To Vista, or not to Vista

I hear the Open Office is quite unstable?

I agree 100%

But as for commercial success then one needs to look at the statistics. It going to get even worse now, given the microsoft has released the express edition of Visual Studio. You can now develop, for commrcial sale, applications on a FREE set of rich development tools.

Absolutamente! I also went on a mad dash to get HW with XP before it's too late. Last part came in this morning. So I don't have to worry about that stuff for several years.

same

I have an ancient SGI Indy doing duty as print server, firewall, DHCP host etc (NAT and all that jazz) running from a floppy with Linux on it.

Amusing as it was given to me for free from the place I worked years ago, but the monitor and keyboard *still* kick ass.

Cheers

PeteS

OS

experience/expense

I use Open Office 2 for a lot of stuff and I haven't had any problems at all - indeed, it's refreshing not to fight the damn tool as I have to on occasion with Orifice.

Cheers

PeteS

To paraphrase an old joke from an election in the USA:

If Vista is the answer, it must have been a stupid question.

Cheers

PeteS

I have a bunch of copies of W2K pro (so I can use the few Windows tools I must have) along with all the service packs and updates (I have them all cached).

Don't even have to worry about that 'genuine disadvantage' program. XP never had anything I needed.

Cheers

PeteS

I'll say. I regret being hasty and just running out and buying a replacement PC that had XP already installed... bloat-bloat-bloat :-(

...Jim Thompson

You might not have had any choice. When I bought a laptop four or so years ago I was able to cajole them into installing NT, and they docked me $100 for that. I gladly paid. On the next one a couple years ago they told me that there is some hardware in there where only XP has the required drivers or it plain won't work.

So, end of last tax year (smirk...) I went and bought another laptop to make sure I won't be stuck with Vista.

Windows 98 should be very speedy now with 2007 hardware... :)

D from BC

PC Club will sell you a desktop without OS.

Probably a major risk with a laptop and all their peculiar drivers.

...Jim Thompson

Yeah but they are so practical. You can pick them up and take them on a trip. Or you can take it and do some CAD in the yard under the palm tree. Once they are running they pretty much keep humming until something literally falls of. The last one is supposedly even spill-proof.

MSDOS 6.x even more so.

being

and

What are you going to run it on if the DRM equipped hardware does not allow it?

Same here, it's the last OS I will use from M$. It actually works, is very stable, and does not phone home or try to do things automatically for you.

Better hardware.

I once said that too, but then I bought a laptop with XP.

I still have a 12 MHz AT board in storage.

well, *nobody* gives a rat's arse! Visibility is the key to success; blowing a sizable chunk of the turnover makes you visible in the organisation and makes you a "key employee" instead of a mere "ressource" to be depleted and disposed of at leisure..

Go with the flow: The objective is perhaps not to improve your "computing experience" - perhaps it is more important to have an IT budget that justifies having an entire IT department with an IT manager that needs to go to regular business meetings with suppliers in exotic locations?

You Need HP Openview, surely, to manage all that infrastructure! The tag on that should be good for a two-week trip to the bahamas for a product information seminar.

Tsk, silly! People throwing money away on stuff they blatantly do not need!

If my new Vista-DRM infected corporate lapdog does not work it is not *my* problem at all; the IT guys and Microsoft can deal with each other while I go read a book. Everyone get paid either way.

My old XP box or the Linux boxes will not suddently detect the presence of Vista and cease to function; thus the games will run and the programming tools be accessible all the while.