Windows 7

[Ian Rogers]

I've just bought a new box of bits (building a PC) put it all together... Installed Windows 7 home premium...Whilst installing various programs, it appeared very glitchy. I thought I'd built a donut.... After.. oohh.. about 3 hours turned it off.....ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN important updates... How the F**K can Microsoft condone this kind of workmanship... If my products need one update my customers sneer down their noses..

Anyone else have a similar deal..

 

[cr0sh]

Also - just think - you can install all of those updates - and still get hacked/trojan'd/infected/etc...

 

[ben7]

I've just bought a new box of bits (building a PC) put it all together... Installed Windows 7 home premium...Whilst installing various programs, it appeared very glitchy. I thought I'd built a donut.... After.. oohh.. about 3 hours turned it off.....ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN important updates... How the F**K can Microsoft condone this kind of workmanship... If my products need one update my customers sneer down their noses..

Anyone else have a similar deal..

LOL! WOW! the most updates I have had was like 30 at one time...

Also - just think - you can install all of those updates - and still get hacked/trojan'd/infected/etc...

thats why I use Norton for antivirus protection works very well actually, and has blocked a bunch of trojans over the past year...

-Ben

 

[gabeNC]

Since win7 has been out for awhile, and I assume you were installing base without service packs, i'm not surprised. Better to patch than to ignore the problem. Wanna know how many viruses i've had on linux?

Seriously though, our wintel guys at work are always hopping busy, if I had their job i would be slitting my wrists.

 

[Ian Rogers]

Since win7 has been out for awhile, and I assume you were installing base without service packs, i'm not surprised. Better to patch than to ignore the problem. Wanna know how many viruses i've had on linux?

A friend of mine use linux and he also has a mac.... He's always telling me to shift over...But as I am one of those people supplying public needs.... I'm pretty much tied in to the MS clan

 

[cr0sh]

A friend of mine use linux and he also has a mac.... He's always telling me to shift over...But as I am one of those people supplying public needs.... I'm pretty much tied in to the MS clan

What do you mean by "supplying public needs"?

There are possibilities - you could dual-boot for instance (or boot off a bootable USB stick or CD/DVD). You could set up a Linux box then use Wine for the Windows stuff you just can't live without. If Wine won't cut it (and sometimes it don't), you could run a Windows install in a VM.

Alternatively, you can probably do the same under Windows - run Linux under a VM in Windows, and see what works for you and what doesn't. There's also tools like CygWin which can help get your feet wet in *nix land...

Really, though - the best way to try Linux is to just get some old box and install a distro on it. I am partial to Ubuntu, personally - I like how easy it is to install, and it just seems to work with no fuss for most things - and I am not a *nix newbie, either - I've been using *nix in one form or another since 1991, starting with AIX on a RS6000/320; my first real Linux install was a copy of Turbo Linux 2.0 on a 486 laptop w/8 meg. Prior to that I played with a crazy distro called "Monkey Linux" that ran on top of a DOS filesystem (got that working on a 386 luggable with 6 meg).

I can compile my own kernel with custom options, but I prefer not to (it loses its appeal after so many years - I'd only do it for something extremely custom where I -needed- every tweak possible for performance and size; for a desktop system, it's not really worth the trouble, IMHO)...

 

[Ian Rogers]

I have used linux extensively... I had Ubuntu on a work machine for years..

I had a DVD bootable copy of Knoppix, I used at home... Its a family thing... you know... women. They couldn't get the hang of it.. EVEN though KDE was as simple to use as windows..

At work Ubuntu had to go as I needed the resources for the likes of ISIS... MPLAB etc... (don't tell me about MPIDE for linux, didn't work) I use Visual studio alot aswell.

 

[cr0sh]

I have used linux extensively... I had Ubuntu on a work machine for years..

I had a DVD bootable copy of Knoppix, I used at home... Its a family thing... you know... women. They couldn't get the hang of it.. EVEN though KDE was as simple to use as windows..

At work Ubuntu had to go as I needed the resources for the likes of ISIS... MPLAB etc... (don't tell me about MPIDE for linux, didn't work) I use Visual studio alot aswell.

