Getting a new PC - OSes

by Nosferatu 21 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Nosferatu

  So, the good news is I'm finally getting a new PC. The bad news is it's coming installed with Windows Vista. Hooray for formatting the hard drive!!!

  Why the hell do they only give out the licenses instead of the actual software CD now? It's like Microsoft has taken away the power from the user to do what they want with their computer. It's a dumb system, and I won't support it.

  I've been thinking about finding a nice *cough*pirated*cough* copy of Windows 2000 for an OS just to run whatever windows software I need. I have a copy of XP "pro", but I hate XP. I've never worked with such a stubborn hunk of crap for an OS, well maybe except for ME.

  I'm wanting to go dual boot - Win2000 and LINUX!!!! Some of you have shown me some screenshots of Ubuntu and it looks quite nice. I want to put the power of the PC back into my hands.
• 

  Satanus

  I like w2000. I am stubbornly holding onto it as long as i can. Don't want xp. Power to the people!

  S
• 

  Nosferatu

  I can't believe how much people are slamming Vista. The sales guys at the computer store are slamming it, lots of people online are slamming it, I haven't seen anybody defend it yet. I'm also in disbelief of how many people defend XP. I find it slower and more unstable than my old PC running Win95. At least when I kill something in the task manager, it goes away immediately. When I try doing that in WinXP (usually killing Internet Explorer), it takes a minute or two to go away. Then it irritates me with an option to send a bug report that doesn't provide the option of never sending one.

  I've become tired of Microsoft's garbage. To do the everyday computer stuff, I'll run Linux. To run Windows software, I'll run 2000. I've heard lots of good things about 2000, and it's probably the closest decent thing I'll get to my beloved Win95.
• 

  KW13

  I think we've had this conversation before

  With Linux some flavours (versions) are purely for geeks, but some are not. Ubuntu is brilliant, i always enjoyed it and i continue to do so.

  If anyone wants Linux, i immediately recommend they install it.

  Dual booting Windows with Linux is relatively easy, just remember to install Windows FIRST then Linux Second.

  Remember though, Linux isn't Windows and although there are similarities there are also a lot of differences that will take getting used to. You may find connecting to the internet difficult, so i also recommend using a Router to connect because Modems are one thing Linux is hard to work with.
• 

  Midget-Sasquatch

  Yeah the "software" or controllerless modems are a pain to get working in linux. But if you're not hindered by dialup like some of us here, you can always get a real cheapo external modem for faxing. There was a company (linuxant) selling drivers for connexant based modems too.

  I used knoppix (a gnu/debian based distro of linux) for a bit but think I'm going to try MEPIS next.
• 

  zev

  i have an xp based machine for general stuff.

  i also have a seperate mepis 6.0.1 machine that has a rather unusual way of running xp.

  my mepis web page is here.

  well, unusual to regular folks anyways.

  i also have another linux based computer in those pictures that runs my web server and ham radio proprietary hardware and software for connecting radio's to the internet. linux can do allot of things that you wouldn't usually see.

  all about my irlp radio project here.

  my current MEPIS 6.0.1 desktop looks like this:

  my current mepis desktop

  that being said, xp is one of the best o.s's that ms ever made. for the common folk anyways. i dont think much of ms, or its monopoly

  in the computer world, and would love to see the field more evened out between ms, linux and mac os.

  if your having that much difficulty with xp, you may want to concider what your doing, trying to do and what your infected with.

  sounds to me like you need to sit down and get some utilities available and scan the beast and see whats infected you machine.
• 

  CaptainSchmideo

  I ran 2000 for quite a while, but found it had severe problems with multimedia apps, especially connecting my video camera thru Firewire. When I finally upgraded to XP, those problems went away.

  Of course, other wierd things took their place, so it's one day at a time on the Windows 12 step program....
• 

  onacruse

  LOL

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/24/129099/1.ashx

  I was told that W2000 is as much better an OS than W98 as W98 was than W95.

  I think that Microsoft's concept of OSes is that everything can be "fixed" by adding a few more millions of line of code.

  However, I don't use multimedia (don't even have the sound system set up), so my needs are pretty simple.
• 

  Finally-Free

  Why the hell do they only give out the licenses instead of the actual software CD now?

  That's something I would take up with whoever sells the computer. Dell will give you the media. I wouldn't deal with a vendor that didn't give me the media. Some vendors will have a separate partition to restore the O/S and bundled apps, but I've seen those get corrupted and I won't use them.

  I'm not impressed with Vista either. I don't see enough added functionality to justify the bloatation of the O/S. Mostly I use XP, and sometimes Linux.

  Disabling the error reporting service will get rid of the annoying prompts to send error reports to microsoft.

  W
• 

  KW13

  You can disable that in Computer Properties too, however i would suggest disabling the Security Center service in XP because that is one big pain in the ass.