[rgreen4]

obviocapitao said:

But it doesn't matter if Microsoft gives Windows away for free -- we're about to see a surge of Linux/ARM netbooks that will cost around $200 and boost 15 hours of battery life.

This statement flies in the face of market reality. There has been a rash of returns of the Linux based netbooks in favor of the XP based ones. As a result many are being discontinued. The consumer wants the programs they are used to, not the almost versions that come for Linux. They are also not interested in th hoops they have to jump through to download and install programs.

Windows took off when it came out of the techie closet and became a system the consumer could easily use. You download a widely available program and then double click it and it self extracts and installs. Or you buy a package with a disc, insert the disc and when the autorun menu opens you click install and it does the rest. Most of the netbooks are purchased by the road warriors who work for corporations, and Open Office while close is not compatible enough to read and write everything that the corporate does on on MS Office. The Linux netbook could be $100 and 30 hours of battery life, but if it is not compatible with the software the rest of the company uses, it just a paperweight.

So, instead, they spend a couple of hundred dollars more, get a netbook with XP, MS Office and recharge it a little more often. But now the files are fully compatible and you can do real work with it.

One of the main misconceptions of the Linux crowd is that the world wants a free OS. That has obviously been proved false, as some 105 varieties of the free OS (at last count) are combined for somewhere between 1% and 3% of the PC's in use. That's after more than 15 years of development.

Linux works well on desktops, but has documented compatibility problems with wireless laptops (especially those with Broadcom wireless chips), and Open Office is fine if you are only dashing off a few letters for your self and a few personal spreadsheets, but if you are going to interchange files with corporate users or even some volunteer organizations, you will have compatibility problems. Until Linux and Open Office solve these problems, they will never be a mainstream OS or Office Suite, even if it is free.

I personally changed from my favorite apps, WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 over a decade ago because all the machines at work were going with Office 97, later upgraded to Office 2000 and late last year to Office 2007. I do work with a major volunteer organization and all the documents, spreadsheets and all their training slides are in Office 2007 as well.

[rasmasyean]

You are wrong. Furthurmore. Vista has a S3 sleep (suspend to RAM) as default, where it only takes like 2 Watts and like a couple of seconds to resume back to original state. If you have an old laptop, maybe the hardware didn't exist that allows it to do it then. But you have to update your understanding of these items.


I thought that perhaps you were just a Mactard that denies any fault or thinks everything else sucks. I guess what really is the case is that you do not know much about modern computers and are just stuck with the state that you know several years ago. And it shows in many of your posts throughout this thread.
FYI, time to read up on some things before you keep making yourself look bad.

[MarioJP]

rasmasyean said:

You are wrong. Furthurmore. Vista has a S3 sleep (suspend to RAM) as default, where it only takes like 2 Watts like like a couple of seconds to resume back to original state. If you have an old laptop, maybe the hardware didn't exist that allows it to do it then. But you have to update you understanding of these items.





I thought that perhaps you were just a Mactard that denies any fault or thinks everything else sucks. I guess what really is the case is that you do not know much about modern computers and are just stuck with the state that you know several years ago. And it shows in many of your posts throughout this thread.

FYI, time to read up on some things before you keep making yourself look bad.

is that what that is i could never figure that when i went into the system bios "suspend to Ram"

thanks for the info dude

[asiafish]

rasmasyean said:

You are wrong. Furthurmore. Vista has a S3 sleep (suspend to RAM) as default, where it only takes uses like 2 Watts and like a couple of seconds to resume back to original state. If you have an old laptop, maybe the hardware didn't exist that allows it to do it then. But you have to update your understanding of these items.





I thought that perhaps you were just a Mactard that denies any fault or thinks everything else sucks. I guess what really is the case is that you do not know much about modern computers and are just stuck with the state that you know several years ago. And it shows in many of your posts throughout this thread.

FYI, time to read up on some things before you keep making yourself look bad.

Nothing to look up, I HAVE BOTH. Vista sleep takes about 4 seconds to resume, which is fine, the problem is that it doesn't always work. Hibernation has been perfect in Windows since Windows 2000, but it is still slow.

