The Opinionator

Windows Vista Update

Three months ago my alter-ego reviewed Windows Vista. My opinion was that with enough memory, it was stable and had very useful features like Indexing. That said, I was highly disappointed in how long it took for my system, a Lenovo X61 Tablet PC, to boot-up. The problem had gotten to the point that I was going to do another post, this one blasting Microsoft, about the poor performance.

Like many users, I get updates to Vista and MS Office automatically downloaded. In the last 10 days or so, one of these updates solved my problem. Whatever magic pixie dust was in the update or updates, my experience has changed dramatically for the better. I started noticing that my system began to boot much more quickly and decided to take a watch to it in order to confirm my observations. From pressing the Power button to reaching the login screen, it took 44.89 seconds. Once I swiped my finger to begin the rest of the boot-up process to completion was about a minute and a half, including loading Skype, Ding! and AIM. What an amazing turnaround! It used to take me 6-8 minutes to boot up. Now my system boots up on par with my iMac.

Excellent work Microsoft. If this is an indication of what I can look forward to with Vista SP1, bring it on!

The Memory Chronicles Or How I spent A Little And Got A Lot

In this post, I described my experience using MS Vista and how upgrading the memory made all the difference. For roughly $75, including tax and expedited shipping from kingston.com, I was able to order a 2GB stick of RAM and totally change my user experience. For about $30, I could have ordered 1GB instead. That is a small amount of money and the returns in productivity and usability were amazing. Adding RAM has always been the easiest way to improve a PC's performance. And if you buy it aftermarket, it is often a very inexpensive upgrade.

Having reminded myself of this fact, I took a look at my iMac. It is a first generation Intel iMac and I ordered it with 1GB of RAM. To max the system out at 2GB would have cost $400 extra when I ordered it. Even aftermarket memory was over $100 at the time and I was led to believe that you had to crack the case open to upgrade the RAM, that it was difficult to do and you ran a high risk of voiding the warranty if you made a mistake. The only option seemed to be the expensive Apple Store. Fortunately, in the nearly two years I have had the system, I never missed the additional memory. The OS X system performed briskly with 1GB and I never missed the extra memory. This holiday season, however, my son, the "Silent Opinionator, received the Madden 2008 game for the Mac.The minimum requirements for the game call for 1GB of RAM. The game played fine but occasionally I could see where a performance boost might help. So after upgrading the X61, I looked up what it would cost to upgrade the iMac. Adding 1GB would cost a mere $34 delivered from Crucial.com. I also looked into the installation process and it turns out there is nothing to it. Remove two screws and a panel, snap the memory in and replace. In less than five minutes I was done. And I am the least mechanical person you have ever met. My dad used to say that, "You could screw up a cannonball with a rubber mallet." Just think how easy it would be for you to do it yourself. The result is that system is FAST and Madden 2008 runs like it does on a game console. It is like having a new system and I had change from two $20 bills.

In summary, I spent a little over $100 and upgraded two computers and improved my user experience dramatically. I highly recommend adding RAM to all my readers!

Got Memory? The Opinionator Review Of Microsoft Vista

The Opinionator recently received a new weapon for use in the daily war at work; A Lenovo X61 Tablet PC. The system has an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.60Ghz Processor, 1GB of RAM, extended battery, 80GB HDD, integrated Verizon EVDO WWAN and an extended battery. We also loaded Office 2007 and OneNote 2003. OneNote is the killer app that allows you to take advantage of all that a Tablet PC has to offer.

My first impression was that the boot up process took forever. Or 6-8 minutes as it turned out. Once booted up, Vista looked good. And the Index search feature was terrific. It reminded me of the Spotlight search feature on my iMac and works quite well. This will make my life easier as I can just save documents to "Documents" and not worry about being able to find them again without having to create folders and sub-folders.

The boot up process was just the begining. Once up and running, the first thing I noticed was that the system was slow, very slow. In fact, it was almost unusable. My ThinkPad T43 running XP Pro with 1GB of RAM was much faster. The Tablet ran so slowly that I was still using the T43 for many of my daily tasks as I could not stand to wait on the system to catch up. Even typing email was difficult as it took forever to open Outlook and typing showed up several seconds after the letter was typed. Programs often gave "Not Responding" messages before they finally loaded because the process was taking so long. And shutting down was taking even longer than booting up. This was progress?

