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[jough]

Hey kids,

I know you're mostly geeks, as am I, but I need a computer geek, rather than an online comic geek, math geek, otter-raising geek, or a literature geek like myself.

Does anyone know of a forum where people would discuss new computer hardware, specifically laptops/notebooks, or even more specifically HP Notebook computers?

I've just ordered one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000A279E/

(I didn't order it from Amazon, though)

but it comes with XP Home installed, which I can't use because I need to log into a domain securely, which you can't do with the useless XP Home.

So that means either upgrading (if you can call it that) to XP Pro or downgrading (if you can call it that) to Windows 2000 Pro (which I'm using now).

But I've always had nothing but problems using an OS that was older than the hardware.

So I'm hoping someone else has done either transition, too.

[slink]

I shouldn't have thought you'd have any real problem, although it would probably be worth checking out all the devices installed, and getting drivers before you attempt it.

As for fora on the subject, the anandtech fora are pretty good, lots of geeks there, so any problems brought up there will get solved.
http://forums.anandtech.com/

I can probably be helpful if you come to any dead ends, though I don't really have much experience with laptops. But in the end they're not hugely different to PCs, and I'm such a geek with computers that I can fix macs.

[jough]

Well, I'm still waiting for my new laptop to be delivered, but I'm trying to prepare this weekend so that next week when it finally comes (it'll be a little like Christmas at Chez Jough) I'll be ready to get it re-built and ready to go.

I always find the pre-installs to be lacking in many ways anyway.  So the first thing I usually do with a new PC after making sure all of the hardware works is to install some benchmarking and diagnostic tools, and then once I'm sure of it I tend to delete all partitions and fdisk the whole dang drive and start anew.

Of course, "fdisk" being metaphorical in the days of the NTFS file system.

I'm just all excited.  It'll be my first new PC in quite awhile.  Long overdue, especially considering how many hours a day I spend in front of this blasted thing.

[slink]

It'll be my first new PC in quite awhile.  Long overdue, especially considering how many hours a day I spend in front of this blasted thing.

I think I've only once experience a pre-installed Windows, which was when I set up my mom's work PC a few years back, which came pre installed. Needless to say I had to put a USB card and network card in, and demolished  the partitions similarly and started anew.
I just managed to finally upgrade my system again. I'd been running a, I think about, year old system, but got a new graphics card and then got a spanking new everything else to remove any bottlenecks, and it's never been nicer. Although noisier!

If I get any of the jobs I'm looking at I'll probably finally sort out a laptop though, since I have about 500 uses for one.

Anyway, all pointless random guff, but you're a geek so I can go on randomly at you about it! Mwahahahaha.

As I say, if you come across any problems feel free to try me out, I always find just discussing stuff can often bring about some kind of brainstormed like solution.

[CortJstr]

I've never had any problems with the pre-installs. I've never seen a drive come partitioned (except in Win95 to stay under the 2.1GB cap, but that doesn't count).

What kind of badness is going on back there that I'm not noticing?

[slink]

What kind of badness is going on back there that I'm not noticing?

Some pre-installs come with the CD on a partition, so you don't format it by accident. Those are the only real partitions I've ever seen on such pre-installed machines.

And as far as pre-installs being nasty, well... 1: I never buy prebuilt machines, I always buy the bits, and 2: Damn what was two... Oh yes, I am a complete geek. Geekier than you could imagine, and thus I am very, very particular about everything. Thus I don't want someone elses setup of windows. I want to sort it myself, from scratch, to make sure it's perfectly clean install, and has all the right drivers, and no little bits and pieces left from older versions used during the installs. Not that Windows stays clean for long...

[jough]

Usually pre-installs will have a combination of:

1) A missing component from the OS that I DESPERATELY need, usually while I'm at a client's site.

2) Lots of "pre-installed" crap that I will never use and that only serves to take up extra disc space that could be used for porno and mp3s.

3) Strange non-standard settings and "help center" components replacing the usual Microsoft components.

4) A "recovery" partitition that's hidden in Windows that contains the installation disc images of the original setup that had the problems as laid out in 1-3.

In this case, I'm getting the notebook from a company that doesn't offer configuration options (it's purely a sealed-box as configured from HP) and it comes with a toy OS - so I'll need to put Windows XP Professional on it.

I found out that all of the drivers and installation files for the pre-loaded software are all put on the C-drive in the C:\HP directory, so I'll test out the CD-R burner making a copy of that directory, then re-format the hard drive and put a fresh XP Pro install on it, and then spend the next three days working on driver compatibility problems.

I think I've got it all worked out, though, thanks to the kind folks on usenet.

[slink]

and it comes with a toy OS - so I'll need to put Windows XP Professional on it.

Excellent.
I always describe XP as the giraffeer Price OS. Since well, it looks like a UI designed by them.
If it weren't for that (and I've had the discussion of using classic skin - it still looks odd to me, just slightly uncomfortable) I'd switch from 2K pro. I just need the most utilitarian feel to everything with computers. If I could run everything I wanted from a unix shell, I would.