Well, that's too bad. My wife has never had a problem with our Ubuntu installs (though she would like some kind of 'doze box in order to download/buy ebooks from certain online places that only support windows for some weird reason).

 

[Ian Rogers]

Windows update... three days later and all seems to be good.... I really don't understand why it updated 82 (important updates) and then service pack 1 ????.

Ah well.....Its kinda funny how windows 7 looks and feels like Linux now...

 

[cr0sh]

Windows update... three days later and all seems to be good.... I really don't understand why it updated 82 (important updates) and then service pack 1 ????.

Ah well.....Its kinda funny how windows 7 looks and feels like Linux now...

Just wait until it crashes for no reason (I once saw it bluescreen hard - needing a complete reinstall - after installing PGP - up until then, it worked ok)...

Something I've always wondered, though, is why Microsoft never went the route that Apple did (custom version of BSD, more or less - the licensing of BSD allows for it). I do remember them attempting "POSIX-compliance" with NT4 (still the best version of 'doze IMHO) - and working with SGI as well (mainly on the Fahrenheit project - which more or less finished SGI as the transitioned from their awesome IRIX boxes to POS NT boxes that nobody would buy - and while I have no proof of this, I am pretty sure M$ did what they do best - "stole" the tech from the Fahrenheit project, which magically became DirectX and DirectX3D - as SGI withered on the vine and blew away - but that's all speculation on my part).

Oh well. At least OpenGL managed to continue...

 

[TtOoWwAa]

i personally think windows 7 is as bad as vista or millennium more or less, id stick with either some linux distro or windows XP pro.

 

[Reloadron]

i personally think windows 7 is as bad as vista or millennium more or less, id stick with either some linux distro or windows XP pro.

Why? Are you actively running Windows 7? What applications fail to run well?

Ron

 

[gabeNC]

Windows 7 is everything fistya was supposed to be. It hurts me to say but I actually (ahem) like win7. I dual boot my laptop and run linux 90% of the time but there are some applications for me that linux just won't work for (Cubase, pickit2, games). I don't have a mac but have friends that do, and I was annoyed that they switched to intel from my beloved powerpc chip but I think they hit a home run with os-x, based on BSD, rock solid with good security.

 

[Reloadron]

Back to the updates thing. My first likely real and serious experience with a Linux distro was maybe about 10 years ago. I had dabbled with Linux prior to that but not a whole lot. I had a system with a few HDDs running Windows 2000 Professional an OS that I still swear by. I installed Linus Suse (I think it was 9.3 maybe) and the install went beautifully. I used the GRUB boot loader as I was more familiar with that than LILO. Following my beautiful dual boot install I started working in Linux Suse. The first time I had Linux go out looking for updates it promptly downloaded and installed something like 225 updates, patches and fixes. Go figure huh?

As of today I don't have a Linux distro running at the moment. I have my old dual Xeon workstation collecting dust fully reformatted with Windows XP on it and keep thinking it would be a good Linux box but have yet to make it happen. My everyday home machine is running Vista 64 as is the wife's system. My current workstation at home is running Windows XP. That system is a nice dual Xeon system that pisses me off. The GPU is a 3D Labs Wildcat Realizm 800 which at the time was a $2,000 GPU. Unfortunately.....

On February 24th 2006, 3DLABS refocused its business and stopped developing its workstation graphics cards for the PC and announced it would focus on its new DMS™ low-power media-rich application processors.

3DLABS continues to support its legacy graphics cards while under their warranty conditions but no longer sells or develops PC graphics cards.

Drivers were never developed for Vista or Windows 7. even the old workstation uses a 3D Labs Wildcat II commercial GPU. Someday I need to get over it and buy new cards for those systems.

My remaining system is a pretty good Pentium D system which is a Windows XP / Windows 7 dual boot configuration. It sits on my test bench desk area and actually is a good running system.

Overall I like both Vista and Windows 7. I can't get done on Linux what I can get done on a Windows system, especially office applications. My work life revolves around the Windows based systems with a good chunk of Windows software. That is just the nature of the beast in my life.