I have Windows 7 running as well and so far it is pretty good, hopefully it will equal OS X sleep and resume speed and reliability in the retail version. Vista is close, much better than XP, but still not perfect. OS X isn't perfect either, its just a little closer than Windows is right now.

Mind you I'm only talking about sleep and resume, or suspend to ram if you want to get technical. If you think I'm a Mac zealot than clearly you haven't been reading my posts. I'm about as platform agnostic as can get and have just as many things that I prefer in Windows as in Mac, including the Windows UI, which I think is faster and (in classic mode) cleaner than OS X. My work situation is just that, my own, and in that narrow field of running form courtroom to courtroom, opening and closing my laptop, sleeping and resuming, there is no better OS at present than OS X. For other workflows other systems may be better. I am also an avid gamer, especially when I travel, and for gaming I choose Windows. That I play those games on a MacBook Pro is irrelevant, in gaming mode it is just a moderately fast, premium priced and premium quality PC like any other premium priced and premium quality PC.

[rasmasyean]

I have no idea what a "legal pleading" is in your case, but you should know that Mac Office 2008 is a nerfed version of Win Office 2007. They couldn't support the technology to develop an equivalent MS Office even though it took them one year longer. You can check Wikipedia quickly for criticisms as well as other sources. Just an FYI once again...so you know that MacOffice and WinOffice are different. Not even counting like a dozen Suite titles that don't exist in the Mac version...

[insightdriver]

Dear Ms Tard,

I won't tear apart your long post point by point. I will only say, folks, do some fact-checking because she has made some errors or exagerations.

For one thing, take any product, like a laptop, and drop it , and likely it will break.. There are fragile things like the screen. You cannot project the basic material properties of aluminum and determine how shock proof the Apple laptop is. To do the right thing, comparison drop tests would have to be made, ala Consumer Reports typical reviews.

Airplanes have been made out of aluminum for over 50 years.

Finally, Ms Tard, you put a lot of effert in, but had very little clarity amongst all the clutter.

If I where to spend north of too kay on a laptop, I would not rule out an Apple one at all. Whether I would pull the trigger would depend on how I felt that day. It is just as valid to by something because it looks nice, even if one could get better performance from a cheaper model. Besides, for most computer users, for day to day use, they rarely use more than an average of 10% of their computing power. So when it gets down to it, the human is the weak link, not the performance of the box.

[asiafish]

rasmasyean said:

I have no idea what a "legal pleading" is in your case, but you should know that Mac Office 2008 is a nerfed version of Win Office 2007. They couldn't support the technology to develop an equivalent MS Office even though it took them one year longer. You can check Wikipedia quickly for criticisms as well as other sources. Just an FYI once again...so you know that MacOffice and WinOffice are different. Not even counting like a dozen Suite titles that don't exist in the Mac version...

A legal pleading is the format required for just about every court in the US. There is a lot of standardized spacing that must be exact, and a vertical double line running the entire page with numeric markers for page lines that must line up perfectly with the text in the main body. It is difficult to create without either a template or Wizard. Both MS Word and WordPerfect have templates and wizards for legal pleadings because every lawyer, law clerk, paralegal, legal secretary and judge must work with them.

Open a legal pleading in any application other than the one that it was created in and that formatting will break, guaranteed, every time. Sometimes they used to even break when opening on a different version, but that was back in the Word 2.0 for Windows/Word 5.1 for Mac days (until 1993).

I could care less that the Mac version of Office doesn't have Access, which I don't use, or that the Windows version doesn't have Project Center, which I also don't use. What matters is that I can open a legal pleading created in Word for either Mac or Windows ON either Mac or Windows and will not have to recreate the formatting, which is a huge waste of time. That is why Linux is not an option, and that is why I can't use Works on a PC or iWork on a Mac.

I do not use 1/10th of the capabilities of Office on either platform, but I need my pleadings to open perfectly, every single time. Fortunately, in that regard there is not difference between Office for Mac and Office for Windows. Both open all .doc and .docx pleadings perfectly.

[rasmasyean]

Office 2007 on Wine, eh? ROFL! My donkey!
appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=4992

Besides, it's not just the application itself that people use. If you have OLE, COM, .NET and all sorts of things that integrate the suite and others with it...good luck! Basically, if you want to cut and paste something other than plain text...time to adopt a new religion and pray.

