Day 19 - Review of Dell Inspiron 1520 w/Vista

I'm deep into PM work this past 1.5 week. It's been a fairly productive week. Quite enjoyable, actually, though wish I have completed more. Gives me a renewed appreciation for Product Managers' work. ;)

I've had my new Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop with Vista for almost 2 weeks now. For the most part, things work pretty well. MS has done a good job with formatting/themes in Office 2007 & Visio 2007, making it effortless to create professional looking documents.

Things that work well -

• The formatting is smarter than previous versions (really, the way it should be!). For example, in Excel, in older versions, when I copy content from one cell to another, it also copies along unwanted format changes. Even though older versions has the paste special option as well, the option is a all or nothing deal, where I could not just copy over the cell formatting and not formatting that relates to the overall formatting of the table. I had been annoyed many a time when I had to fix formatting that others messed up while updating shared workbooks. In the newer version, if one uses a theme, the table is smart enough that, for example, when you copy content from one row to another, it knows to copy only cell level formatting, but keep the table-level formatting undisturbed.
• In Office 2007, Save As PDF is part of the basic package now, as opposed to a feature with an added fee. So that's kind of nice.
• The system seem to be able to take on load pretty well. It is a laptop with decent power after all. When I import music from CDs with my Dell latitude in the past (single CPU), that would literally take down my whole system and I'm unable to do anything in the meantime. With this new system, I am able to import music while continuing to work on other stuff. It finishes pretty quickly too.
  
• It's much quicker to find a program/file. You can do it all with the keyboard, which is convenient. For example, I can just hit the Start menu button on the keyboard, then type Paint to get the the Paint accessory.
  
• In the Start menu, you are able to type the program or file to get to, and the program/file will show up for selection.
  
• In Windows Explorer, there's some filtering functionality, which makes it easier to get to the files you want w/o clicking to Find Files.
  
• Start-up seems to be faster, although that could be a result of me being more conscientious of not allowing so many applications to be in the startup.
• There's perception that hibernate works better also since it always first suspend the computer before truly sleeping the computer. Also, one of the firs t thing that suspend does is to turn off the monitor, thus creating the perception that it's "sleeping" faster.

Things that don't work that well -

• Wireless connectivity is a BIG problem. It'd work for a while, and then just stops working all of a sudden. Thinking that it's a router issue, I kept rebooting the wireless router & broadband modem, which wasted a lot of my time. It wasn't until yesterday, when my husband was home on his wireless connection, and I had a problem while he didn't that I realized it's my laptop's issue. Dell online chat/email support was utterly useless in helping me solve this problem so far. However, I found this article on Dell's support site (http://tinyurl.com/2spxgv), and changed the configuration last night according to the instructions. I'll report back next week to see how this "optimized" configuration works.
• Whenever a program closes, Windows doesn't know for some reason and complaints that the program stopped work. Duh! I closed it! Of course it stops working!!! But at least it's fairly benign. It's just more of an annoyance.
• Windows Explorer has crashed on me a few times also. I don't think I had this problem on XP. I suppose MS should have a patch coming for that as that's a fairly basic piece of the operating system.
  
• Bluetooth seems to be having some problems. There were a few times where Visio crashed and complained about the Bluetooth plug-in; it suggested that I shut down the Bluetooth plug-in, so I did. Not sure what that's about. I tried using the Bluetooth interface to connect to my phone to transfer some files. It worked for a while, and about 1/3 of the way through transferring files, it stopped working. I tried reinitializing Bluetooth on the laptop and my Samsung Upstage phone. Although the phone thinks it's connected to the laptop, and the laptop to the phone, I was no longer able to see files from the laptop on the phone. By then it was 1:00 AM so I stopped messing around with Bluetooth. Will try again later.
• There were a couple of instances when a new driver is installed (e.g. for a wireless mouse), and the reboot that follows doesn't go through. The laptop would go through with the initial screen and then stuck at a blinking cursor on the upper left of the screen. I have to do a hard shut down (i.e. press the power button) in order to restart the computer. Those were scary. I always worry that I have to reformat and re-install the entire laptop and loose all my data. Best to set up a regular backup schedule…
• MS still hasn't gotten the hibernate functionality fully functional. This has been an ongoing problem for a long while in past OS, so not a new problem with Vista. Sometimes, when the laptop "wakes up" from hibernation, it decides to change the resolution to the lowest possible with a huge font size.
• As a lot of people has mentioned, there are still some drivers that are not available in Vista. Vista came loaded with the driver for our ~4-5 year-old HP officejet, so it still works. However, software that came with the officejet is not ported (not a big deal really). Our camera memory card reader driver is also no longer available, so I have to either get a new card reader or use an older computer to upload photos. Of course this is a good excuse to get another camera also. :P

Sidebar is pretty neat, but it still has some ways to go. My Google Sidebar seems a little shy though. It takes some minimizing of windows to "find" it. Doesn't just appear if I click on the "Show Desktop" icon on the task bar. When I looked on my husband's Macbook, widgets on that Mac also looks more mature and stable. Here's a screenshot with sidebar visible.

Webcam seems to work OK. Here's a photo of Arty, the company mascot.

With the 15.4" widescreen (which looks nice btw), my laptop no longer fit in the laptop bags that I currently own. It's just slightly too wide to fit. I had to borrow my husband's laptop backpack for his 17" laptop. I have a nice Victorinox laptop roller that I use for travel. The sleeve from there no longer fits either. I hope that with a new sleeve, I can still at least use the bag. Will give it a try. I had purchased a Belkin notebook messenger bag with the laptop. Although it looks nice in the photos, have useful compartments, and fits the laptop, the strap is really uncomfortable. With this ~6 lbs. laptop, my shoulders were hurting with just the laptop and power cord.