[TheWitness]

Thought I would chime in on this topic. I have been using various operating systems for several years now. I guess I started in High School in the late 70's. Since then I have used so many operating systems and so many applications, I imagine I have forgotten more than I can remember and Microsoft applications have been at the core ever since DOS 1.2.x. See, I can't even remember the version of DOS it was. Definately 1.x though. No directories anywhere in that version.

At my parents company, we ran accounts payable, receivable, performed inventory control, and ran mail merge on a snappy Sanyo MBC 550 computer. Was a screemer priced over $3000. It ran DOS, Had no hard drive, dual floppies (that was a bonus). It had 64kbytes of memory, a green screen and a 4 Megaherz processor, a Z80 that is. Before Intel even.

So, Vista, XP, Linux, Unix, and the BSD's (Apple and FreeBSD) are all so much better than what I started on. Heck, in my first year of college, I used a MACINTOSH. Nothing like a black and white GUI on a 12" CRT. I would go blind these days with something like that.

Now onto the discussion at hand. Microsoft is loosing ground, especially over seas, and they are getting pricey. I remember buying Microsoft Project for under $100 and that was not an upgrade. Try doing that now. Microsoft Publisher was under $50. Need I say more. Well I will. Tried Linux, use it on VM's. Yup, I still use Windows as my primary OS. My company produces software for Linux big time and I love working on it over Microsoft.

I tinkered for years with many OS'. I once supported Microsoft as it took down IBM. What I have observed is that what Microsoft, in general, has become is not an OS for true tinkerers or Engineers, but has become an OS for the masses, mostly uneducated about computers and the like. As such, I will likely drop it as others like myself have recently. But the masses will hang on because they know nothing else.

But watch out, because what happens in colleges, run's America in 20 years. So, if the colleges use Linux, so will America some day.

TheWitness

[rodent042]

I am in agreement. People attempting to shove their opinions down each other's throats is not appealing. My fellow penguin-lovers, you are not going to convince anyone to try linux by arguing with them any more than a Jehova's Witness coming to my door is going to get a friendly response.


I might also point out that the article we are posting to is about someone who does NOT like Vista. He is attacked by Microsoft zealots for for speaking out against an OS that has failed to deliver on multiple levels for both the average consumer and big business (a quick google search will provide a plethora of complaints). Some people love it, some don't. Some countries are even seriously talking about boycotting it. Microsoft has even backpedaled themselves and allowed people to exchange Vista for XP. It is plain as day that there are serious problems afoot and it is not the first time (see 95a, NT 3.x, ME). If folks like Vista why must they resort to calling the author (or anyone else, for that matter) names to make their point? Many might take a lesson and practice what they preach.

[tmsassoc]

I haven't upgraded yet and won't until I get a new computer. My current system won't support Vista but it does the business tasks I need to do, tax preparation and bookkeeping. However I do have another problem. A client deleted Outlook Express from his XP computer and I can't find a copy so I can reinstall. Over 3 different sessions I have spent over 4 hours slumming around the Microsoft site trying to find it but no luck. Any search suggestions or alternate sites appreciated. I have also tried Download.com and PC World downloads without success. Lots of security and service pack updates but never the base program.

[Zarkon]

In following this discussion I have seen several references to 32bit versa 64bit Vista.
I have questions. :0

1) The speed and stability issue.

Show of hands! How many of us are running a 32bit OS on 64 bit hardware.?

Why run Vista 32 on a 64 bit computer ? Half your processor and memory are drug along unused. There can't be that much difference to the basic engine for XP. The XP drivers are compatible.

2) If you hate Vista are you running the 64 bit version or the 32 bit version?

I suspect that the 32 bit VISTA is just a retreaded XP. That for marketing reasons got a new name. I 'm betting that originally microsoft planned to drop 32 bit support but were forced by market pressures to fill the 32 bit niche.

3) If you don't run Vista 64bit is it lack of drivers that is stopping you?

?:|64 bit drivers are scarce.

This did not happen when we moved to 16 bit or 32 bit operating systems.

The printer, scanner, etc. hardware aren't necessarily 32 bit either. many of these devices are 8 or 16 bit. :( Data passes from the computer to the peripheral as serial data. My son uses XP64 edition on his desktop. he runs various software. |There are no drivers available for common printers or scanners for that operating system he saves to thumb drive opens the files on my 64bit system runing 32 bit XP . Then he simply prints or scans. Its very suspect!