Actually when it comes to Microsoft operating systems I feel the biggest disaster was Windows ME. They used the works as a test ground for the building of XP. In my opinion ME sucked! In my opinion the upgrade for XP should have been free for anyone using (stuck with) Windows ME. Can y7ou tell I hated it?

Ron

 

[Ian Rogers]

Mistake Edition (as it's commonly known) I have a laptop that shipped with Vista...I hated Vista and tried to downgrade to XP.. I couldn't get XP to see the SATA drive...
Two years on and with various updates, It actually runs quite stable now... (I'm typing on it as we speak)...

But as for Windows 7, many of my friends think its as stable, if not more so, than XP..... Yeah right I'll keep you posted..

 

[Birdman Adam]

Dunno why your having so many problems...? Windows 7 has been the most clean-looking and fastest OS I've ever used. All of the odd things I plug in it automatically loads drivers for. I have a nice laptop that looks better than the horribly overpriced macs, and can actually do real work at the same time! I don't think apple sells a mac for less than $1000?

Another thing I never understand is how often people poke fun about malware on windows, especially 7. Have only had one minor spyware get installed on XP a while back. All I use is free AVG!! And I click all the links they tell you not to... Maybe its because I use google chrome? The bottom line is I backup all my stuff, so if I have a problem, just reload yesterdays image!

Overall, I've never been able to be so care-free with a computer before.

 

[Ian Rogers]

Not having problems... It runs like a dream now...It was a rant about the amount of updates they try to cram in in one single session...I think its an awesome KDE oops windows version....He He

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Win 7 Pro x64

Acrobat and Firefox don't play nice. Firefox at least now puts it in "unlabeled containers". Removing the "containers" restores Firefox's operation. This happened in XP too.

I haven't been able to get an external modem to install.

Win 7 Pro doesn't like some USB serial servers.

USB is particually wierd with "Sleep and charge ports"

Initial wireless connectivity is particularly bad. Had ICONs in the system tray that said I wasn't connected, but I was. It's slow conncing wireless from sleep. I had to make a tweek to make wireless work properly. I feel I should not have been the person to develop the solution on my own. I published my solution in "MicroSoft Tech Net".

Toshiba Hardware, Toshiba support, Toshiba reliability, Toshiba honesty and Toshiba additude is really bad. It took like 4 months and three trys to replace a keyboard and the left-click key. First time: There is nothing wrong; Second time: replaced left-click and keyboard (replaced it with a broken one) (sent them a pic of a finger pushing on the spots that would not work); Third time: (sent pics again - problem moved to 3 keys in stead of 1); said it had a video problem and they wanted to reformat the drive. I said NO. I loaded the latest drivers from NVIDA and it works fine. Every time I had to send it immediately back, I had to wait for another box.

Toshiba told me that they could put a backlit KB in my machine for $275 twice. They then told me that they could only replace with like components. I put a backlit KB in for like $55 and it doesn't work. I can get no power to the KB power connector. I SUSPECT it's a EEPROM enabled option (KBLED). I had the new keyboard basically within a day and installed within 15 minutes. Toshiba parts won't pay for return postage on defective items.

The machine isn't bad, but it looks like it's not upgradeable in any form. The service center I ordered the parts from said that they are not allowed to work on my series.

The machine was in repair for so long, I wasn't able to exercise the Windows warranty for the wireless issue.

The computer isn't bad, but the quality of service is at the bottom. They just wanted the unit in and out. Initially, they would not fix a key that was depressed at least 1 mm at rest because it wasn't DEFECTIVE. They ship it back because their tests showed that the keyboard was fine. They didn't understand "The space key doesn't work when you press it on the front edge". They could not call. I wasn't allowed to talk to a tech. I had to send a picture of a finger pressing the space key.

 

[Ian Rogers]

I have heard stories about Toshiba... My daughter works at Argos and the Toshiba returns are a bit embarrassing.

 

[tvtech]

Acer had a bad name around 2006 to 2008. Due mainly to client stupidity. I was member of a Forum that defended Acer to the hilt. And still do.

My original Acer 5684WLMi from 2006 is still running though in spite of it's predicted failure in 2007 by Acer haters. The Acer haters all failed. My Acer still lives as I type here.

5 Years and still strong.....XP of course also helps.

Cheers