One way to fix Vista: buy a new PC

closeHey, just so you know ... this post is now about 15 years and 4 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

I’ve complained about my Vista woes here before since I upgraded from XP back in April. Well, apparently the solution to my Vista problems was just to buy a new PC.

Thanks to a 20% off coupon found through my slickdeals.net RSS feed, I purchased a “built-for-new” (i.e., not refurbished) Dell Inspiron 530 desktop from the Dell Outlet. For under $450 I got a system with an Intel Core2 Quad 2.4GHz processor, 3gb of RAM, 640gb hard drive, 16x DVD+-RW dual layer burner, 19-in-1 media card reader, built-in wireless, keyboard, mouse, Vista Home Premium, and MS Office 2007 Home/Student edition. Not a bad deal!

Once I had the new box running, I moved over my ATI Radeon 2600HD video card from my old PC so I could still have my dual-monitor setup. Then I spent a few hours over the weekend copying over gigabytes of files, documents, music, photos, videos, etc. from the old PC (via crossover cable) and also re-installing and configuring my applications and utilities.

Ok, so I have to admit that Vista runs a lot nicer on my new PC. I haven’t run into any of the problems that plagued me before (especially the annoying disconnect my iPod, lose the wireless network one) and the OS has been running pretty smoothly so far. Only time will tell for sure, but at least for now I’m happy again!

One small thing I didn’t plan for: the 530 has no PS/2-style keyboard or mouse ports. As a result, I was unable to connect my old Logitech Cordless Elite Duo wireless keyboard/mouse combo as the charging base/receiver used a PS/2 connector for the keyboard. I didn’t have a PS/2-to-USB converter handy so I ended up just using the Dell-supplied keyboard and mouse for now. The keyboard is actually a lot smaller than my old one (due to the lack of all the various multimedia buttons, none of which actually worked under Vista anyway) and a lot quieter, so I’ll probably end up sticking with it.

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