Laptops

Looking at getting a new laptop, but i'm being put off by vista.
Is vista loads better now than when it came out? and should i not worry about it and just get used to it :roll: Or do i try and find 1 with xp, or has xp been forgotten about now?
Its only going to be used for putting photos on, surfing the web and some work stuff. No games.

P.s anyone know how to get itunes back after deleting the itunes program.
In a frantic bid to speed this laptop up i set about deleting programs. How was i meant to know that they were shared programs She had about 400 tunes payed for that she hadn't had time to put on her ipod

Vista is a perfectly usable operating system, dare I say it its actually very stable as well. Any new operating system has problems but as they go on they are further developed. I wouldnt have issues recommending vista to most people. Sure it isnt the most efficient OS ever but for most people it is fine and the media handling side of it is very user friendly.

Just make sure you go big on ram.

Out of interest have you considered a Mac? OSX puts windows to shame, its just so nice to use.

Sorry probably cant help with itunes...never been in that situation.

Forgive me but what is ram :?: Is it the bit that says 1GB of memory or the 160GB hard drive :?:

XP is alive and well. It's on most of the netbooks that aren't running Linux.
Vista is not as bad as everyone says it is, but you need to fiddle with it in order to make it run with a reasonable turn of speed.
Linux would be able to do everything you want too, and would make the computer cheaper.
Incidentally, I've just bought a Samsung NC10, and it's brilliant. Runs for more than 7 hours on a charge. But if I didn't need Windows XP for the software for my OU computer degree I'd have bought one of the Asus EEEs that PC world is selling for £120.
As for undeleting your Itunes library, I don't know if you can get your music again through Apple but if not you could have a go with PhotoRec.
EDIT - 2 replies while I was typing! Not really paying attention, Spinal Tap's just come on ITV1. Ram is the 1GB bit (RAM=Random Access Memory). 1GB is not enough for Vista to work well.

heathy":27gi3e9h said:

Forgive me but what is ram :?: Is it the bit that says 1GB of memory or the 160GB hard drive :?:

Click to expand...

its "the bit that says 1GB of memory"
if you want a desktop replacement type of laptop (15"+ display) with vista go for 2GB of memory.

heathy":2ildbtgv said:

P.s anyone know how to get itunes back after deleting the itunes program.
In a frantic bid to speed this laptop up i set about deleting programs. How was i meant to know that they were shared programs She had about 400 tunes payed for that she hadn't had time to put on her ipod

Click to expand...

i would be very suprised to see itunnes uninstall remove any songs. i guess itunes stores the songs in the users profile somewhere ("my music"?). if you reinstall itunes afaik it asks you if the computers harddrive should be searched for songs. say yes and after some time the songs should pop up again. need to admit that its about 1 year ago that i used ituns though. i'm on linux for 99% of the time...

I have a Dell with XP for work and an EEE for the kids andweb browsing at home. The work unit died and I survived a week with the EEE, including a long international business trip.
The only downside is the titchy screen and keyboard on the EEE, otherwise for a fun machine it's great.

Vista will be perfect for what you will use it for, probably more so than XP. Even gaming is not a problem in Vista really.

It mainly put down by people who are used to XP and earlier windows and the fact people tried to upgrade to Vista on older hardware that really shouldn't.

So ignore the OS and just use it. You'll not even notice after a while.



Tries installing iTunes again ?
They are stored in a folder called iTunes under my music (or there abouts) just do a search (start meny->search) for itunes. DRM on the music may cause you problem.may not as I've never used it for that.

Vista is alright with 2GB or more. I still find XP a bit nippier (and I know my way around it better) but Vista is okay. I run XP Pro on my desktop (Pentium D, 3GB) and Vista on my laptop (Core 2, 2GB).

My laptop initially came with 1GB and that was not good- Vista can quite easily munch 800MB all by itself (as opposed to XP which, even after anti virus and all the other gubbins, tends to idle at about 350-400MB).

Make sure you turn the Indexing Service off- resource hog with no real benefit. If you want to go a bit deeper you can go through all the other services and turn off the unneeded ones too.

I have heard that Windows 7 will be less resource intensive than Vista, dunno whether this will end up being true or not...

Itunes puts the music with random named files in a hidden folder.

on your new computer, download itunes open it, set it up

then close it!!! do not open it during the next process!

Plug in your ipod, wait until the PC sees it as 'new hdd/ memory stick etc

go to 'my computer' and check out the ipod icon 'disk E' or something like that.

Open the ipod icon and you will see all of your music stored as data, drag these onto your desktop - this will take a while if you have more than a few gigs worth.

Once this is done, open itunes and open your saved ipod folder. If you double click on any of the music files, it will automatically open up into itunes.

It can take a good hour but this is the best way of moving your ipod music to a new laptop/ pc.

You'll basically be using the ipod as a memory stick to transfer files. When you open up itunes, those files then get transffered back to your music.


if you get stuck, I'll try and find the links