h3%5kr3w Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 well I will say this, that the casing that acer uses for their aspire series your speaking isnt made that tough (had a friend in college that had one last semester, it dropped like 3 ft, and the whole thing busted apart... he's still awaiting the replacement) that is one sweeet ass acer your speaking of. never heard of it in that price range or else I would have bought that one! even the lower ones that are just like that one xcept w/the intel shit gma video are like $600 to start around here. yah, i even found out my 'one of a kind' compaq case is made by some off the wall co. that makes alot of cases for dell and of course hp. I will however have to say a few things about the premade category, yes alot of general companies make general hardware for computer companies, BUT the ONE thing that is specificly made most of the time is motherboards. Typically made by some offbrand manufacturer, or w/a package deal with specific name brands. This is how they can pull off all the lcpc's (low cost pc's) at such a low price, and some of the midrange computers. IBM does alot of the midrange boards believe it or not, but actually it doesnt stop there, because most of these companies are getting their parts for the motherboards from offbrand manufacturers too (anyone remember the ibm motherboards with the busted capacitors?) these were included in a wide range of IBM, Dell, and Gateway computers (and I have seen these issues with all 3 brands myself). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vector Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 well I will say this, that the casing that acer uses for their aspire series your speaking isnt made that tough (had a friend in college that had one last semester, it dropped like 3 ft, and the whole thing busted apart... he's still awaiting the replacement) that is one sweeet ass acer your speaking of. never heard of it in that price range or else I would have bought that one! even the lower ones that are just like that one xcept w/the intel shit gma video are like $600 to start around here. yah, i even found out my 'one of a kind' compaq case is made by some off the wall co. that makes alot of cases for dell and of course hp. I will however have to say a few things about the premade category, yes alot of general companies make general hardware for computer companies, BUT the ONE thing that is specificly made most of the time is motherboards. Typically made by some offbrand manufacturer, or w/a package deal with specific name brands. This is how they can pull off all the lcpc's (low cost pc's) at such a low price, and some of the midrange computers. IBM does alot of the midrange boards believe it or not, but actually it doesnt stop there, because most of these companies are getting their parts for the motherboards from offbrand manufacturers too (anyone remember the ibm motherboards with the busted capacitors?) these were included in a wide range of IBM, Dell, and Gateway computers (and I have seen these issues with all 3 brands myself). the major OEM's are able to sell computers at cheap prices because they have huge buying power. they buy processors, motherboards, graphics cards, harddrives, etc etc by the thousands even hundreds of thousands, so obviously they get better prices than the average joe walking into a frys or best buy looking to purchase just one harddrive or upgraded processor. and most of the computers you open up will have intel mobos, but sometimes youll find asus, msi, or even gigabyte, etc etc and boards that are labeled as Dell or HP are typically made by one of the major board makers but have specifically written bios's for the OEM's that sell them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shonen Posted February 17, 2009 Author Share Posted February 17, 2009 I was doing some research into downgrading from Vista to Win XP to check out any potential hurdles I may find in my way. Anyways I was curious if any of the 1525 owners have done the same thing and what they came across. From my reading I found that if you don't go into the bios and change the HDD type from ATHA to ATA you can run into problems. Also read that this method didn't work for some and they had to get the sata driver provided on dell's website and chuck it on usb for install prior to windows EDIT Just read if you have a copy of win xp with sp2 on it the hard drive driver/bios aint an issue(can anyone confirm/offer advice). I also had a look at dells xp drivers and other than finding the one for the wireless card, modem I got a bit lost. However I did find this http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-24760-d...downgrading-how which supposedly has everything needed to get all the devices working. List of hardware can be found here: http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/p...;l=en&s=dhs Also I was planning on install both xp and ubuntu on the one hdd with diff partitions, but last time I did this on my desktop I ran into a couple of issue's and opted to install each on a separate hdd. Was wondering if anyone has come across a problem like this. So yeah any advice for what I should keep in mind or slight problems that may occur would be greatly appropriated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vector Posted February 17, 2009 Share Posted February 17, 2009 I was doing some research into downgrading from Vista to Win XP to check out any potential hurdles I may find in my way. Anyways I was curious if any of the 1525 owners have done the same thing and what they came across. From my reading I found that if you don't go into the bios and change the HDD type from ATHA to ATA you can run into problems. Also read that this method didn't work for some and they had to get the sata driver provided on dell's website and chuck it on usb for install prior to windows EDIT Just read if you have a copy of win xp with sp2 on it the hard drive driver/bios aint an issue(can anyone confirm/offer advice). I also had a look at dells xp drivers and other than finding the one for the wireless card, modem I got a bit lost. However I did find this http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-24760-d...downgrading-how which supposedly has everything needed to get all the devices working. List of hardware can be found here: http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/p...;l=en&s=dhs Also I was planning on install both xp and ubuntu on the one hdd with diff partitions, but last time I did this on my desktop I ran into a couple of issue's and opted to install each on a separate hdd. Was wondering if anyone has come across a problem like this. So yeah any advice for what I should keep in mind or slight problems that may occur would be greatly appropriated. if youre planning on downgrading a laptop that came with vista preinstalled from a place like dell then you arent going to find any xp drivers for your hardware on the dell site. when you install xp alot of the hardware will find its drivers from the windows update, but for the rest youre going to have to go to the manufacturers site for each piece of hardware and download the xp drivers, this will probably include your wireless card, mobile chipset drivers, sound card, and graphics drivers, and probably some others too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swathe Posted February 17, 2009 Share Posted February 17, 2009 I deleted vista pretty quick and ran linux. I chucked windows 7 beta on it to test before rolling out to my main desk top and it deteced all hardware fine and ran it without issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shonen Posted February 17, 2009 Author Share Posted February 17, 2009 Yeap I have found that out first hand Vector, No xp chipset driver among other things and its starting to look like a right royal pain in the ass finding half the shit (hopefully the drivers in those links work for me). Personally I would rather just use ubuntu and be done with it but as much as I like wine I don't wanna be using it for packet tracer among other things for class, it just starts to get a little to messy and annoying for my liking. I read that swathe had win 7 somewhere on here and I have been somewhat considering installing it. I know for a beta its allegedly pretty stable but I still have some reservations on using it. Not to mention that I need to leech some bandwidth to get the .iso, bloody capped already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swathe Posted February 17, 2009 Share Posted February 17, 2009 It ran perfectly fine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted February 17, 2009 Share Posted February 17, 2009 Windows 7 is pretty much Vista R2, so given your laptop isn't XP friendly then it might be a better option if you really don't want Vista. But, if you take a look at driverpacks.net you might be able to find the correct drivers for your system, you will just lack all the dell bits that make the hotkeys and hardware buttons function. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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