Windows Vista Ultimate on my dv9700t = Sweetness. :P

*dun dun dun dun* lol. She’s here!!! Yes, I am really typing this at 5am in the morning. You see, I didn’t entirely want to do this (wake up this early), but my allergy/unknown ailment/itching kicked into high gear. Voila! I was sleepless at home. I figured I might as well wake up and do some “work”. lol. I have to say that there was quite a bit of crap installed. By crap, I mean stuff like Norton and the trial Office Suites. I have no need for either of those items because I am getting educational/enterprise versions of these tools (not for free, by the way). Just saying because I have a reputation around here and my pirate-y name is Bootleg Jane. I have J’s hubby to thank for that. lol. Overall, I love my laptop. I’ve got a decent Windows Experience Index score of 4.6 5.0. The crossed-out WEI base score was the out-of-box WEI score I received for my dv9700t laptop which is unsurprisingly one of the top sellers on HP’s website. I have since installed a bunch of upgrades and largely (I thought) possibly brought down my score. Well, it climbed up without me doing anything to it except uninstall the crapware that came with it. Here are the brief scores: Note, you will have
dv9700t windows experience scoreto click on it to see the full thing. I didn’t want this to eat up the whole post. I definitely see myself getting comfortable with this computer and upgrading some components in the future. A few words of disappointment:

  1. I was disappointed that my BIOS was not TPM-enabled. One of the reasons I sprung for Vista Ultimate was for the feature called Bitlocker Drive Encryption. Now, Bitlocker can still run, but there’s the perfectionist in me that wants everything to be just right. I can still use the Bitlocker whole disk drive encryption feature. It just involves an extra step i.e. it needs to store the encryption key in a USB drive. I’ve got USB drives out the wazoo so once I’ve backed up my laptop, I’m going to roll up my sleeves and dive into the depths of the murky waters of Vista. *cue evil laugh*
  2. Next, the fingerprint reader sucks. Like royally sucks. At this point, I’m just using it as a piece of decoration. It has refused to read my fingerprint and I’m going to have content myself with signing in regularly like everyone else.
  3. I’m still torn up as to whether or not I did a good thing in not getting the TV tuner. I’m not sweating it though. It’s not a deal breaker. I just need to get me some hi-def content to view to console myself. lol.

I am in love with this piece of art. The only part I’m dissatisfied with is the fingerprint reader. I’ve tried to get finger-printed, but it keeps telling me that I’m too fast/slow, etc. I’m getting a little irked that I added an extra $25 for this feature. In any case, thanks to the timing of my purchase of the Cables To Go 28270 USB 2.0 Mobile Office Retractable Cable Kit, I was able to use the teeny-tiny mouse it came with to get around and get connected. Believe it or not, the experience of setting my laptop up was not as painful as dealing with my desktop PC. I will say that the desktop PC being refurbished probably had something to do with it. That being said, all was not honey and oats in my home. 🙂 For the weirdest reason, the updates kept failing to install until I resorted to installing 2 or 3 at a time. All should be well now because I stayed up rather late doing the installations. I’m also anxiously awaiting my big bluetooth mouse from Logitech and ethernet cord (via Amazon) so I’m keeping my eyes peeled. Until then, I’ve got to go grab lunch. Ciao