My problems with Vista were that it was ridiculously slow on a middling laptop, until I switched off all the bells and whistles, like the graphics and indexing (and even then...). Given that, it's hard to see the advantages over XP for an ignoramus like me. Also it pops up and asks your permission to make any changes to the computer, which can be annoying. But for the most part I haven't felt like I needed to switch backward.

I hated it until I switched off the permissions thing and upgraded to 6 gigs of RAM. There was a long adjustment period. Every time I tried to work with the files I'd brought over from the old computer, it would tell me I didn't have permission; and the route to get permission seemed excessively convoluted. It stalled a lot and programs crashed. I turned off a lot of things, like the pretty bar of gadgets and widgets. It's working fine now.

I miss weird things, like being able to defrag. I'm going to have to look that up because it says I can't do that myself, it will do it for me, but I want to do it. Mostly because I don't trust it's really being done.

I also really miss being able to have different e-mail profiles. I didn't like thunderbird when I tried it. I don't want something fancy. I just want to be able to separate all the different e-mail addresses more clearly than dumping them into one mailbox allows, even with folders.

sean, how goes it? I have a spare power supply and graphics card. You are welcome to both.

Oooh, hey o_a. Still having the same problems. I have another (older) graphics card I can try. I hope the card isn't bad, as I have several video games that require the card.

I'm going to take another crack at it today and report back.

ok. I'm in tech, so no clue when I'd get them to you. The power supply was used for about 6 months at most. It's pretty beefy. The graphics card is ok. Nothing new. The only fancy thing about it is it also has an S-video output. Don't recall all the other details, but I do still have the box for both! Go figure. Let me know if you want them. They are yours for the taking.

Another person with a Toshiba Satellite, I got it in November and I love it. I have vista and dont' seee the immediate hate...okay the constantly stopping everything to have to click that yes i want to install is annoying, but other than that things are fine.

My brother had a Toshiba or two and liked them, the last one he dropped and cracked the monitor but he kept using it with an external monitor until he switched over to a Mac.

I've got four Toshiba laptops of various vintages (One of them is a tablet) and they've all been nice and reliable.

The Leonovo's are what IBM Thinkpads are now called and they have an excellent reputation as well. Many businesses prefer them.

PM, your recommendations are sound, but that's kind of where my frustration is. I'm used to diving in and using my computer without needing to constantly seek help. I'm not a luddite. I shouldn't have to mess around like this.

Outlook 2007 is so bad that it is unusable when I'm not in safe mode. And I'm not using Outlook to access email (only my calendar and notes).

So the slowness bothers me with some apps. I also hate how the menus changed for Excel and Word 2007. That was a terrible mistake that I wish Microsoft could redo.

New update:

I swapped out my graphics card for the one that came with the computer, and it's working fine. That's a bummer. And I just checked the hardware profile, and the computer automatically detected that I'd switched cards, and loaded the drivers for the right card. It knows there's a GeForce2 MX 400 in there now.

And when I looked at the device manager in safe mode with the other card in, the profile showed the GeForce FX 5200.

So, the computer can tell which card is which. At this point, I think I'll try putting the 5200 back in and see what happens, but the nicer 5200, that I spent good money on, may be fried. Feh.

I bought a Toshiba Satellite Pro 620Cd at a garage sale for $9 once.

It needed a hard drive and a keyboard, but it worked the last time I fired it up.

I may cannibalize it for a video picture frame.