Quote Originally Posted by admin
you can make any brand work fine... the biggest problem is most people don't know what they are doing when they buy a machine....

first is hand pick the machine for the hardware: cpu, drive speed over size, ram config (max capability for motherboard), etc.... second thing that should be done is to reinstall the OS b/c every Windows OEM install has so much BS w/ it; i highly suggest reinstalling... then if you don't need the aero features of vista turn them off.

vista is a very smooth OS if you know what you are doing. it takes some getting used to b/c they did change the layout alot and added annoying parental style controls
Couldn't have put it better myself. People just go into best buy and assume that just because its on the shelf it will be fine and sometimes that is the case but most of the time its not. I always build the machine based on the machine.

I got mine with:
CD/DVD-RW
Vista
1 gig of ram

and upgraded from there. I now currently run 3 gigs and this thing is a beast. Like I said my only issue now is storage. I only put a 80 gig hard drive on here and I think after I get my D40 next year I'll spring for a 1 TB hard drive.