Santa brought me a Core 2 Due E6600! 6

[wahnula]

Now for the mainboard...I am a power user not a gamer, will probably team this w/ AIW 2006 (ATI x1300 I believe)plus two 1GB DDR2-800 RAM. I need lots of expansion slots but never SLI, but two x16 PCI-Es would be welcome. Currently looking at Asus P5W DH Deluxe, I would like to ask our distinguished panel for recommendations.

Thanks and Happy Holidays!

Tony

 

[tf1]

Unless you have applications that you know are incompatible with Vista, I'd recommend Vista. I've been through several incarnations of Vista and I currently run on a fresh installation of the final release. There's obvioulsy a bit of familiarising needed but once you get into the new Explorer, search engine, networking, security and other enhancements it is undoubtedly a step forward over XP.

It is definitely faster than XP was on the same computer - a Pentium 3.0 (2MB L2), with 2GB PC2-5300 and Radeon 1600 Pro.

It is difficult to say what is the best feature but the two that jump out at me are the changes to Explorer and the installation. A fresh installation is blisteringly fast (25 minutes on my PC) and so much simpler than previous Windows versions. I like the way that Office uses Explorer windows for the Open and Save dialogs: once you've used it, it seems so natural that I don't understand why Office ever used its own dialogs.

The only minor incompatibility I have is with Photoshop CS2 which won't see the printer (a Canon Pixma i5200). After editing I have to copy the files across to a WinXP PC to print. I've not investigated this too hard yet - but I would guess that there is probably apatch to sort this out.

I definitely would not recommend anyone gets the Upgrade version of Vista, though upgrading from XP to Vista using the full version of Vista works really well. The Upgrade version of Vista just has too much missing.


Regards: tf1

 

[wahnula]

Thanks tf1

I was leaning this way and thanks for the warning about the upgrade. Now, which flavor??? I may never join a domain with my home machine but then again I may in the future, so it's at least Business flavor. But then again for the extra $100 I could get the whole ball of Ultimate wax, unless I download it from "OEM" sources in the Ukraine for $79 along w/ Office 2007 for $50, as I am sure these are genuine, approved Microsoft products that use spam as a way to get the word out...NOT!!!

But since I already OWN XP, and you said:

upgrading from XP to Vista using the full version of Vista works really well.

I may as well install XP, let the beta testers (oops earliest adopters) work out the bugs, and make the move in a few months.

Call me Al Gore, I'm a waffler!

Tony