WTF would ANYONE buy a WIn 7 PC?

After win 98 each version just had more problems, and ever more effort put in to stopping end users doing what they wanted with their machines. And the bloat!

I've only found one windows app with no decent equivalent, so I run it on linux using wine. Linux is still rather fussy about webcams, and multimonitor support isnt automatic out of the box. The upside is that its sane, functional, unbloated, and works properly, excellently, reliably, and much more securely.

.

Why do people go out and pay for win to begin with? Ignorance. If a shop only sells windows PCs, youre in the wrong shop.

NT

I was using the Internet, using DOS and KA9Q NOS, before Win3 arrived. Before Linux,even. No Web back then, just telnet, FTP, NNTP, gopher, etc.

*His* view of the market, little girls in offices, typing letters, MBAs, doing whatever nonsense MBAs do, and adventurous consumer hobbyists, didn't, at the time. The 'net was mostly confined to academic users. Some think it still should be (ITCFWI).

More or less. Works for Windows98 was possibly the last decent, usable utility that MS produced, (I'm with Joerg on that one). I've never been able to get it to run under wine.

I don't know what you're used to in Holland, but the sort of pizza you get in Italy isn't quite the same thing you usually get in the States.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

XP is pretty good, and there are lots of apps that aren't available for Linux.

People tell me that W7 is good. I just got a netbook with Win7 installed, just to play with it and see how things work.

John

On a sunny day (Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:42:36 -0800) it happened Fred Abse wrote in :

I ran win3.1 on top of DRDOS. MS integrated the command line with the GUI stuff in win98, mainly to kill Digital Research. It worked, but it did not make MS products any better, on the contrary.

OTOH Linux still has the command line alt F1 ... X is just a layer on to.

Yes, I buy pizza at the supermarket, but there are several decent pizza restaurants in Amsterdam and surroundings. I have been to Italy several times, had pizza there too :-) Long time ago, they still had lires.

On a sunny day (Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:56:56 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Well, I guess it depends on what you want to do. ltspice runs in wine, eagle runs in Linux, Altera has a Linux version. so does Xilinch.

Yea, I have a netbook that runs Linux. Now for many years (first eeepc). Solid state disk...

All that stuff like win version ??? mostly wastes time.

Unfortunately the fact is, if you are an EE and not retired you must use Windows. Whether you like it or not.

Most people think Usenet is a bunch of old professors with long beards. The latest generation doesn't even know what Usenet is.

Up to version 6.0 it's ok, after that, not so much. Thing is, I run my whole accounting chebang with this super low cost software. It usually retails around $20.

Yuck. We never do that, we make it from scratch and then mostly bake it over wood fire, outside.

Who knows, some day Drachmas, Liras, Pesetas and Escudos might be back :-)

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

I expect an OS to just run my apps and keep out of the way otherwise. XP does that pretty well for me. I have three identical HP server-type boxes with hot-plug RAID and I run the same OS image and apps on all three. The same install has been running on the prime machine for four years roughly, nothing corrupted. It very rarely crashes an app, even less often crashes the OS. Good enough.

The Linux guys I know seem to play with Linux a lot.

John

The best "pizza" is flamkuchen ;-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

That would be spelled Flammkuchen:

Looks like this guy's stove is running a bit hot there but it's an optical illusion from the spot light up top.

Flammkuchen is a close relative to Quiche Lorraine which does not at all jibe with my digestive system. The grease in there makes me slightly sick.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On a sunny day (Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:58:42 -0800) it happened Joerg wrote in :

Being retired has its plusses :-) Age does get to you though. There is this saying: "Time is a great teacher, but it kills its students."

But I do not agree completely with you, much of electronics can be done in Unix. There are other operating systems too, I noticed Macs being used in the VU (Vrije Universiteit) Amsterdam for front layouts. Maybe in your position if customers give you MS windows stuff you have to be able to process it. But for original design work? I think not. Maybe it can be done in the cloud, let somebody else install and maintain that MS stuff. Workstation idea... Main plus I see is for writing soft that the market is so big, But these days you need to sign your programs for it to be able to run in that MS OS, and that is not even free. They are making life very difficult for developers, they seem to want to close the whole idea of multipurpose computing (computers). Question is now if new hardware will even be able to run free OSses like linux. One more reason to ... Good thing is that Russia went for linux. May help them win the next war, when the US fleets is rebooting... LOL :_) :-) :-) :-)

Well, you have never read sci.physics no? They would all have Alzheimer... Most of them anyways :-)

I have a huge accounting package installed in Linux, but I never use it. It does exists however,

Dr. Oetker pizza is OK (from Germany). Just stocked up today, mozarella and mushroom ones. Into the freezer, grab one when needed, 12 minutes in the oven, ready. At least you know it is clean, some restaurants ..mmm

US demonrats are trying to de-stabilise Europe. I do not give warnings.

