New Laptop - which flavour of Windows? (and other issues)
in [Laptops]
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From: Bernard Peek on 17 Mar 2010 10:25 On 17/03/10 12:28, Jules Richardson wrote: > On Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:06:52 -0400, Barry Watzman wrote: > >> If you feel that a given [old] OS meets your needs, fine, you can say >> that. I said it for a long time about Windows 98. >> >> However, there is a STRONG (not universal, but strong) consensus that: >> >> 1. Windows XP was far better than Windows 2K or 98 > > I'm not so sure - I use win2k in a VM when I *have* to have Windows for > something; it seems to be able as stable as Windows ever gets. My > experiences of XP gave me the impression that it's really just win2k with > a bunch of bloat and eye-candy thrown into the pot* - in other words it > doesn't really offer any addtional benefit, and just "looks more pretty". > XP with SP2 is significantly more secure than any version of W2K. If your VM is connecting to the Internet I would recommend upgrading. -- Bernard Peek bap(a)shrdlu.com
From: Jules Richardson on 17 Mar 2010 12:31 On Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:25:06 +0000, Bernard Peek wrote: >> I'm not so sure - I use win2k in a VM when I *have* to have Windows for >> something; it seems to be able as stable as Windows ever gets. My >> experiences of XP gave me the impression that it's really just win2k >> with a bunch of bloat and eye-candy thrown into the pot* - in other >> words it doesn't really offer any addtional benefit, and just "looks >> more pretty". >> >> > XP with SP2 is significantly more secure than any version of W2K. If > your VM is connecting to the Internet I would recommend upgrading. No, it's not - no way would I use any MS product with a direct 'net connection. :-)
From: Andy Champ on 17 Mar 2010 17:06 Barry Watzman wrote: > If you feel that a given [old] OS meets your needs, fine, you can say > that. I said it for a long time about Windows 98. > > However, there is a STRONG (not universal, but strong) consensus that: > > 1. Windows XP was far better than Windows 2K or 98 > 2. Windows 7 is better than XP > Mmm.... not sure... Win 3.x was bad, and '95 was based on it. And on MS-DOS, under the hood. 95 was developed into '98, which was.... OK, for a crude, unprotected, not properly multi-tasking OS. ME was a pile of ****. The other side of the tree - Windows NT was solid as anything, and got better from 3.1 to 3.5 to 3.51. Then Win2000 put the '9x-family GUI on the top, and wrecked the stability. XP took a lot of the bugs out, and isn't too bad. Vista was all bells and whistles, and trying to protect you, and I find just gets in my way. Not too badly, and to be fair it's _way_ better that 2000, never mind ME. Though bear in mind I'm running it on a machine with two quad-core Xeons and 8gigs, so it ought to feel OK. But I've seen no real reason to go with Vista - it's just what the box came with. Win7 I've only tried on a laptop. It feels pretty good - less of the silly prompt stuff than Vista, and seems to work better than XP. Certainly the wireless behaves better. I've only really messed with Linux on the kind of marginal hardware that doesn't really run Windoze well. Ubuntu usually. And it doesn't run any better. Andy
From: Bernard Peek on 17 Mar 2010 17:56 On 17/03/10 21:06, Andy Champ wrote: > I've only really messed with Linux on the kind of marginal hardware that > doesn't really run Windoze well. Ubuntu usually. And it doesn't run any > better. The default window manager in Ubuntu is Gnome. It's as much of a resource hog as its Windows equivalent. With Linux you do have the option of switching to a lightweight window manager which will run faster. If all you want to do is a little web browsing and word-processing that would be quite good enough. Linux is capable of doing useful work with limited hardware, but you do need to tweak the configuration. -- Bernard Peek bap(a)shrdlu.com
From: Clive George on 17 Mar 2010 18:28
On 17/03/2010 21:06, Andy Champ wrote: > Win 3.x was bad, and '95 was based on it. And on MS-DOS, under the hood. > 95 was developed into '98, which was.... OK, for a crude, unprotected, > not properly multi-tasking OS. ME was a pile of ****. > > The other side of the tree - Windows NT was solid as anything, and got > better from 3.1 to 3.5 to 3.51. Then Win2000 put the '9x-family GUI on > the top, and wrecked the stability. You forgot NT4, which is where the 9x GUI came in. We've got several Win2K servers which are having to be replaced now because of removal of support in about June - they've just sat there working fine for years. |