Double check that I'm not being a total twonk.

[scaryjim]

While it's only vista home so no downgrade to xp, I could get hold of a lisence via work for £37 but I'm not sure it'll make that much difference.

...

For just £38 I'm going to go with the T5750 and a 2nd gb of memory.

tbh I'd rather spend the £37 on an XP downgrade than a hardware upgrade - swapping from Vista to XP makes a world of difference to the responsiveness of a laptop, and frankly XP is a more user friendly OS than Vista anyway. I've done it twice now...

... when you press the power button or click the one on the start menu it actually turns off not go into sleep mode ... don't you just love vista for that.

People should really know better than to turn a computer off by pressing the power button Anyway, that's not a Vista problem, it's a setup problem. Both my Vista laptops used to shut down properly when you clicked the "power" button in the start menu, so I think the fault probably lies with Acer there...

Oh, I should also say that before I replaced Vista with XP on this laptop (which is the Celly 1.86GHz / 2GB DDR2-533), it was running Vista pretty smoothly - I didn't downgrade for performance reasons...

[Pob255]

I'm not talking about holding down the power button just pressing it, which sends a shoutdown command to the OS

And in vista the default setting for the start menus shutdown button is Sleep (laptops) or Hibernate (desktops) not shutdown, you have to manually change it, the setting is hidden in the control panel > power scheme > advanced options.
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/window...tasmpwrbtn.htm
This was changed in windows 7 the default is shutdown and it's changed via the "start menus & taskbar properties" a far more sane location as very few desktop uses would think to consider the power scheme settings would apply to a desktop.

[IAmATeaf]

Probably stupid to say this but I was under the impression that CPUs in a laptop were soldered to the main board ie no socket.

[GT-R]

Probably stupid to say this but I was under the impression that CPUs in a laptop were soldered to the main board ie no socket.

I think some are.

[scaryjim]

... in vista the default setting for the start menus shutdown button is Sleep (laptops) or Hibernate (desktops) not shutdown, you have to manually change it, the setting is hidden in <dumb place to hide settings > ...

Curious - both my Vista laptops (one Vaio with Vista Business, one HP with Vista Home Premium) *definitely* shut down from the start menu rather than sleeping... *shrug*

I'm not talking about holding down the power button just pressing it ...

Yeah, I assumed that was what you meant - personally I'd never assume that pushing the power button would turn off the computer, and would always go through start menu...

[Pob255]

Just fitted the cpu and memory, it's very easy to get to the cpu on the X58L, just remove the back cover section, and you can get to the memory, wireless card, cpu and heatsink, no other sections need to be removed.

Ever thing was fine, however I spotted one odd thing, the original memory fitted is actually 800mhz but is under clocked to 667mhz.

I started running Cinebench to test it and the multiplier was staying at x6 ie 1ghz even when just plugged in (ie no battery)
However a careful check, it's the power settings in vista, how stupid is that, run the cpu at half speed at all times? even when plugged in and both cores are under 100% load. no wonder this laptop was so sluggish.

Well I've going through the power settings to create a new sane profile, so speed step now works correctly when it's idle and low cpu usage, but kicks the speed back up when it's demanded.
The laptop is now far far nippier and much more responsive. all told it's been a great success and for just £32 in the end.

[GT-R]

Just fitted the cpu and memory, it's very easy to get to the cpu on the X58L, just remove the back cover section, and you can get to the memory, wireless card, cpu and heatsink, no other sections need to be removed.

Ever thing was fine, however I spotted one odd thing, the original memory fitted is actually 800mhz but is under clocked to 667mhz.

I started running Cinebench to test it and the multiplier was staying at x6 ie 1ghz even when just plugged in (ie no battery)
However a careful check, it's the power settings in vista, how stupid is that, run the cpu at half speed at all times? even when plugged in and both cores are under 100% load. no wonder this laptop was so sluggish.

Well I've going through the power settings to create a new sane profile, so speed step now works correctly when it's idle and low cpu usage, but kicks the speed back up when it's demanded.
The laptop is now far far nippier and much more responsive. all told it's been a great success and for just £32 in the end.

Glad it all went ok for you, what cpu did you fit?

[GT-R]

ah, nevermind!