[jough]

I'm really NOT looking forward to "upgrading" from Win 2000 Pro, which I've been using for awhile now and kinda like.

I've used XP machines, and you *can* revert back to the 2000 look and feel (since 2000 is really NT5 and XP is just NT 5.1) but I'm not looking forward to networking and security options that are straightforward and easy to set up in 2K all of a sudden replaced with stupid wizards where you can't tweak anything in XP.

Of course, there are 3rd party tools.

In any case, as much as I don't want to switch to XP, I really want to use hardware graphics acceleration and have my display adapter work correctly, and since HP doesn't provide drivers that will fully work with Win 2000, I'm stuck with XP Pro.

Of course, this may also be the time to move to FreeBSD.  If I could get a decent e-mail client for it, and Photoshop, I might do it.

[AugustWest]

I'm with you Jough.  I use Win2K Pro at home (on this very machine!) and like it more than any version of Windows I've ever used.  We had XP on Mrs. West's computer for a while and it was installed on my work computer recently.  I don't like it.

I'm not nearly as sophisticated a computer user as you and Slink, but I can take care of myself.  Given that, here's what I hate about XP.

It assumes you are a drooling idiot.  It won't let you look at your files.  You have to fight it to give you anything more than great big pretty icons to your applications.  And god forbid you should actually want to look at the details on your program files or drivers.  You get fifteen different messages warning you that you're too stupid to be messing around with this technical stuff.  Don't worry your little head about it, Uncle Bill will take care of you.

It's insulting.

[jough]

I've found Microsoft OSes to be insulting since Windows 95 (maybe before then).

All of the "My Computer" or "My Documents" type of folders always seemed condescending to me, like you were a child and needed to know where to put things.

I'm sure I'll get sick of XP inside a month and start examining driver support for Slackware or Debian Linux, but in the meantime I'll play their little game, I'll try their shitty software, and may even install the Roxio Easy CD Creator software they package with the thing (although I've really grown to like Nero a whole lot).

After finding the info on the driver installation I'm not worried at all now.  My previous two laptops were both Compaqs and only included a "Restore CD" with everything hidden in proprietary cab-type files which was only a drive image and didn't include the actual installation files for anything.

Now I hear that HP got wise and puts the installation files for both the drivers *and* the pre-installed software right on the hard drive (since it's 40Gb, I guess they can).  I'd prefer them to be on an included CD so that I wouldn't have to burn my own CD before I wiped the drive clean (the install files are only on the series of Restore CDs) but at least they've taken a step in the right direction.  And hey, I'll make sure the CD-R drive works by burning the driver and installation CD.

I've been spending the night reading up on XP tweaks, tips, and tricks, and I think I can whip it into submission.  It's not very much unlike Windows 2000 under the hood - they just put up more obstacles in the front-end gui.  The same registry keys and other file goodness appears to be much the same as Win2K.

It'll be an adventure, anyway.  I'll just be happy to have a computer that boots in less than 5 minutes (to be fair, I do start a lot of services on boot, like Apache and mySQL, etc.).

Now I just have to come up with a name for the new machine.  I'm not going to worry about it until I've played with it for awhile - it should suggest its name to me - but so far my computers of the past 6 years have been:

Shantih (first PC desktop)
Daedalus (first laptop)
Johnny5 (my current laptop)

Much like the boots on my feet, I tend to use a PC until it simply will no longer function or completely is too old to suit any reasonable needs.

Johnny5 meets both of those criteria.

[slink]

I'm absolutely with you on Nero now. Back in the day of my first CDwriter, I had no idea what to use, and stuck with EasyCD for a while, since it's what P packaged with the drive. Moving to Nero afterwards however, well, it worked!
I have CloneCD around for 'backing up' games, but apart from that I can do pretty much anything I want with Nero.
I also start a million processes and services on startup. The base ones the same - apache and SQL, and I could pretty much do with them alone. But now I have things like the controller profilers (both joystick and pad), the nForce and GFFX control panels and Trillian. Which all seems fine most of the time, but it starts to get noticable playing AC2 or something.
It would be nice if I could ditch ZoneAlarm, since it turns itself into a real RAM whore, but well, not going to happen!

As I say of XP in 2000 mode, it just doesn't quite look right. It feels like a plastic version of 2k. As does 2k3 server, which I would probably have tried switching to by now were it not for nothing working on it yet!
It's like, if anything changes say my penis cursor, and it's functional, and well designed, it will still piss me off, because I like the windows one's Utilitarian ugliness. It just feels right now.
It's really quite sad of me, but what can I say?
As for keeping computers 'til they're useless, I still have a P60 around, one that in fact Intel replaced due to the famous floating point error! Which never seemed to manifest itself, but I figured I might as well get it replaced.
Needless to say I'm not actually running that anymore. Slowest I run is my celeron 300, as a server come LAN C&C machine!

[AugustWest]

Johnny 5, that's good.