Case Catalyst/new laptop??? Any suggestions??

[Karen Peterson Diaz]

The day has come, unfortunately. Screen on laptop was shaking at depo yesterday. This morning it is BLACK. Ugh. I'm frantic, of course.
This morning, I backed Catalyst files on external hard drive before screen went completely black. Now I tried to put my CC version (old....Version 4!!!) on an HP I had here as a backup (yeah, right) that has Windows Vista, I guess. Well, it's giving me some junk that it can't install because of a driver, etc, and to contact the "manufacturer." So now I've seen a lot of posts with Catalyst users saying Vista is not good with our system.

My day gets better...........so I call Stenograph, our handy 24-hour support, and their recording just HANGS UP on me. I've called back a number of times. Once in a while I get a recording that says they're experiencing technical difficulties. So am I..........ugh!!!!

So my question is......or questions are........Anyone have a GREAT laptop that they love with their Case Catalyst? I've always stuck with Toshiba. Any ideas? Or maybe can Stenograph help me with the "driver" needed to work on this backup HP computer I have that has Vista? (that's a lot cheaper!!!!!)

Thanks for any suggestions, thoughts, or even just kind words. I'm SO FRUSTRATED right now!!!!
Thanks for listening :)
Karen Diaz :)

[Janiece Young]

Karen,
I just replaced my Toshiba Tecra in April. I tried an HP and it did a terrible job of recording the audiosynch. I returned it. I now have a Sony Vaio and I like it almost as much as my old Tecra which was an amazing computer. I plan to have a new hard drive put in the Tecra and keep it for a back-up.
I have done realtime for attys w/t the Sony and no problems, no freezing. It has Vista software which doesn't bother me b/c all I use it for is at jobs so I'm inside CASE the whole time.
I hope that helps you.
Janiece

[Karen Peterson Diaz]

Thank you, Ashley, for your help. I actually DON'T have a support contract, but was willing to pull out the ol' bank card and pay them for the call for after-hours support! I will wait until tomorrow. I've tried calling and calling and they are just not answering the calls. I will wait until Monday. After stressing all day, my husband came home and plugged our home monitor into my laptop and it at least has me able to scope what is on my laptop. I don't know why I didn't think of that? lol. So, obviously, it is just the screen that went out and the hard drive is fine, thankfully, for now. So I am a lot less stressed now because I can at least scope my jobs I have out. Thank you for your response. I'm not very active on this site, but I really need to be. It is so soothing to be in a place where everyone understands!!! :) Take care........

[Ashley]

Karen,
I am running CaseCAT on a HP computer that has Vista as its operating system. I bought the laptop last summer (Aug 2008) and I am on version 10.03 (or whatever the most current 10.0? is) but I can't imagine that would make much of a difference with Vista being able to handle CC as a program. I used to have a Sony laptop and am much happier with my HP.
I happen to share your same sentiments about CC tech support and I, myself, have had some difficulties with them and their after hours support. If you are under contract (which I guess you would have to be if you have the 24-hour support) they should absolutely be able to provide whatever driver you need.
Did you try loading the CaseCAT CD as well as your machine's utility CD on the older computer?

[April McMillan, CRR, RPR, CSR]

You may want to check out the IBM ThinkPad T or W series. They're wonderful workhorses. Check out my discussion in the Technolust group, Discussion, Laptop.

good luck