a 500gb hdd today. I think I'll give 100gb to windows 7 (and the rest to osx).

Doing a backup now, then going to get dad to switch the disks (he's a certified dell and apple tech, so best bet for not breaking anything :P) - then booting leopard dvd and restoring from the backup. it's all happening.

it's a SATAII hdd that I've bought, I hope it works ok... I thought it was meant to be backwards compatible, but I had to jumper the two SATAII 640gb hdds I just bought also to work on an old sata mobo.

last edited by Farseeker at 16:17:32 22/May/09

No idea why the processor is so high, nothing (other than Chrome) is open :/

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/830/screenshotbtr.jpg

definately something wrong

go into processes and sort by cpu usage;

Does that memory stuff look right? Free 48, 48 what?

It's now down to 25 no that control panel is open (took 25 seconds to open).

Also alot of programs and windows come up with 'Not Responding' during loading as they take so long.

CPU USAGE 100% = panic time

On the left is sorted by CPU the right is sorted by memory, largest at the top.

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/7885/screenshot2s.jpg


Edit: stupid computers

last edited by mission at 17:00:55 22/May/09

Are you running some kind of QGL theme there mission?

CPU USAGE 100% = panic time

Gah, she's gunna blow!!

It's not normally that high, sitting around 10%ish now which is more normal when it's not doing much.

last edited by mission at 17:04:15 22/May/09

I do like Vista, nothing really wrong with it, except the speed.

QFT

7200 ftw

My M1330 still has good battery life

Also windows 7 is sick and simple