Thanks. Now I feel less upset with my HP Pavilion notebook's rating of 3.3, when actual desktops as expensive score as low. I bought the Pavilion for $1200 with an NVidia GeForce Go 7400 card, which is middle of the road. (The MacBook Pro's graphics aren't the greatest you can get for $2K, though they are better than my HP. I would have liked it but $2K was way outside of my price range).

Reading this, I can't help but to come away disappointed about midline PC options.

A few months ago I went shopping for a new gamming computer. When asked what games I needed the computer to run I said, "The ones that have not been written yet." One guy at Best Buy actually understood, others just gave a blank stare. I asked for 64 bit dual core and 256M dedicated video memory as a starting point. Nothing at the big stores came close to that. Bottom line: If you want a good computer stay away from the brand name chain stores. Find a privately owned shop where they can build you a system.

I can not believe that the writer thinks that retail stores are the places to look for PC's. Retail stores plan everything based upon price points. With this as a strategy, most computers for sale are crippled in one way or another.

The only accurate measures are sales by direct sellers such as Dell and Gateway, and by legitimate VAR's.

Recently, it became apparent that it was time to replace my wife's aging HP laptop. I opted for a Pavilion DV6000 series laptop from HP. I did not find anything acceptable at the local Wal-Marts or Sam's Club stores. Many of the computers we have seen on display in our town have been configured with the minimum of RAM, puny graphics, and Vista Home Basic.

So, I configured one and ordered it through HP directly.

I feel it is definitely worth the extra money to get 256MB of dedicated graphics memory and a slightly better graphics chip. I know that the Nvidia graphics that is put into laptops is not the ultimate (no pun intended) graphics subsystem for Vista, but it is definitely better than the integrated solutions that use part of the system memory.

I also opted to max out the RAM, hard drive, and display. I figured that if I was going to spend over a grand on a laptop a few hundred more would be worth it to be able to enjoy the machine for the years it will be used.

I agree completely. I needed a business-class PC in a big hurry when my wife's XP died. The only thing available at BB and CC were Media Center PCs with a Vista OS layered on top. I reluctantly bought a "high-end" Gateway and ripped out some of the unnecessary cards. It didn't have the memory or video muscle to do what I needed over the next four years.

I went to Dell and ordered exactly what I wanted.

The Gateway is going into a closet to spend the rest of its life as our 'spare'.

Mabye I've just been using computers to long so I don't get the "WOW" but what is with all the hoopla over Aero? I can barely tell the different between Basic and Aero. Whoopty doo you can't use Flip3D? So what. You can do transparent windows? OH NOS!!!
(By the way you can do these things fine in 2000/XP with 3rd party utilities or in Linux with much less powerful graphics cards....)

The only reason you need a powerful graphics card is for gaming or 3D applications which the mass majority of home users do not care about.

Putting a piece of hardware in a computer ford something that will not be used (except to "WOW" the consumer into buying the OS) is not a good idea. If the consumer wants a good graphics card and they care enough about it then they will buy a computer with it or do the proper research to realize that if they buy a computer with a POS integrated card now that they can upgrade it later.

If you buy your computers at retails stores you deserve what you get. This isn't the 1950's people. We have the internet now.

The basic problem is that Vista is too hardware-hungry for much of the PC market, so vendors are trying to slip inadequate hardware to the consumer at a price point at which the PC will sell. Is it working? Not if what I see in Canada is indicative.

A strange development is occurring here in Canada. Major electronics retailers are sending their usual flyers out, but sometimes there are only Macintosh computers and then "desktop computers" or "laptop computers" on offer (no mention being made of either Windows or Vista!).

In one flyer not one text write-up under the pictures of "laptop computers" mentioned either Windows or which version for Windows was on offer for the particular machine.

Microsoft decided for whatever reason that it doesn't want to sell PCs to the bottom third or bottom half of the market, perhaps in a classic "go upmarket" move that will reduce their marketing and distribution costs, and let Mr. Gates enjoy the big bucks of the top end of the market Apple-style.

Problem is, there are a lot of vendors and PC brands out there that are gonna go the way of the TRS-80 in making this particular dream happen.

