Thinkpads Forum

I am ordering a fully loaded T400. It will be my first Vista machine. Is Vista Ultimate the best version. Any advice appreciated.

best for what? All Vista versions are the same except some come with programs that you might or might not need/use. You can pay extra for stuff you wont need or want or you can save some dollars. If you need ultimate because it comes with all that you need then get it for that reason, other than that they are all the same.

Bite your lip and go through it. It's my first vista machine too and it runs alright-- the menus are extremely dumbed down and stuff is hard to find (if you were really proficient in XP). I'd jump back to XP if it had no-reboot switchable graphics.

I have to say, I've been very happy with Vista. Multimedia chores, especially photo organization, is greatly simplified. And the Start Menu search is terrific.

Most users will be happy with Home Premium, which includes Windows Media Center. If you need to send faxes, you'll need to upgrade to Business. If you need both, get Ultimate.

SHoTTa35 wrote:All Vista versions are the same except some come with programs that you might or might not need/use.

There are some non-trivial functional differences between the "Home" and "Corporate capable" versions which are not related to programs that you might or might not need/use!

Bill B.

I've been pleasantly surprised with Vista on my T400. The search functionality is great; it's tough to go back to XP on my other machine where I have to actually look through the Start menu to run a program. I also prefer the organization of user directories in Vista. There is no more "My Documents"; instead, there is a directory for each user, and that directory contains directories for Documents, Music, Downloads, etc. In a way, it's more like UNIX, and I prefer it this way.

While I prefer the naming in Vista (Documents and Settings converted to "Users", and the stupid "My" prefix removied from the documents, pictures, movies, etc folders), the organization itself is still a mess, and additionally, lots of user/OS/app data (such as desktop and start menu item locations) has been moved to strange places with only user-inaccessible placeholders remaining in the original locations.

Only after looking on the web I managed to find out where the stuff has been moved.

So I still keep my documents and other data in my own directories on a different partition, and don't use the Vista folders. It is a rule of thumb for me not to place my important data in the same location used by the OS for its own data.

dr_st wrote:While I prefer the naming in Vista (Documents and Settings converted to "Users", and the stupid "My" prefix removied from the documents, pictures, movies, etc folders), the organization itself is still a mess, and additionally, lots of user/OS/app data (such as desktop and start menu item locations) has been moved to strange places with only user-inaccessible placeholders remaining in the original locations.

Only after looking on the web I managed to find out where the stuff has been moved.

So I still keep my documents and other data in my own directories on a different partition, and don't use the Vista folders. It is a rule of thumb for me not to place my important data in the same location used by the OS for its own data.

You can program those blue folders to point to different locations. Back when I ran two separate partitions, I mounted a different partition inside C:\Users\%USER_NAME%, and did the aformentioned.