Ok, time to vent.

On a business trip to Mexico two weeks ago, my 1-year old Toshiba laptop died. Luckily all the work with my client was done on the client's computer and my sister-in-law in Mexico let me use her laptop to check email, etc. But upon my return to the U.S. yesterday, I was faced with having to buy a new laptop. My old one has an extended warranty so will be fixed, but obviously I couldn't stop working until the repairs are complete. So I had to buy a new laptop.

Obviously, they pretty much all come with Windows Vista now (though it looks like Dell just started offering an XP option for those that don't want Vista).

Has anyone had any experience with it? I'm just about to chuck it out the window (pun intended). The laptop has 1GB, but it's less responsive than my previous laptop. And the hard drive is constantly thrashing around even when I'm not doing anything on the laptop. The laptop itself is nice and Vista immediately recognized my wireless network, but from time to time it concludes that my wireless network doesn't have any access to the Internet--though it most definitely does. So I have to "repair" the connection in Vista and then, what do you know, Internet is there again. And when I wanted to copy my data from my old laptop's XP hard drive, Vista wouldn't let me because it said I didn't have sufficient rights and to click a button to get them. So I clicked it. It started thrashing my old HD for a long time before I gave up; but it never gave me access. So I eventually had to totally disable the user access controls so it would just give me access to the folders on my old hard drive.

Anyway, I've ordered 2GB of RAM to see if that helps the speed of the machine and reduces disk thrashing. If it doesn't--or if I can't get Vista to stop "losing" the Internet--then, well, I also placed an order today for a new laptop HD on which I will be installing XP for this laptop.

Sheesh, what a piece of junk OS.

Regards,
Craig Steiner