I would think it would just be a matter of cross compiling the existing drivers for 32 bit.

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!
Message was edited by: Zarkon

[Cheddarhead]

MPH: How does one reach the other forum moderators, and, specifically, how do I reach Kelle? Thanks.

[mphenterprises]

You can reach any member, whether regular member, Member Moderator, or Kellie, by sending that person a Private Message. To reach Kellie, feel free to click on this hyperlink to send her a Private Message directly.

[TheWitness]

64Bit principally means more address space. This is only a problem for large systems such as Databases, Multimedia authoring and many Engineering applications. If your applications need a lot of memory space, then you need to choose a 64bit operating system. However, if you choose such an operating system, please note that all applications will take more memory due to the whole address space issue with 64bit.

Printers and external devices don't care, other than the fact that you likely would be forced to recompile and publish drivers that are compatible with the 64bit OS'.

The downside to the whole thing is that it is likely, although I can't say that I know, that many applications will likely not run. In the "old" days, Microsoft provided a "thunking" layer that allowed 16bit applications to run in the 32bit operating systems.

Regards,

TheWitness

[cbs16]

I really don't get this. I bought a new Dell XPS M1330 that had Vista Home Premium and I love it. Everything seems to make more sense than in XP. Sure there is a slight learning curve, but after that it is really a good OS. Fast and stable as long as you have 2 GB. I run a lot of obscure scientific analysis software; it all works without a hitch. Regarding drivers, I just dropped it on an older ThinkPad T42 and was stunned that EVERY driver installed automatically. Then a really old Dell Inspiron, again perfect. Last, a Toshiba Satellite about 2 years old. Ditto. It just worked.
Maybe the mags are sensationalizing Vista problems to rustle up interest, I don't know.

[epgomez]

I would say vista is a disappointment. I don't agree with the guys that says vista is faster than XP. based on experience I've using windows since it all started and each new version is larger than the next which always requires powerful hardware more powerful than a MAC counterpart because it's always about BLOATWARE! programmers who are very lazy enough to develop efficient code that it always uses the easy way out-> use libraries with several lines of unusable code!

[Geejay]

As a double booter you must install XP on a first partition ( C: ) that may be NTFS or FAT32 and then install Vista on a second NTFS (no choice) partition. When you boot up from then on XP or Vista will appear as your C: drive. When you backup your system ( I use Norton Backup 12 ) make sure you backup both drives; I find it easier to backup from the Vista partition.

I don't know what version of Vista you've tried -- I use Ultimate and have no problems whatsoever.

Best of luck with Linux since it works for you

JG

[Zeroday]

dude! You couldnt dualboot? wow! I have triple booted on my Toshiba Laptop, I have Vista, XP and Ubuntu Linux with Vista installed first and I used Vistas own partioning program!! Y? because I can. Vista has not failed me at all since I got it 4 months ago. I remember everyone bashing XP at the beginning but now everyone (including you) loves it. So in conclusion I bury this article for being so inaccurate

[handy69]

Vista is without a doubt the most BUGGY os that MS has put out. I made the unfortunate decision to make mine a dual-boot. Now how to get the damn thing off is the question. It seems that whenever there is another update my computer does another nose-dive and I am sick and tire of it. MS sucks! It's back to Linux for me. XP was not bad by any means in comparison.

[Jackie40d]

Its why I made a copy of all the files I need to a back up drive ( not backed up type format just copied ) and began moving all my system to Linux Mandriva i586 DVD 2008 version ! Its the Full 64 bit version and has more stuff in it than the older 32 bit version !

[nemophoto]

If you want to talk about buggy OS, let's talk about the original Mac OS X. My wife is a graphic designer and bought a new system when OS X was released. The OS was a sham and not ready for primetime. They had the balls to charge people for what really amounted to a BETA release. It took two more releases to stablize the OS and write most of the features it was suppose to have in the first place. At this point, five (or is it six) years later, it's a pretty decent OS. (There was major whining and uproar from Macophiles over the change from OS 9 to 10, just as there was from the PowerPC platform to Intel.) Still, if you look at it, every time they release a 10.x update, software vendors have to rush madly back to the drawing boards to make it compatible. (Look at many web sites and they'll say something like "Now OS X 10.5 compatible".)

