Apr 09 2008
My New Laptop Annoys Me
So the audio on my laptop went apeshit again over the weekend. Last time, it was a result of iTunes overrunning Windows for no reason. This time, I think it was SlingPlayer, which means my brilliant plan for taking my laptop into the kitchen to watch recorded shows on my DVR has gone terribly wrong.
Of course, this became an excuse to spend some of my FanHouse money. I ran out to Best Buy last night to get a relatively cheap new laptop. The new plan is to use the new laptop as my every-day PC while my old laptop will handle more specialized tasks. (And before anyone asks, no, I did not get a frigging Mac. Blogging for AOL doesn’t pay me nearly enough to afford a Macbook that isn’t built like a Frito.)
Anyway, this new plan would work better if the new laptop didn’t annoy the hell out of me. Between Windows Vista and the sheer amount of crapware loaded on to this thing, I can barely get through half a minute without some pop-up window asking either for permission to run a program or telling me something “helpful” about my new PC. You want to be helpful, computer? How about you shut the hell up for 2 minutes and let me do what I’m trying to do here?
I’ve already looked around the web for a few tips and tricks, but if any of you fellow football fanatics out there would like to share your own tips on making Vista behave itself, feel free to post a comment. A lot of my headaches will probably be solved when I get rid of all that crapware — even if it did make the laptop so cheap in the first place — but I’m sure there’s something here that I won’t see.
By the way, is it just me, or does Schalke 04 really look like they couldn’t kick a rock into the ocean right now?
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It’s too bad Mac quality has gone so far downhill these days. Mass production has made a lot of new Macs I’ve seen lately behave all too similarly to PCs.
TTurn off uac, I just unpacked my new vista computer, and I had to do that within an hour. it’s just far too much, especially for someone who knows what they’re doing.
there’s an app called pc-decrapifier that will get rid of all that crapware.
after that you should be pretty good.
You can turn off the UAC under “user accounts” in the control panel. Just search for “uac” in the control panel window and the option to turn it off should come up. Then, no more annoying permission requests.
If you want to do a fresh install, there’s a freeware app called vlite that can take an image of your Windows DVD, give you options about what to install and what to leave out, and burn a slimmed-down installation disc.
After a few weeks with Vista, I wound up just going to back to XP. For me, Vista didn’t really do enough to justify the increased bloat. I realized all the tweaks I was doing were designed to make it act like XP anyway.
I didn’t catch the Schalke match yesterday, but Daniele De Rossi couldn’t kick a rock into the ocean on a penalty kick. Brian McBride is quietly chuckling to himself.
Brian: Yes, but David Beckham can feel Daniele De Rossi’s pain. And let’s not forget De Rossi plays in Serie A, where the running joke is that the scoresheets are made up in advance of the games…
I turned UAC and a lot of graphics enhancements off last night — something to do while watching D.C. and Houston bomb out of the Champions Cup again. (More on that later.) This has sped things up considerably. Now I’m wondering whether I should tempt fate and try loading my gigantic MP3 collection into iTunes again. My old computer couldn’t handle that, but this one might be different.
Start with a fresh clean Vista installation. If you need directions have a look at http://www.davescomputertips.com/newsletters/20070715.php#2.
If you give it a chance you will like Vista, promise.
Seriously, downgrade to XP. Your computer will run faster and be less annoying.
Or switch to Linux.