Invisible wrote:
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/archives/350

Well, since your blog won't let me sign up to comment, and you don't post 
your email address here, I guess I'll put the reply here. :-)

Some hints:  I suggest before you set up anything serious on the laptop, you 
test the recovery disks so you know what they do. :-) Best time to do it, 
after all.  (And yes, I'm guessing with two DVDs it does the same thing as 
the gateway recovery disks do: Puts it back to factory fresh, then uses the 
second CD to install drivers after you "restore" the Vista install.)

As for the start menu and the control panel: use the search bar. It's way 
way faster than trying to find something in the menus. You want mah jong? 
Type "mah jong" in the search on the start menu. It actually works right.

The "measuring performance" is indeed checking things including your 
graphics, RAM speed, disk speed, etc. Go to you start menu and search for 
"welcome", then go to "view computer details", then "Windows experience 
index" if you care. That'll also tell you the OS bitwidth, RAM, etc.

And yes, you can turn off the transparency and put the start menu back. 
Right click on the desktop and pick "personalize", or right-click on a blank 
part of the task bar and pick "properties".

The machine will likely be slow until you leave it on overnight or so, while 
it builds search indexes and recovery snapshots stuff like that the first time.

Sound-wise, you can get "true surround sound" by plugging it into a dolby 
system, even if your speakers aren't good enough. I.e., they're describing 
the audio card, not necessarily the speakers.

eSATA: external SATA. If you have an external drive case that supports USB 
and eSATA, use eSATA and it'll be about 4 times as fast to transfer.

HTH. :-)


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

Post a reply to this message