Let's face it folks, if we must pay Mac prices, we should just by a Mac instead.

Joe wrote: "The visual eye candy and GUI experiences around digital content could improve as developers release more supporting applications."

Well, speaking of the experiences around digital content, here in Canada I've just been bitten in the ass by Microsoft's inclusion of DRM in Vista. Read all about it here.

Basically, I can't recording certain TV programs using Windows Media Center (or any other TV app!) because of DRM. I'm restricted to using the cable provider's own DVR, which is very inflexible.

If my experience is any indication, I predict that we shall soon see a major consumer backlash against Vista.

For the record, you can avoid all of this DRM nonsense if you switch to OS X or Linux. This is what I'm considering doing.

A customer recently came in with a Gateway MX8711 laptop with Vista Home Premium on it. He wanted Vista wiped off the drive and his old XP put back on it. When asked about his reason for this, he reply was that “vista is not compatible with all my old software.” There was also a “problem” (and it was an old one) that the laptop could not recognize the dvd burner drive, as well. This laptop had had a rating of 3.1 on the Vista scale, 1 gig of ram and dual core.

As most of you know, I am not a fan of M$ Vista. But, it must be said, that on this laptop, it did not seem that slow to me, and the aero interface was attractive as well. So I could see how it could appeal to many users, or at least at first. Vista's problems were not apparent at first on this laptop with the exception of the disappearing dvd drive, which is also the same problem in XP. That problem was fixed later by editing the registry.

To make a long story short, I was able to save the laptop by not wiping Vista off the hard drive and replacing it with XP. The simple reason was Gateway did not have the XP drivers, and had used a sata hard drive in this laptop. The sata ide controller driver (intel) is not included on the XP install disk. Furthermore, this laptop does not have a floppy drive so you cannot install the driver that way either. USB flash drives are also not an option as XP will not recognize them that early. The only option would be to slipstream the controller driver onto an XP cd. After some research, I found out that there were still going to be some issues with the lan driver, and the sound driver that XP would install, would not work. Gateway support was absolutely no help at all.

So I talked some more to the customer, and suggested that his best option was to shrink the Vista partition down as much as possible and install a dual boot system with linux. This way perhaps I could get enough software (he wanted me to install a list of software now) working to make his laptop useful again. Programs like winavi would not install, AVG free edition did install, but on this laptop with Vista, the virus shield would not work. Thankfully, the free antivir did work well on Vista, and was the best choice I could find. I had trouble finding cd/dvd burner programs for Vista, so ended up showing him how easy it was to use the K3B burning program in linux to burn all his stuff. Mepis 6.502 was installed as a dual boot on a 30 gig partition, and fulled in the apps that would take too long to try to find working ones (if there was any) for Vista. Mepis Linux was installed as the default system to boot up, as most of the time it would be used to simply surf the Internet or get email, both of which Linux would do in a secure fashion, unlike the virus plaqued M$ systems. Mepis is one of the most friendly Linux systems out there, so the customer had no problems at all with using it. Two clicks on the Mepis taskbar icon KwikDisk and he could copy and paste files from linux partition to and from the Vista one.

He was very happy with the finished product, as it was now useful. Another problem area was finding a player that would play dvd movies in Vista. Windvd had no sound, unless they have a patch or newer version out now. VLC I installed, but even though its open source, I am not completely liking that program, as it doesn't seem to be as user friendly on playing some disks as the commercial ones are. So the best solution to save the custerner time and money was to let the custermet plays his DVD's in Xine on Linux.

Vista had another major problems, for some reason, it did not like any of my burned data cd's (yes, I did fix the reg error and it is working). So the workaround here was to read them in Linux, and copy the files to the Vista partition. I can't say for sure, but it seemed that the worst Vista problems were with CD's/DVD's/Video and Sound, which somehow, my gut feeling is that M$ DRM is messing up everything. I could be wrong, but it feels this way to me.

