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Laptop OS, and the possibly the most emasculating question ever

The CowThe Cow Registered User regular
edited January 2008 in Help / Advice Forum
1) I bought a new laptop for college on w00t back in September. It's a Lenovo 3000 N100, and it came prepackaged with Vista. Halfway through the quarter it broke, and I only got it fixed earlier today. The issue is, I hate Vista. It does lots of things I don't need at the expense of resources I do. I also hate the hell out of configuring it. However, it does come with anti-virus. What I'm wondering is, does installing an OS that laptops do not come installed with usually violate warranty? I am considering either XP or Linux.

2) My cuticles are all fucked up. That region where the nails meet the skin and there's dead white crap. This is how little I know. Is there anything I can do stop them from cracking and general gnarliness short of going in for a pedicure?

The Cow on

Posts

  • Mai-KeroMai-Kero Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Software can't void a warranty.

    Unless it's software that makes your computer explode or something.

    Mai-Kero on
  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Installing software very much can void a warranty, and sneaky good-for-nothing PC vendors will use this against consumers to stop them having to deal with actual broken laptops.

    However, Lenovo are good, so I shouldn't worry.

    Lewisham on
  • Mai-KeroMai-Kero Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    To clarify, software can't void a warrant from something like IBM or Dell. Reliable vendors. If you're buying from Joe's Shack of Computers and Computer-Related Fish Dishes then yes your warranty will die.

    Mai-Kero on
  • panksea06panksea06 Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    I worked at Circuit City and was told that installing xp on a vista machine or other OS changes would in fact void the warranty.

    However I was told this as a point of marketing, to encourage me to sell our Protection plan, which explicitly covered OS changes, but it maybe/probably isnt true for all vendors. I would check with the manufacturers warranty documentation online.

    panksea06 on
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  • twmjrtwmjr Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    The Cow wrote: »
    2) My cuticles are all fucked up. That region where the nails meet the skin and there's dead white crap. This is how little I know. Is there anything I can do stop them from cracking and general gnarliness short of going in for a pedicure?


    Lotion? This stuff is really good:

    200.jpg

    twmjr on
  • deadonthestreetdeadonthestreet Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    What "resources" does Vista use that you need elsewhere?

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  • The CowThe Cow Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    RAM, mostly. I assume it's using more processing speed than XP would, and it does nothing that I couldn't use XP for. I haven't been reading very much on Vista, I'm definitely far less knowledgeable about the specifics of it than I'd like to be, but frankly nothing about it has given me a reason to keep using it when it's such a goddamn pain.

    It seems like the consensus is pretty good that it won't void my warranty. I'll check the documentation again tomorrow, and will try and find a decent Linux install. Thanks; reading warranties and contracts of almost any kind always make me question whether or not I've already broken one of the statutes.

    The Cow on
  • Uncle LongUncle Long Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    Well, it's hard for me to recommend switching back to XP unless there really is something you can't do on Vista. I have experience setting up lenovo "Vista" machines with a requested XP install instead of the out of the box vista. Sometimes searching for appropriate drivers is a bit wonky if you're implementing vista when it was designed for xp; I don't know why that is, but that's how it is sometimes.

    But that's not the reason why I'd say not to do it more than the expenditure on XP itself. Unless you can get a cheap/free license, it's not worth the money to me.

    You can always give linux a try; Ubuntu and the ilk are pretty good places to start.

    I'd say keep up with Vista and see if a little more time can't get you where you want to be.

    Uncle Long on
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  • The CowThe Cow Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    I guess I will check out the apps for Linux first, see if it can run War3 on this machine, and then decide between it and XP. Vista is just really annoying to me for some reason, and it's just not worth it for me to get used to it at this point.

    Thanks a lot, guys.

    The Cow on
  • The CatThe Cat Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited January 2008
    twmjr wrote: »
    The Cow wrote: »
    2) My cuticles are all fucked up. That region where the nails meet the skin and there's dead white crap. This is how little I know. Is there anything I can do stop them from cracking and general gnarliness short of going in for a pedicure?


    Lotion? This stuff is really good:

    200.jpg

    Yup. also you can do the poor-folks manicure and push them back/scrape off the dead shit at the end of your shower or after a bath. Also, if grotty hands are manly I'll take the sissy any day. So long as he doesn't pinch my makeup :P

    wrt the warranty, you should have a copy of it on file, unless you're one of those people who don't file things. Alternatively, just shoot the company an email and ask if running XP is a problem. Last resort could be making a separate partition from which you could boot another OS, I guess. Its not like you're actually interfering with the original stuff that way...

    The Cat on
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  • deadonthestreetdeadonthestreet Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    The Cow wrote: »
    RAM, mostly. I assume it's using more processing speed than XP would, and it does nothing that I couldn't use XP for. I haven't been reading very much on Vista, I'm definitely far less knowledgeable about the specifics of it than I'd like to be, but frankly nothing about it has given me a reason to keep using it when it's such a goddamn pain.

    It seems like the consensus is pretty good that it won't void my warranty. I'll check the documentation again tomorrow, and will try and find a decent Linux install. Thanks; reading warranties and contracts of almost any kind always make me question whether or not I've already broken one of the statutes.
    OK here's the thing. Vista looks like it uses a ton of ram. It doesn't. What it does is preload often used programs into ram so they open faster. When that ram is needed elsewhere, it empties those programs so the ram can be used. Because Vista learns what you like to do with you computer it actually adapts over time and makes the system run better.

    deadonthestreet on
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  • brandotheninjamasterbrandotheninjamaster Registered User regular
    edited January 2008
    I got one of these nail cube thingamajigs for my wife. I had a similar cuticle problem and used that cube to scrape everything. It worked and my nails are shiny...not that, that was my intention....

    Lemme see if I can pull a pic.

    edit: figures...I can't find one. It had the feel of extremely high grit sand paper, thats about the best way I can describe it.

    P.S. I feel like a complete pansy now...I'm gonna go watch a couple of Rocky movies, maybe that will man me up.

    brandotheninjamaster on
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