[asiafish]

rasmasyean said:

Office 2007 on Wine, eh? ROFL! My donkey!

appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=4992



Besides, it's not just the application itself that people use. If you have OLE, COM, .NET and all sorts of things that integrate the suite and others with it...good luck! Basically, if you want to cut and paste something other than plain text...time to adopt a new religion and pray.

OLE has been working fine on Macs since around 1994, .NET and COM are fine too. I cut and paste far more than text and have links to outside applications with no issues whatsoever. I have Word for Mac print mail-merged envelopes out of a FileMaker Pro database, as just one example. I have never had an issue that needed the Windows version of Office instead of the Mac version, or vice versa.

As for Wine, they only support Office up to 2003, and that is listed as partial support. Still no-go on Linux.

[rasmasyean]

I was talking about Wine (the Windows emulator for Linux).
Anyway...regardless of that...what makes you think .NET works on Macs? If that were true, then a whole assortment of Windows programs would work on Macs off the bat. But, they don't.

[asiafish]

rasmasyean said:

I was talking about Wine (the Windows emulator for Linux).

Anyway...regardless of that...what makes you think .NET works on Macs? If that were true, then a whole assortment of Windows programs would work on Macs off the bat. But, they don't.

EVERY Windows application works on Macs since Macs can run Windows.

[rasmasyean]

I think the misconceptions of the Linux crowd that the world wants a "free OS" is because many of them are young and poor. This can also be seen from many Linux fanaticism rants that don't really conform to reality and real-life situations. This lack of funds along with lack of experience leads them to believe everyone else sees the world in their shoes. It also stems from an idealism that isn't shared by the majority of people. When a lot of them grow richer and older, they may soon realize that this "extra cost" is actually peanuts as well as is not worth the amount they can make in the hours of fiddling around with the "free OS". Then the "free" argument becomes irrelevant. In real life, decent Linux meant for serious business is NOT "free" anyway.
Even 3rd world nations want Windows XP humanitarian laptops (XO) despite the higher cost because they want their children to train with world class software. They too recognize the value obtained from premium.
Not that I'm trying to mock "young and poor" people, just trying to help you understand the mentality. There was a time when I too lined up around the block for free Ben and Jerry's ice-cream. :p But at some point, it's not worth your time anymore.

[rasmasyean]

yankeeDLL,
Not all Windows is stable true. But the ones that need to be usually are. Often if they are in hands that don't mess them up or are protected from viruses etc. I used to call up Desktop support to ask them if I can have an application I saw a co-worker use. They said I already have that and proceed to connect me and troubleshoot. They find out that I haven't logged off in several months and that the application and company patches install upon logon and reading my profile. I've done this several times for different "issues" and pissed off Tech-support! haha

[TechieXP]

First off in Windows sleep and hibernate are not exactly the same. Sleep save your system to ram, and hiberbate creates a file. Sleep loads pretty fast...on my system it takes 3 sec..including login...hibernate takes longer bec it wasnt meant to be instant. Hibernate saves a file to the drive and when you resume it has to read the file. How long it takes depends on how much you have open, how faster you drive is an you system speed. Hibernation on my desktop takes about the same time when I boot...about 50 secs.o I usually just leave my system going and I have never come home to a BSOD or a restarted system. I dont set Windows update to install my updates...i do them manually. If a person has a laptop or desktop that takes more then 5 secs to resume from sleep, then they are simply perfoming bad maitenance of the system. Also we have 4 macbooks in the office...they don't always wake up from sleep instantly.

Since we have them in our office I have learned more about them. The only difference I see is the style and names. no matter what you name it, it doesn't change what it is. I like Macs GUI...that is about it. But I can theme change and still have it. Something you can't do on a Mac.

One of teh coolest things about Windows and Windows based PC, is the ability to personalize almost everything. If you don't like what they give you, you can modify ALL of it...

I just wanted to see if anyone can explain certain benefits. I am aware there are people who have a need to dualboot...i wasn't speaking of them. I was speaking mostly to those who get a Mac and install Windows and use Windows most of the time.

