"gowanoh" wrote in message
Laptop monitor screens are not the same as standalone flat panels in their performance as well as adjustability for calibrating.
They can be used but are more difficult to use than desktop flat panels if your goal is reliable, predictable printing.
Lessons learned from the public release beta of Vista which is said to be the final shipping code:
When Vista is released there will probably be drivers for recent printers and scanners but as of now there are few. Epson has yet to release a Vista compatible driver. There are no drivers for calibration devices and XP drivers do not work with Vista. Nor do many CD/DVD authoring programs, video editing programs, Virus programs, etc. CS2 and CS3 run well on Vista but some tests have shown that performance is actually slower for many operations under Vista than XP.
Vista is a performance sucker and worse if you use the glitzy but useless aero 3d interface. It is not a good OS for laptops, regardless of what Microsoft and manufacturers will tell you because it requires gobs of memory and laptops, with only a few exceptions, do not have a second hard drive to use for virtual memory/swap. Laptops will not be practical for use with Vista until flash memory augmented hard drives become the norm, which will likely happen over the next year.
If you upgrade to Vista it is best to install it as a second OS, again not practical on a laptop, as it will destroy your XP installation and you cannot revert to your prior OS as with earlier versions of Windows. Also the Vista boot loader cannot be removed from your hard drive without a complete reformat. As of now even multi-OS commercial boot loaders cannot displace the Vista boot loader, they merely load on top of it. I am not a Microsoft basher but Vista is, at best, problematic. Wait and see is the best approach. No one "needs" Vista.
I agree:
XP is the best OS MS have done so far,
it works so well, I am not willing to try an untried, incompatible with almost everything, OS
and it took almost a year for them to really finish XP with SP2 and get all the glitches out and drivers up to date
If Epson has no drivers I’m sure it is too soon to get it for my purposes. Again the XP driver is substandard to the Epson one.
and if you can’t make a CD or DVD with 3rd party software, it’s useless (the come-with Windoz CD writer sucks)
I saw the "improvements" and I see no need for it (yet) I don’t need transparent windows, not even sure I would like them, an add-on proggie can re-skin your XP to that style now.
I don’t keep so many open anyhow that I lose track, (they are in the taskbar), so the 3d windows sounds kinda dumb and Apple-ish. We need meat not whipped cream.
Why is 64 bits better? will that affect the look of the graphic display?? the way we use images??
I think I rather invest in more or faster hardware
dual chips
more mem
removable backups etc
anyone using it yet?
I got my first LCD recently due to a comp problem that burnt my CRT and I needed to get one locally ASAP
I chose Samsung 471P after reading reviews and my price range (it was $400.00)
pros:
it swivels to vertical / looks nice/USB easy install
it has 1500:1 contrast ratio more than some hi end LCD, the cheaper ones have only 800
good view angles >>no color changing (I have people review pics over shoulder or next to me
some people highly rate the monitor software calibration tool free with purchase
I like the driver for it
cons
2 ms refresh
it may conflict with some radeon or other video card driver settings (so far OK couple crash to lower res after rotate)
on all LCD text looks disgusting-use clear type and large fonts use at highest res anything lower looks nasty
1280×1024 (I did not choose widescreen) and 32 bit
the white is bluer? than a CRT
so far I am pleased with it cause I thought I would not like it I used adobe gamma to set it up and the driver interface it matches my inkjet and is very close in color to my previous CRT
my first monitor was a Samsung and it lasted long until I got a bigger one so I had some brand loyalty there
I heard DELL are the same inside
and that was another choice I looked at