Comments on: Under $1,000 Laptops Perform Better With Linux, Not Vista

By: zer0-kill

zer0-kill — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:22:22 +0000

@jjMan: That app is the console to change your sidebar widgets

By: zer0-kill

zer0-kill — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:20:32 +0000

You don’t even talk about the revelation of Linux>Vista until the end of the article, and even then you use XP to back up the claim. The title should be rewritten as Laptops Under $1,000 Perform Better With Linux & XP, Rather Than Vista. Small mistake no worries. Also you might want to cite your sources a little better than just saying that “Merrill Lynch says…” and you give no credibility to this Steven J.Vaughan guy.

Other than those faults good article, a bit condensed and rushed, but informative to most of the populace.

By: leadsling

leadsling — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:31:17 +0000

If Linux is preloaded the BELOW-AVERAGE user can use Linux. I was refurbishing some P3s I picked up at a school surplus sale to use in a computer lab we’re building for our church. I put gOS on them and then tested the install with first my wife, who BTW is almost computer illiterate. She was able to surf the net, check her email, type a note and print it, and play a CD without any instruction whatever. I then got 6 children, ages from 4-11 to try it out. None had any problems whatever. Quit trying to foist this idea that Linux is impossible for the average person to use. If it is installed for them, they can use it.

By: ern

ern — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:51:37 +0000

I’ve installed Vista on a number of sub-$1000 laptops, and they all run fine. Choose Linux if you like, but in all honesty, this carping about Vista is idiotic. It runs fine on any of these systems, including those with single core processors. Most of these complaints are just Microsoft bashing. Choose the OS you want: Vista, XP, Ubuntu. Whatever. They’ll all run fine on whatever system you choose.

By: N4TECguy

N4TECguy — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 07:16:37 +0000

It’s amazing how lousy this article is. It makes a good point, I’m one of those using Vista Basic on a sub-1000 laptop. It’s not very fast but it’s usable and it’s EASY to use for my parents, who aren’t computer geeks. And herein lies the absolute fatal flaw of this article – it bashes on Vista but it does not provide a viable alternative. It talks about Linux like it’s the holy grail but doesn’t address the fact that many programs still either have no Linux version or don’t run as well. Don’t give me that OpenOffice crap either – I’ve used it and their spreadsheet is nowhere near as powerful as Excel. It doesn’t do what I need it to do.. Besides that, then you still have the trouble of finding a good Linux based OS, and making it work with your laptop, getting all the drivers and software in line, etc etc. Ok, Vista is slow, installing Linux takes a ton of time too.

By: Shane

Shane — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 03:56:07 +0000

Yup, I just installed Linux Mint on my wife’s laptop, she loves it and it runs 2wice as fast as XP even.

She can acually multitask. No offense to her, but she doesn’t know squat about computers and operates it fine Mechwarrior5.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 03:26:23 +0000

@Mechwarrior5: This article is about sub $1k laptops. And the article said get XP. And Linux has come a long way, perhaps you’ve heard of Ubuntu??

Nice Article.

By: David

David — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 01:08:06 +0000

Linux is freat for a laptop. One small problem, though–getting WiFi to work easily. that was the dealbreaker for me, unfortunately. I guess I’m too dense for Linux.

By: Thales

Thales — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 05:48:39 +0000

Mechwarrior;

Do you think that everyone immediately knew how to run Windows when it came out? Nope, the learned. Same with Linux can be said. I recently migrated to CentOS, my 4 year old P4 desktop with CentOS 5.1 runs better than my $2,000 dual-core system with Vista Ultimate. I worked as a trainer for Dell during its’ Vista roll out, I was naive enough to believe it would be a decent OS. I learned my lesson the night I had to ghost machines with it… an extra three hours. Vista is trash. With the current trend of usability, aesthetics and multimedia emphasis that Ubuntu is brining to the table it won’t be long before it has begun to gobble up new users.

By: Natronix

Natronix — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 02:41:26 +0000

I bought one of the Walmart special Acer Aspire 5315 laptops with Vista Basic on it. I switched it out with Vista Ultima x64. Yes, overkill but had to try this as an experiment. With 1G of RAM it is working just okay. I trimmed down as many of the “Services” I could to boost performance as much as possible and turned of all Vista features. Runs pretty well, but the real negative to the sub $1000 laptops, is their integrated video cards. I wanted to install Linux for this laptop, but was afraid I would be stuck without drivers for LAN, WPA2 WiFi, fax modem etc…
-NX1