I dualboot to test and I have Windows vitualized and installed on a single drive with a partition for each OS. But it is for testing and helping others with problems.

The only benefit of Windows in my case is to turn on my pc and host my appz. I seldom use any of Windows built in features other than the browser. When I use the Mac I am indifferent to the OS itself as I don't use it features, just the browser mostly. I find most operating system themselves to be boring as they are all basically the same...

After not playing with Mac OS since teh first version, it is amazing how it has grown up. But if you look closely at OSX...you can see it is still a bit of Mac OS and a bit of what Steve made when he was at his comapny and made teh NextStep OS. However if you compares Mac OS or classic mac and comapre it to OSX...the NextStep OS was a lot more like Windows in many aspects...just like earlier Windows was very similar to Mac OS.

[yankeeDDL]

Rasmasyean,
just to be clear, I don';t think that Windows is "worthless". Sure, standby and hibernation work ...most of the times. The system does not crash ... most of the times. Boot times are not too bad ... at the beginning. You can do that with Linux and Mac as well. It's nothing special. Only Linux and Mac are more reliable. They're also not perfect, but the chance that your computer doesn't "wake" after standby, or that it becomes instable after standby, it's higher with Windows. I wish there was a way to collct real data, but there isn't.

In my experience there is no match for the reliability of a Linux/Mac vs the reliability of Windows. This does not mean that Windows is not reliable, it means that Linux and Mac have excellent reliability, at the point you just don't need to worry about it.

Your point on not messing with the PC to avoid it to become instable is not very valid, in my opinion. I cannot imagine anyone that runs windows that is not in administrator mode. Anybody. While in Linux this is default. So it is far easier to'make a mess' in Windows than it is on Linux, because any time you need to change a critical parameter you'll need to enter a password. Let's not forget: the people that read (and write) a "PCWorld" forum, are probably quite advanced users. But the vas majorify of PCs are "average Joe" PCs ... and "average Joe" simply doe not know better.

Your point about installing patches is also valid: with Windows you need to reboot after you install patches. With Linux you don't. People that use Windows are so used to such unreasonable and inefficient behavior that don;t even realize that there is an alternative. You leave the PC ON all th etime, the PC is there for you when you need it, you don't need to bother with rebooting, you don't need to worry about the OS crashing on you or rebooting because the system becomes unstable. I refuse to believe that all the windows users in this forum never had any problem of stability with Windows. Then again, this is "PC world" so readers are likely to be experienced semi-pro users. Still, I read comments of people saying that "it's good for the RAM to reboot every now and then" and other excused that simply hide the truth, with Windows you must reboot occasionally, and you're forced to reboot sometimes.

[TechieXP]

I am one who will say I have had problems, but not like what many describe. From as far back as I can remember I didn't ever run anti-virus software. I run it now because I have someone else using my pc and they are not as polished as I am. Better safe than sorry.

After switching too NT versions of Windows I can definitely say I have had far less problems. I was trying to figure what would be a cgood sign of instability. Have I had programs crash? Yes. Typically the browser. Both IE and FF. I am so glad IE has recovery like FF does.To this date I have been using Vista since beta and I have yet to experience a BSOD. My rule of thumb is I tested the programs I knew I needed to use during the Release Candidate stages of Vista.

I can not say the same for 9x. Most of my problems were in Windows 95, but it was a hardware issue not a Windows issue. In Windows 98 programs crashed all the time.One thing I did to lessen issue was too never install repeat software.

When I first started using NT, I realized that mistakes during experimentation were a bit more costly. NT isn't as forgiving as 9x was. So when I first started using XP, I created a lot of problems on my own because I honestly didn't know what I was doing. Same with Windows 2000. After a few hard lessons including losing a whole partition that contain over $100,000 in software...I realized what I needed to stop doing. If I wanted to experiment...install in on another drive. Which I did.

The biggest difference in NT vs 9x is the services. If you can turn off what you don't need that will help. Don't run programs not designed from the OS. In theory and 32bit application should be able to move over to another OS without issue. In relaity this isn't always teh case. Vista even broke many of Microsoft's own application if you weren't up to date. Example...in order to use Office 2000 in Vista it needs to be at SP3.

