Darren New wrote:

> 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. :-)

Interesting. I have an email from WordPress notifying me that you just 
signed up... ;-)

> 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.)

Perhaps. I was kind of expecting the second DVD to burn quicker than the 
first one - but no. Exactly the same speed. Both took about 20 minutes 
to burn (and another 10 minutes to verify).

> As for the start menu and the control panel: use the search bar.

1. What's that?

2. You need to search for stuff = you haven't organised your stuff 
correctly.

> The "measuring performance" is indeed checking things including your 
> graphics, RAM speed, disk speed, etc.

Why does that take 20 minutes? memtest86 gives me most of those 
measurements in 0.2 seconds.

> 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.

For some reason, the welcome page automatically opens every time I log 
in and won't go away. Apparently the Windows experience index is 3.6. I 
didn't see any more detailed stats - but those are probably under 
"advanced" or something.

> 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".

Already found out how to turn off transparency - but I kinda like it. As 
I say, if you give it a slight tint, it makes it visible.

> 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.

I was wondering why the HD runs *constantly* and never, ever stops, even 
when the machine isn't doing anything. Nice to know that Vista has 
built-in systems to waste my time and computer power on pointless tasks 
that I don't want it to do. :-) Clearly M$ have put a lot of work into 
keeping computers slow to encourage the purchase of new, faster ones.

> 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.

Mmm, OK. But... they have the same electrical interface?

Also amusing was the manual's description of the covers on the bottom. 
One is labelled "harddrive" and the other is labelled "secondary 
harddrive". What, you mean you can put two in it? I suspect not! ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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