Complicating the performance issues was that the system was downloading updates to Vista or Windows Defender on a nearly continuous basis. This further reduced performance.

Another effect of the system's sluggish performance was that the HDD was spinning virtually all the time. This was loud and you could follow it by watching the HDD indicator light. Not only was this loud and annoying, but this meant that I was draining the eight cell battery in roughly two hours, well below what one would expect in terms of battery life.

After several days it became apparent that the system was either going back to my contacts at Lenovo or I needed to fix the problem. My choices came down to blowing off the loaded image and loading XP, adding memory or both.

Fortunately, memory is relatively cheap so I decided to give it a try. I considered adding 1GB to the open slot however, for roughly $70 I was able to get a 2GB stick of memory which would max the system at 3GB of RAM (for 32-bit Vista). Two days later the memory arrived and in less than five minutes, thanks to the ingenious design of the Lenovo Tablet, I was up and running with 3GB of RAM.

The results have been nothing short of amazing. Boot-up still takes nearly five minutes on average and my iMac shames it in that task. However, the system performs briskly. Index is fast and extremely useful. Office 2007 works well. The HDD is no longer spinning constantly and a pleasant side effect is that the battery now lasts in the five hour range, meaning I often spend a day away from the office without carrying a power adapter. And the system now shuts down relatively quickly. All in all, a remarkable difference. There are a few quirks; My VPN does not like to play with Vista all the time, for instance. However, the system has not crashed once since I added the memory three weeks ago, nor have any programs.

My verdict: Vista is bloated and a resource hog. It is unbelievable that it performs so poorly with 1GB of RAM. What Microsoft was thinking is beyond me. Despite that, Vista is a good O/S for my needs. I really like Index and could recommend it just for that reason. However, do not even think of loading it on or ordering a system with Vista with less than 2GB of RAM and 3GB is even better.  And the X61? That is a topic for another review but suffice it to say that it is amazing and even Vista could not diminish my enthusiasm for the system.

Disclosure: I do not work for Lenovo. However, I do support them for my company.

More Sprint Mobile Broadband Blogging

Just as I had given up on using my Sprint Mobile Broadband Card in the Raleigh-Durham area, I decided to give it a whirl while I am here at my son's football practice. Lo and behold, great coverage in an area where my Verizon Blackberry has trouble getting a bar of coverage. And better yet, a STRONG 869 Kbps on the Toast.net speed test. Excellent! And the experience really reflects that speed. I was just able to make a call on Skype with no delays and excellent voice quality.

When combined with the pending roll-out of EVDO Rev A beginning in San Diego, wireless broadband may finally be getting fast and ubiquitous. Note, the Verizon EVDO card is also an excellent performer and highly recommended as well.

Sprint Wireless Broadband Card Blogging; Speed Tests 4-7

In the course of my recent travels, I have been able to test my Sprint Wireless Broadband Card in three locations. The results are uneven. A retunr trip to Philadelphia resulted in a 728kbps speed test at the airport. In Atlanta, I was connected at over 1mbps, very fast indeed. Especially since I was actually in Woodstock, 30 miles or so from downtown Atlanta. Back in Raleigh, I was back below 300kbps. Tonight in Chattanooga, I tested out at 523kbps. Not bad. If the 500kbps-1.4mbps is typical, then Wireless Broadband is all it is cracked up to be. However, the slow speeds in Phoenix and Raleigh do make one wonder. In speaking to a Sprint employee I know, he mentioned that there were load-balancing problems in some markets. Perhaps Raleigh and Phoenix are among them. He seemed to think Raleigh was certainly among them.

Sprint Wireless Broadband Blogging; Speed Test 2

In the second of my Wireless Broadband posts, I am currently at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). Specifically, I am in Terminal E. I noticed that speeds were again mediocre. After clearing my cache, I ran a different Speed Test at www.toast.net. The result, 227kbps. Once again, another poor showing by the Sprint Wireless Broadband Network. Frankly, it should not be called "Broadband".

Fortunately, my company has a T-Mobile corporate plan and has been able to get me a T-Mobile Hot Spot monthly plan for $19.99. I would not have bothered but the poor performance of Sprint's "High-Speed" network made it necessary.

More from my next city!