XP is garbage

Hello John,

Welcome to progress in the world of computers. Similar frustrations here, I do not like XP at all.

Last time I bought a new laptop I could convince them to ship it with an older and thus more stable version. For a fee, of course. This time I could not cajole them into it so I got an XP box. And I don't like it.

Regards, Joerg

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Click on Tested DVD drives.

Hello Jim,

I was tempted to do that as well. But besides finding another license for NT there is another lurking issue: Often new hardware isn't supported anymore. Even some of the SW I use, such as the scanner and printer driver explicitly says it will not work with any OS other than XP.

Regards, Joerg

LOL, my Sony Viao is running perfectly on Windows XP Pro.

Never crashes, never "beeps and boops". I do have a Win2K box at work, which has is also very good, but I prefer XP as the mouse wheel does work better. Of all the Operating systems that I've used Windows XP is the best OS that I've seen to date. Win95,98 and ME needed to be re-built every six months, Windows NT 4 once a year, Windows 2K works well, but there are issues which are down to it's age more than anything else.

I'm still keeping an eye on Linux, but I don't think that it's quite got the ease of use bit sorted out properly. I can't see it being a serious contender for Windows for a while yet, but it is improving.

Not true at all.

Then by a Mac for pete's sake.

Hey Jeff, I used it. I have no idea what slashdot is talking about. Making users is exactly the same process as it is on any linux box.

There are not differently named apps. The difference is there is a task manager already there, rather than digging it out, and a few other utilities that most windows users are used to having handy in a lame attempt to make the switch less painful.

There is no such thing a a real *nux box anymore, as they are ALL different. Apps don't work across the board, they have to be compiled for the specific distro and often become unusable when the next revision hits. Its all quite a joke, and most laughable.

As was said at the front of this linux stuff, Linux is splintered, and has no future outside of the hard core hacker willing to invest hundreds of hours every time a new distro hits. I ain't touting it. I have tried at least a dozen apps, and the only thing that sucks more than linux itself is the people who live and die by it, and go ballistic when you say anything negative about it. Others enjoy it, so I posted what I had actually seen by using it, not just some quotes from a microsoft loving web site.

JB

There are as many opinions, as there are users. Run and hide from Norton Ghost. It will fail you when you need it most.

Let the objections begin, but remember you have been warned by someone who has waited years and years to see if Norton/Symantec could ever get it right. Not so far.

JB

No wonder it's so popular. :-)

Getting your average computer user to perform the equivalent of 'su' in ANY operating system takes an act of Congress, I think...

....and unfortunately I suspect that QNX's days might be numbered with so many companies now switching to Linux for their embedded OSes... :-(

That was the reason for the 'sort of' windows gui, so folks don't need to go to the command line. Seems like most distros now let you create a user which is more secure, and when you try to access something that requires su, they just pop up a window and ask for the root password.

Few windows users are prepared for working under the hood in a linux system :-)

JB

I think Windows 98 in general is far less stable in Win2K and XP. In particular, ANY PROGRAM WHATSOEVER can willy-nilly can and write anywhere in the PC's memory, to its I/O ports, etc... yikes!

Windows 98 is also pretty hard to 'secure.' For an individual user, that typically doesn't matter, but for actual companies, security is a Big Deal...

I haven't had the problems others have with XP, although I'd say that about the only thing I really like in XP that isn't in Win2K is the automatic grouping of the window "buttons" down on the taskbar based on the program that spawned them all. Something like a SPICE program popping up a half dozen different windows really clutters the Win2K taskbar -- not so in XP.

Oh, and XP's "remote control" is pretty cool. Much more reliable, in my expereience, than stuff like TightVNC that you might get for W2K.

---Joel Kolstad

John,

You might want to look at Symantec's "GoBack" program -- works FAR better than, e.g., Windows "checkpoint" restores, in my experience.

Hello Chris,

What ever happened to Linux with a Windows extension (Lindows?)?

Yes. I am just thankful that my car does not need an operating system to work. Maybe some day my toaster will but then I'll just roast my bread on the Weber barbeque.

Regards, Joerg

That's one think I liked about '98: I could write programs that did I/O without going through DLLs or drivers. I could dimension a PowerBasic integer array at a physical address that just happened to be 64K of VME register space. So variable V(dev) directly accessed a VME module register!

It's not the application programs that punch holes in Windows. It's usually Windows itself.

John

Do you know what XP actually stands for? It stands for...eXPerience.

Tom

Well, with Win2K and XP you can get "generic" drivers that will let you play directly in memory or I/O space all you want, and I don't think there's anything wrong with using such drivers for one's own testing/learning/hacking purposes, but in general I LIKE the idea that the OS provides some amount of protection from errant programs.

In Win2K and XP I'd tend to agree... in Win98 I think it was far more often the applications.

In Win2K and XP there are a lot of pretty crappy drivers out there. Even Creative Devices had drivers for their sound cards (at one time) that failed on multi-processor systems, which is pretty embarassing IMO.

---Joel

I read in sci.electronics.design that Ken Taylor wrote (in ) about 'XP is garbage', on Tue, 12 Apr 2005:

Because even THEY think they got it wrong last time?

Hello Graham,

Yep, I have yet to find one.

Regards, Joerg

That is good to hear. Its still the finest OS written for the PC. I have to use PCB/SCH software to make any money, so I am in Win2K and rarely get back to OS/2 anymore because of the CAD requirements I have.

I did spring for $50 and got Object Desktop which is a very nice addon to windows that lets me have a desktop that looks a lot like OS/2 with the toolbar/launchpad instead of icons all over and the menu bar. It lets me "skin" the apps to appear like OS/2 as well, so that most people who see it have no idea that its Windows. Of course its still windows under it all, but time has made me into someone who just wants to be productive, having spent twenty years hacking and horsing around trying to avoid M$ altogether. If you use CAD, it can't be done

Nice to know others are still hanging with eCS. I wish I could....

JB

Hello Tom,

Hmmm, I always have to brace myself when in front of an XP computer so I don't let of an eXPletive...

Regards, Joerg