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First impressions of the machine are mixed; mostly good but mixed.
I spent 3 days excitedly anticipating it's arrival, all the while dreaming about running 64 bit OS's and all the rest of the hardware in it. I had an absolutely great time unpacking it last night. (You'll see the photos of my fun later). Here's the photos I took as I unpacked (and documented) the condition. The new laptop smell, shiny case and the sheer size of the thing make for a very strong physical presence. Once I had it setup on the kitchen counter, turned it on and ... waited. And waitd some more. And waited a bit longer. And then I did the dishes. And then I waited. Vista initial setup box here, a name there and more waiting. Then Vista prepared my desktop for me. Around the time of the next epoch, it asked for a root user name and password. A few aeons later I was starting reminisce about my old TRS-80 and it's whopping 128k of memory; which brought me back to staring at the shiny case and thinking of the 2,097,152 k of memory that were supposedly inside and wondering if maybe if Microsoft had taken to trying to solve NP complete problems as part of the setup process. Anyway, obviously it took Vista a while to get setup and for the first login screen to come up; probably about 20-30 minutes. Then of course, installed is the required amount of junkware from Asus, M$ and other software vendors on the planet. So another 20 or so minutes was used to uninstall Norton, and others and then to figure out how to turn off half or more of the stuff that pops up into the system tray at startup. Vista IS annoying, but not quite like I thought it would be. Sure stuff is in a different place than I'm used to, but it IS actually a tad more intuitive. And I say that with respect to having used various distros of linux and even watching Mac's get poked at from time to time. About the only other thing I did after turning off / uninstalling stuff I didn't want was to try to get connected to my "hidden" and encrypted wifi connection (which didn't work) and then installed "Need for Speed - Carbon" to get a feel for what kind of gaming I can expect from it. One word can some that up for me: wow. : ) I'm sure there are desktops out there that can easily put what this has to shame, and probably even some laptops (albeit much more spendy ones), but it easily trumps anything I've ever owned. Which includes my Athlon XP 2800+ with a GeForce 7200GT main desktop. So quick recap, only focusing on what I DONT like so far. - Shiny LCD. It's very clear and bright, but it being shiny bodes ill for trying to look at it on battery power in coffee shops. - 4200 RPM HDD is DEFINITELY affecting system wide performance. Boot process is normal now, but installing games and deleting/uninstalling software seems to set the machine back at least one generation of computers. - Glossy case gets smudged easily. This might sound trivial until you actually go to touch it and pull your arms away and leave a greasy trail all the way across the arm rests. - Power cable doesn't seem to seat completely into the case. Maybe it's a safety feature that helps try to prevent breaking the prong off inside, and it seems to work just fine. But first time you push on it expecting to get that solid, clicking feel of metal coupling to metal you'll be disappointed. - This one has a small defect on the size of the case by the LCD screen. I'm tempted to just squeeze it together to make it flush, but .. - Annoying flashing red lcd bar lights on the side when the GPU is working intently. It basically screens "Look at the geeky gamer playing on his puter" - Annoying and pointless "eye" by the mouse that glows red all the time. All small things and mostly fixable or ignorable. More later about adventures in operating systems. |
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