I can say that I may experience a glitch often...but not everyday.

As far as sleep or hibernation...so far to this point I have not experienced am issue. I use sleep mode everyday in XP and Vista and there hasn't been a time I have had an unsuccessful wake up. Maybe I am lucky. However I did notice that the system is more sluggish if I use hibernation.

I just think we have gotten so use to the minor issue, that many of us just feel it is going to be just part of the experience. It's like your car...they break down when you don't expect and after that it is one thing after another.

I don't want to use an OS that requires me to need a college degree. I really don't use teh features of Windows other than to boot, the calculator or browser. The rest is simply taking up space. I am glad MSFT is pulling much of it out in 7.

[WinTard]

For the record, Windows 7 Ultimate x64 beta 7077 on a Dell Latitude D830 (BIOS version A14) takes exactly less than a second to wake up from suspend, and 23 seconds to resume from hibernation (including 9 seconds spent in the BIOS), which makes Windows take only 14 seconds to resume? BIOSes are all different based on POST (Power On Self Test) and options selected.

[rasmasyean]

I guess "traditionally", people put up with the instabilities because it's a trade-off for the application support and universal compatibility. Though you are right in that "on average" Windows tend to get flaky more than Linux and OSX.
But I suppose these days, many people use mostly web applications and web related stuff. They thought they'd make cheap netbooks for like children in developing nations and all, but it all got swallowed up by Westerners...many of whom wanted a "second" laptop for the ultra-light mobility.
It looks like XP is the new WinCE. Except this time, it's not just for geeks and people who want to look important.
Though I don't think Linux will make anymore advancements in this area. It's more like they will recede more. Because people just have their software already on XP and they just don't want to fiddle around with it to find and install stuff. The whole point of this mini-psuedo-top is convenience in a minimalist sense. There are sub $300 XP netbooks now. I mean, if a Linux netbook goes for $200...we've been at the $100 difference already and they didn't make a difference. Why would people care now? And a lot of linux netbooks were bought because there were no XP choices. Now everyone and their mom makes one...or two. As a matter of fact I just saw a Vista Home Premium netbook. It wasn't a "sub-compact"...it was an Atom computer! It was a bit more expensive, prolly not worth it, but I'm sure they'll make more and drop the prices.
EDIT: I found the one I saw at the store on CNET. It's this one. I intially thought it was a Vista Basic machine, but I guess it's actually Home Premium. Next is Ultimate, soon I bet!

http://www.cnet.com....m-339294540.htm

[asiafish]

WinTard said:

For the record, Windows 7 Ultimate x64 beta 7077 on a Dell Latitude D830 (BIOS version A14) takes exactly less than a second to wake up from suspend, and 23 seconds to resume from hibernation (including 9 seconds spent in the BIOS), which makes Windows take only 14 seconds to resume? BIOSes are all different based on POST (Power On Self Test) and options selected.

Sleep and hibernation speed and reliability in Windows depend on many things, mostly open applications, pagefile and drivers. Video and network card drivers are probably the biggest culprits for resume failures.

I have Build 7057 of Windows 7 running on a ThinkPad T61 (integrated graphics) and so far it resumes reliably (30 or so resumes, no failures) and is about 4 seconds to resume from suspend, 35 seconds from hibernation. I seriously doubt that the Dell resumes in under a second, from suspended to a responsive desktop as even instant-on devices like PDAs aren't that fast. Under a second means that the screen was dimmed, but the system was still running, whcih is one of the options in Windows.

That same T61 is only about a second or two slower in Vista and equally reliable. In XP it is about the same speed as Vista, though it will fail about once per 8 resumes from suspend and once in 20 from hibernation.

Windows 2000 resumes equally fast and is just as unreliable as XP from suspend and just as reliable (perfect) as Vista from hibernation, though going into hibernation can take up to 3 minutes on a 3GB RAM system with many open applications and documents.

[bbvammy]

I have a question and can anyone answer this?

Because, I don't have a netbook yet.

Can I dual boot netbook?

Ubuntu as my OS for online security

XP as my back up for software availability

Best of both world? ]:)