People in the USA are buying laptops compared to desktop computers now at a rate of approximately two to one. There is very little reason to get a desktop computer now instead of a laptop, unless you are a die hard gamer. Most of the “die hard” gamers, have become “retro gamers.” After a gamer has bought enough software games, and spent countless hours trying them out, they tend to settle down and play the games with high re playability. Also, Vista has the new directX 10, which should be a bit of lockin boon to Vista and M$. But Vista if you check out the blogs, has a lot of problems playing games, and maybe actually slower playing them than XP, at least for now. So I do agree that gaming on Windows has now become a niche market. At least half of the die hard gamers have moved on to other things. It no longer drives the computer market. Laptops does. Vista was built more for gamers, but fails here, because the real reason Vista was released was for DRM and the control and lock in that Bill Gates was looking to impose on the end users.

Richard Eng :
Quote;
"If my experience is any indication, I predict that we shall soon see a major consumer backlash against Vista."
---------------------------------------------------
I agree totally with that statement. M$ has passed the bounds of controlling what power users can and cannot do with their computers. They have become the partners of Hollywood media companies at the expense of their custormers.

Checking out the Newegg site, I see that 1/3 of the new laptops come with XP on them now. For people that just surf and get their email, they will not know the diffence.

I would not buy a laptop that XP or Linux would not support will full drivers anymore. Being dependent on Vista for at least now, is like buying a Winmodem.

Joe noted that the Best Buy machines all had the resolution set wrong. Of course! How else can you artificially "speed up" computers that are too slow for the job except by offloading the video demand?

A speed-strained PC runs better at lower resolutions.

These kinds of indicators suggest a deep and perhaps insurmountable mis-step with Vista. Or perhaps a brilliant MS strategy aimed at making the PC Mac-expensive and Mac-competitive, and therefore more blindly sought by deep-pocketed buyers who matter.

Truth be told, MS made a similar self-interested mis-step with Windows 95 in two ways. Active Desktop AND the Windows 95 need for lots of RAM were failures that MS got away with because the market had yet to mature. Active Desktop (or whatever it was called) was supposed to stream content onto the desktop but it anticipated everyone would be using fast connection to the proprietary MSN service in just a few years, which never happened.

Second, Windows 95 came along with a big need for lots of RAM (a lot for its day) just when RAM was surging in price and had never been cheap anyway. Most Windows 95 machines were thus woefully short on RAM, so much so that typically just a few megs were available for apps and the swap file was in heavy use all the time.

MS got away with Windows 95 and MS will on paper get away with Vista; but because the market is mature, demand will vanish at the low end as that market is a gonner with Vista. The losers here will be the name brand PC lines like Dell and HP, and we will see a dramatic shrinkage in the PC market over time as MS ramps it back from a general consumer market of vast size to a more niche market for those who must have PCs for work or education abd who can pay Mac prices.

Brilliant, Redmond, just brilliant. Kill off a huge market so that distribution costs are much reduced, and then sell only to the upmarket. Small businesses that bought cheap PCs for years will now have to go upmarket too.

How long will it be before we see the Microsoft PC line of personal computers going head to head with the Mac in price and quality? Not too very long I suspect.

I'm a gamer, and I need a high-performance PC because I tend to favor somewhat demanding games (like FEAR, for example). I would NEVER buy an off-the-shelf PC. Their specs are terrible; they source from the cheapest suppliers!

The only way to get a good PC with proper specs is to build it yourself, selecting the best parts you can find. MY PC has a 2.4Ghz AMD Athlon (64 bit), an NVidia 512MB graphics card, 2.5GB of ram, several hundred GB of hard disk space, and a swappable system drive (like a server installation) so I can run Windows, Linux, or anything else I want without having to dual-boot. Last night I ran Halo in the highest possible resolution (I think it was something like 1280 x 1024) with all the special effects and gimmicks turned on. It was lovely. No slowdowns at all, high framerate, just a big pile of gorgeous, really.

Try THAT with an off-the-shelf PC... The game would be unplayable. Why is this? Companies are ripoff artists. Sad but true.

