Haven’t Tried It, Don’t Plan To
I’ve read enough pained reviews of Windows Vista that I have no plans to switch. And if Microsoft is so boneheaded as to insist on saddling us with ever-spiraling hardware requirements and an operating system–think about this for a minute–an operating system that actually clogs and burdens the hardware for its own flashy features rather than simply making the rest of the computer available for your use, then next time I need a machine I’ll install some flavor of Linux. Me and, apparently, more than 100K more users … but it’s going to take a lot more than that, I fear.
No doubt my more technologically savvy friends are laughing at me and remembering how each successive Windows version has done nothing but progressively require better hardware and then clog it. I remember when I bought my first Windows machine, in 1997, and admired the little animated papers flying from one folder to another to tell me that the transfer was in progress … and the tech friend helping me take the thing for a test run shook his head grimly about the resources that little jigger was wasting. Never mind. I’ve understood for a long time and I am finally at my limit. I have enough Windows, Microsoft. Lean it down, slim it back, give me my stable XP or I will go elsewhere. And while I’m not the most technologically savvy Jenny on the block (I’m having a hard time making sure my files are backed up before I upgrade to WP 2.5 as The Venomous One commands, also assuring me it’s easy as pie. Dare I ask her if she backed up her files? Oh yeah. I dare) I’ve got friends in Linux places who will be glad to help me turn back from the dark side. Believe it, Gates.
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I have Vista on the new See-Dubyatron and it’s OK, but I’m not doing anything particularly intense with it. If I had XP I’d be in no hurry to change, and in fact I’ve configured Vista to look as much like my old XP setup as possible. Which in turn was based on the look of my long defunct Windows 2000 machine.
So far my main complaint against Vista–and Dell–was here: http://junkyardblog.net/archives/2008/04/grrrrr.php
Comment by See-Dubya — April 14, 2008 @ 11:14 pm
My brother, who is an engineer and really works his computer, has really had a hard time with Vista. That’s a bad sign because he’s really smart and could probably build the thing.
My husband, whose business is software development and sales, has had nothing but trouble with his company’s Vista machines. His programmers and technicians are the people who build and maintain monster systems — and they can’t get their stupid Vista PCs to do the simplest things. He’s found ways to work around it but why should he (or any of us) have to do that?
And if these technologically knowledgeable people in my life are having trouble with Vista, when my XP machine dies I think my only choice is to go with Mac. I might just do it out of protest.
MS is a monopoly that demands that you buy their new product every few years, yet creates a crappy product that comes close to ruining your life (Windows 98 was another mess). If they’re going to bring out new things you have to buy, they should at the very least BE BETTER.
Comment by Anne — April 15, 2008 @ 4:44 am
Yes, Win98 was another pile of kludge that I managed to skip–I ran Win95 until XP. Big red warning light if your husband and his employees are having trouble.
SeeDub, I remember that post–another excellent reason for me not to buy a Dell laptop. I love my Dell desktop but have seen nothing but trouble out of their laptops.
Comment by Anwyn — April 15, 2008 @ 7:43 am
I can’t believe I’m going to say this. (No no, not THAT.)
I’m going to actively recommend against running Linux on the desktop.
Linux is a nice OS. It’s stable and it performs very well. But for normal every day use the desktop envrionments are
Just
Not
Ready
Now I know, the stallmaniacs and torvaldians will stomp and whine and they have a point. It’s really pretty close.
But it’s “just kludgey enough” that it’s frustrating. Media? Well… yeah, if you have the right codecs which, by the way, aren’t free. And if you can find a player that “just works” instead of “sometimes works.”
If you’re a hacker and you like ripping out the guts and hotwiring things at the expense of usability, rock on. Go for it.
But if you just want a damn machine that works and doesn’t provide you with endless obstacles to getting things dones, stick with Xp. or, get a mac. Those are pretty nice :) (if you can acclimate to the change in UI look and feel.)
Comment by Mike Wilson — April 15, 2008 @ 9:08 am
I know about the codecs problem … the Ubuntu interface seems to be very nice and intuitive. I think the codecs would be the main problem, and yeah, I’m definitely not going to leap before I look. Most likely what will happen is that I will keep running XP long after MS ceases to support it.
Comment by Anwyn — April 15, 2008 @ 9:26 am
First, let me say that I like XP very much. Unfortunately, it’s the only MS operating system I’ve ever really liked (Vista included).
I’m a UNIX junkie, particularly BSD. I’ve run FreeBSD for years. Just recently, I cut over cold turkey to Ubuntu. It’s hardcore enough for me (just a slick layer on top of Debian), but polished enough for less technical family members to easily use. I honestly never thought I’d see a premium environment that was Open Source, but I’m now a believer.
Ubuntu has great desktop environments, easier updates than Microsoft and good applications support. Even the compatibility stuff is remarkably solid. OpenOffice handles 95% of MS Office, GIMPshop is an easy jump from Photoshop, etc. Wine and VMware allow you to invoke Windows applications if needed (which I’m finding is very rarely). And Ubuntu offers long term support (LTS) releases spanning 3 to 5 years — very uncommon for Linux.
The Open Source community gives MS a lot of guff, and rightly so, but version support is one place where MS leads the way. I’m hearing a lot of folks say that XP is EOL as of 2009, and that they’re being forced to move to Vista. That’s not exactly true. Mainstream support for XP is EOL in 2009, but extended support (including security fixes) runs through 2014. Think about that for a moment; XP came out in 2001 and will be supported for the better part of THIRTEEN YEARS.
Unfortunately, application vendors are going to force you to move to Vista before 2014. Of course, more and more of them are embracing Linux as a second supported platform, so maybe you won’t be forced after all. MS will almost certainly have Vista’s successor ready by then as well, so they’ll have another chance to get it right.
Comment by Daddyman — April 15, 2008 @ 10:27 am
I backed up. Then I backed up my backup. Then I upgraded and, while it really was as easy as pie, I sure wish I hadn’t. I don’t like the new admin panel at all.
Comment by Venomous Kate — April 16, 2008 @ 1:31 pm
Yeah, I backed up my database without any problems, but it also said to back up all the WordPress files independently of the database. That’s the part I’m having trouble with. My control panel doesn’t seem to have a function for downloading everything, except for one thing that makes a backup into an unreadable file with extension .tar.gz. Supposedly this contains the whole backup…I need to install a program that will let me open it and look at it. Just haven’t done that part yet.
Comment by Anwyn — April 16, 2008 @ 1:39 pm