Sure, registery cleaners are OK, but you have to keep buying them everytime they put out a new system. I'm wondering if using Microsoft's free "Virtual PC" is much better, just install programs that work and play well together into separate images. I've got a quad core that grinds to a crawl with all my favorites installed. My biggest beef with VIsta is they should have made the "XP Theme" the same working interface, with a few tabs called "new features", and not some desktop theme that is really just window dressing.

Otherwise I might as well learn the KDE and other Linux interfaces? All the program code bloat is also taking all the horses out of the new hardware? I have some favorite 16bit softies, and you really get stuck with XP32 bit as a common middle ground. I would think with all the new L2 cache sizes and 64bit pathways that Vista would be a big improvement, I can't help how many people that OS will put out of work because they are thrown a curve ball and have to learn it or else.

Actually my comment about registry cleaners was more about Windows in general. I have registry cleaners installed on both my XP machines, but none of the 3 Vista machines. Now, either they are not needing any cleaning, or the inconsistencies build up slower.

---

I don't understand all your Windows bashing if it wasn't for those guys plugging away year after year, you wouldn't be on here with your copy cat files to be bashing them

You want to get rid of ADware and Malware ? There is a file in your Windows called "HOSTS" change the file from 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0 and your computer will have no more of the above . . and I do stuff like FTP up to my site and wander around any place Ilike . . I did have an attack on my fire wall from incna or something like that its the place which gives people a DNS number . .

Since I changed the number in the hosts file I have ran my anti virus and anti malware programs every day and they have come up empty of any malware or virus's . . I did get some cookies that were removed by AdAware and nothing from Spybot search and destroy or from PC Spy Doctor and nothing from AVG root kit and nothing from AVG Anti Virus . . Only time my computer slows down is when I am running all of the atthe same time ( starting one about 1 minute after the other ) Then I am running close to 98 % CPU usage for a while

First question - did your client de-crapify and de-Nortonize his laptop? My HP laptop runs fine after that process. It's not as fast as my desktop, but no laptop is.

Second question - since you mentioned the "instability" of Vista, can you provide us with an example?

Comment - since I use Vista and XP at home and am forced to use W2K at work, I'm still trying to find my horse. Since I have several acres of woods, the other part is not a problem.

---

Evil Empire - do mean Steve Job's outfit that just introduced a laptop with no drive slots - everything must be downloaded, apparently from the mother ship in Ca.

---

Nice list. At least it would be except for the errors.

Lotus to Excel? Get real. Any long term user of both Lotus and Excel knows they are based on different concepts. Lotus was an accountants program and Excel is an engineers program. Excel uses RPN (as do HP calculators), but have tempered this in recent versions. Lotus never did use it. Besides, the father of Excel (Microsoft Multiplan) pre-dated Lotus by several years, even starting in CP/M and on the AppleII. To this day the R1C1 row/column labels are an option in Excel. When Microsoft ported Multiplan to the Mac and then to Windows, they changed the name. When Lotus tried to t

CP/M to DOS, your kidding right?

Digital Research had the inside track for the killer ap of all killer aps - PC-DOS. It is well documented that after being rebuffed by the response by DR, the IBM team left and went to Seattle. Bill Gates signed the non-disclosure agreement and was dressed more like the IBM team and sold them a disk operating system. After they left, he went down and bought the base of PC-DOS from Seattle Computing. DR later developed a competing product that is still in use today for some installation routines - DR-DOS.

WordPerfect to Word? Give me a break.

WordPerfect was (and probably still is) better than Word with features in it that still don't exist in Word (Text Art anyone?) Both came along well after Word Star which was the first major word processing package on Micro Computers (later called PC's when IBM let the tm go by the wayside). WordPerfect was another one slow to convert to windows, and then when MS came out with the bundled Office concept. WordPerfect with no popular spreadsheet and Lotus with no popular word processor could not compete with the combo of Word and Excel.

---

Quote:
"WordPerfect to Word? Give me a break.

WordPerfect was (and probably still is) better than Word with features in it that still don't exist in Word (Text Art anyone?) Both came along well after Word Star which was the first major word processing package on Micro Computers (later called PC's when IBM let the tm go by the wayside). WordPerfect was another one slow to convert to windows, and then when MS came out with the bundled Office concept. WordPerfect with no popular spreadsheet and Lotus with no popular word processor could not compete with the combo of Word and Excel. "
_________________________________________________

Having used Wordstar (WS) back in the old DOS 3.x days and afterword, then tried WordPerfect (WP), and finally Word for DOS, I would say that Word won hands down. The learning curve for Wordstar and WordPerfect was very steep. I had the unenviable task of trying to show secretaries in our office how to use the PC versions of various word processing programs. Word's learning curve, prior to Windows, was far less steep than either WS or WP. Also, WP was absolutely lousy for installing printer drivers, even when it was ported to Windows. WP never quite accepted the Windows concept.

A secretary could get up to speed in Word within a day or so, while WP or WS, with their various embedded ctrl commands drove them crazy. Some offices in our agency mandated WP and the secretaries took literally weeks to get up to speed. The reason Word won out was simply that the office became productive much faster than with either WP or WS. In business time is money, as the saying goes.

While MS was developing Windows (both 1.x and 2.x) MS ported Word over to the Macs, when that happened the learning curve for Word was even quicker because it was truly WYSIWYG. The secretaries loved it. Finally, when MS develop Windows 3.x Word for Windows finally took off. By that time WS and WP were still DOS oriented and never really caught on. In fact, because I worked in a government agency we had mandates to use certain word processors, WP being one of them. This actually caused quite a problem for the agency in that we took longer to get faster and more uptodate computers. It took a long time to finally move away from the WP world. WP really was an anachronism among word processors.

Word was and still is a very fine word processor, granted that most users only use perhaps 10-20% of its full potential. +But the catch here is that my 20% is not your 20%! +It appeals to a wide range of users, from home users writing letters (who probably only use about 1% of its capability) to large offices who might use 80% of all it is capable of doing. Combine Word with Excel and then a presentation software program and you can see why it succeeded in the business world.