Best Buy and many retail outlets use a baked in batch file to set up the default presentation of Windows Vista. In all cases I have seen, the settings applied are not suitable for the the new operating system or display the systems are attached to. The biggest offense is visual - where in most cases, the resolutions set are 1024 x 768 - well below the native resolutions of the displays the Vista systems are attached to. Worse, the applied resolutions are set to an aspect ration which is 4:3 vice the 16:9 wide format they should be. The settings applied distort the screen image and poorly represent Windows Vista.

Similarly, User Account Controls [UAC] is most often disabled and shoppers may adjust any settings they like. In some cases, I have adjusted the display systems to use more appropriate settings. Regardless of system, each I have looked at supported the Aero interface and ran well enough; however, any adjustments made would only be temporary - the poorly written batch file is set to run at startup or log on and would have to be removed if one were to buy any of the display models.

The article has some very valid points - the presentation at retail is very poor and inconsistent. However, discrete graphics aside, Vista does not appear to need the component power being suggested. In each case I encountered, Aero was easily supported - it was how display and demo systems were set up that was the problem.

Some time ago (before Vista came) I was always angry with the retailers, they'd try to hook the clients by selling no "even" pc (example: either a good processor and lousy graphics or a good memory and hard disc but a lousy processor and so on.)I lost a lot time looking for a machine that had a certain hardware equilibrium. It was unnoticed by most non-technical customers, who are satisfied by a mere functional machine. I can understand why the retailers did it(competition, economic margin, etc) but it was unfair. Now, in the "Vista age", they are trying to do the same thing, BUT it's not possible. Vista is a problem on itself, and we are looking at the results of all this mix-up.

To answer the question - the visual experience matters a lot to me - but in a very different way. I want a responsive GUI, and one that succinctly relays information and lets me work efficiently. Only after all that has been delivered, does eye candy matter.

I would not pay extra for the eye candy either. Aren't 'upgrades' supposed to be better and faster? I would just 'expect' the extra stuff, otherwise I would believe I am 'downgrading'.

I think Baker's position also leads to the conclusion that Vista is a niche market product.

"There are very few consumers that need performance," Baker said. "There really is not a big market for performance PCs. It's a niche market."

If there are products like Beryl (on Linux) that offer the same graphic experience Vista does (it does so on lower end graphic cards), I can only conclude Microsoft wants Vista to be a niche market product.

It is clear that the "WOW" graphical experience can be obtained at lower costs (Beryl). If you need a high end PC to enjoy Aero and Aero is part of the "WOW" and a high en PC is a niche market product. Then Vista is a niche market product. I don't think the average consumer looks into the guts and says "WOW a new API!" The selling point for Vista, is like you said, the GUI.

Personally, I feel that it is definitely worth the extra money to get more dedicated video memory. I have a Compaq (read HP discounted by $75) desktop which I purchaed from Best Buy. Ordinarily I would configure and buy a PC online, but the bundle deal they offered was fantastic. For an extra $40 I got basically a free printer and a monitor which I didn't need and was able to sell on ebay for $150 which cut the cost of my PC to about $375.

But I digress. The system had integrated graphics with 64 MB of dedicated video memory with an additional 200 MB of shared system memory, which, as mentioned by the author of the article, is typical of the pre-built systems available at major retailers. This functioned adequately to run Windows XP, however when I upgraded to Vista I found it necessary to purchase an aftermarket video card.

One of the reasons I purchased this system was because it was very low cost and had a PCI-x16 expansion slot. So I was able to upgrade to an NVidia GeForce 6600GT PCI-Express video card with 256 MB of video memory which I purchased off ebay for $60. A modest investment which drastically improved the quality of my interface. This caused my Windows Experience Index in Graphics to go from 3.1 to 5.6 and the Gaming Graphics score to go from 2.8 to 4.7. Microsoft has put a great deal of emphasis on the interface upgrades in Vista, so I feel that it is certainly worth the money to go for more dedicated video memory.

Additionally, I think it is a waste of system memory to devote it to graphics, as the speed of the memory is so much slower when it is not directly on the video card. And, speaking from experience, Vista can use all the system memory it can get its hands on.

So go for more dedicated video memory, and if you already have a PC and are thinking about upgrading to an aftermarket video card, do it!