I'm not a huge defender of MS. It's just a company, and their screwed up activation scheme is why I eventually had to abandon XP for Vista. Anytime you come out with a major upgrade or change, people will bitch. It's only because MS is so large, they make an easy target. I've used virtually every OS since the original DOS (including a brief detour to OS/2), and there have been some real turkeys. Vista, in my experience, is not one of them. My system is faster, cleaner and more capable with Vista than under XP. (I could never overclock with XP -- it always crashed my system. Not the case with Vista.) Linux may be great, stable and small (I especially love the latter), but until it has the major support of software vendors, will always be relegated to a niche operating system. One of the best OS's developed, BeOS, never made it anywhere becuase it had no support from the software community. (I had it loaded on my old Win98 machine for a dual boot, but could never run anythng but their bundled apps because no one ever supported it. It was far better and more capable than Windows, Mac or Linux. The dustheap of software history is littered with the "better app" and "better hardware".)

[RedRat]

I must agree with the article. I have Vista Ultimate running on two HP Pavillions, XP on a machine I built, and Linux Ubuntu 7.10 running on my old Dell Dimension 4100 with 256Mb memory. I am not impressed with Vista, we have found that many games are not compatible with that OS. If all you do is surf the net and do minimal email than Vista is OK, but a pain in A##. XP is still very reliable and does all that I need for the moment.

However, the real charmer has been Ubuntu! The beauty of Linux is that it just plain works. You will find that the open source community has virtually every equivalent to the Microsoft Domain. So far I have not had any problems with Ubuntu which is a pleasant surprise. This has made a machine that I was ready to dump into a still viable machine. My next machine, which I will build, will be a Linux machine!

[Jackie40d]

A Linux Machine ? That is just about ANY
COMPUTER you can make turn on . . want something to add to REALLY OLD
computers try Puppy Linux 2.16


I put it in a Compaq 486 laptop with 16
whole megs of ram and it still had almost 5 megs left to run stuff in . . And it had all the open source stuff to play with plus games and CD burner programs . . it found the sound card the old modem and the PCMCIA slot and the card put into it . . And it was faster then the Windows 98 SE that was supposed to be on it . .

[RedRat]

Zeroday: Oops! I guess I was not clear about my XP machine. My XP machine hard drive is pretty much filled and there is not really enough room remaining. I don't want to attempt to re-partition the drive to get only about maybe 20Gb and run the risk of losing all my XP data (I have some valuable stuff there).

My intention is to try and use a new Linux machine for photo and video editing so it makes more sense to just build a new machine. I want to try out the Linux Ubuntu Studio because I have heard some good things about it. I have considered, but don't know if it would work, putting in a second hard drive (they are pretty cheap nowadays) and put Linux on that drive and hopefully Linux will also install a boot manager that would allow me to boot from XP or Linux/Ubuntu. Haven't made up my mind yet on what to do, though I am leaning toward building a new machine.

[RedRat]

Wow! an old 486 machine. Back about 10-15 years ago we put Red Hat on one of our old 486 machine in the lab in which I worked. It was great compared to the various Windows versions of the time (Win 386 and later Win 3.1 for workgroups, then finally Win 95). That machine ran, and ran, and ran just like the energizer bunny and never needed to be rebooted! I believe this was one of the first Red Hat versions out there. That was when I got the bug for Linux. Unfortunately, back then there were not a lot of programs available for it but we were using it for some proprietary type stuff that one of the guys had written.

What surprised me nowadays was that the old Dell Dimension ran Ubuntu very effectively, as I said it appears to be faster than XP on the same machine. But I think it is time I retire the Dell and build a new one.

[JimmyDahGeek]

Actually if you could free up another 15 gig you would be fine. I have a machine that I use a lot and it has a 30 gig partition for linux with a 4 gig swap partition and I'm only using 10 gig of the linux partition. You can read and write to your windows partition after you get it set up. If you use the live Gparted software you can partition your hard drive without losing data. I've done it at least 8 times now and haven't lost anything. I've used it with windows 200, xp, & vista.

[RedRat]

Hey I am trying to rationalize building a new machine here!!! You are being too rational! Doggone it! Anyway, I think my needs for video and photography, while they could be handled by my current XP machine, would be pushing it. I think the dual core Intel or possibly the new AMD quads might be far better for multimedia.