On a sunny day (Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:08:34 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Yes, some people always install the latest kernel. I have been burned by that, as that required me to rewrite some of my apps... # uname -a Linux grml 2.6.21 #1 Fri Feb 18 21:10:00 CET 2011 i686 GNU/Linux Latest kernel upgrade almost a year ago. It is not that I do not have the latest 'unstable': l /usr/src/ total 324962 drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 168 2005-02-11 11:46 rpm/ drwxrwxrwx 20 root root 1464 2007-04-25 20:00 linux-2.6.17.9/

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 43997476 2007-05-05 14:39 linux-2.6.21.tar.bz2

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 59416602 2009-07-04 16:44 linux-2.6.30.1.tar.bz2 drwxrwxr-x 23 root root 1768 2009-07-05 14:56 linux-2.6.30.1/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root grml 12 2009-07-05 15:14 linux -> linux-2.6.21/ drwxr-sr-x 19 root grml 576 2009-07-06 23:15 linux-headers-2.6.15-grml/ drwxr-xr-x 21 root root 1720 2011-02-27 20:52 linux-2.6.21/

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 74789685 2011-04-12 11:52 linux-2.6.38.2.tar.bz2

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 76096559 2011-05-19 10:52 linux-2.6.39.tar.bz2 drwxrwxr-x 23 root root 824 2011-11-24 05:20 linux-3.2-rc3/

-rw-r--r-- 1 root grml 78107202 2011-11-30 10:03 linux-3.2-rc3.tar.bz2

everything locally,

stuff.

Ever once in a while I pull one of my RAID C: drives and plug in a new drive. That gives me an image that I stock in a baggie, just in case. I've never needed to use it.

We back up all work-in-progress to a network drive, which gets backed up daily. Every two weeks we burn a flash stick that backs up everything important. I stash them in various locations in California.

John

Some of us are stuck in the PC world due to the software we need. Win7 has good things and bad things. The user interface got much worse in W7 with Explorer being nearly useless. Had to install Classic Shell to make Explorer behave better, Agent Ransack to replace the M$ file search which is useless, and 4 pages of notes to configure the damn OS so it isn't so annoying. Once you get rid of the annoyances, W7 ain't too far off from W2k or XP. I've only found two bad bugs in W7 related to networking. On the plus side, networking speed is really good compared to previous versions, almost full bandwidth with gigabit connections. Oh, another big plug, dual monitor setup works the way you would expect. W2k and XP, dual monitor setup is horrible. If you have Home Edition of any M$ OS, you can use it for new years celebrations.

surroundings.

Seems listed as spelled both ways.

Huh? Quiche is a thick egg custard... nothing like the flammküchen I got in Bühlertal... relatively thin crust... even once had a dessert flammküchen with peaches on it.

Grease? You must be eating in Kalifornica restaurants ?:-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Which is why I run Windows98se and have no intention of upgrading it. I do have Windows2000 also. Mostly just for USB support of the USB devices that often are not made to work with 98. Win2000 was the early version of XP, which was much more user friendly and still pretty sane, but I still prefer 98, where I can and do use 98 the way I want it to work, not what MS forces us to use along with all their power sucking and worthless bloat. Yea, I also have a computer with XP, and hate it. It's a much newer and faster computer. One of these days I'm gonna see if it will run Win98, but I know about driver issues on these new computers.

As for linux, no thanks!!!! It is not compatible with the software I have been using for over 20 years and is a pain in the ass to install.

With any hope, there may soon be a day when there is a decent alternative to MS operating systems. Some are in the works.

Anyhow, that's my 2 cents on this rather off topic thread.

Hi Mark,

Could you share your "4 pages of notes to configure the damn OS" with me. I'm going to have to move to W7 soon... as you well know, except for the ThinkPad, everything I own is getting old. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
Annoy a Liberal: Stand Them Up to a Blackboard and Ask Them to 
Show Their Math That Balances the Budget, Even After Taxing/Taking 
Everything the Rich Make... Then Punish Their Ignorance :-)

Q: How do you know you've been burglarized by gays?

A: Your furniture's been rearranged, and there is a quiche in the oven :-)

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

Yes, Alt-Ctrl-F1 thru Alt-Ctrl-F6 here, then Alt-Ctrl-F7 thru Alt-Ctl-F12 here. 6 CLIs, 6 GUIs.

I boot into CLI, then startx. I've found xdm a bit flaky.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

Is Andy Tanenbaum still a Prof there?

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)