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My once carefree web surfing seems to have gone extinct and I am not sure why. I am not a computer geek, but I enjoy what I get into and I love writing and reading stories. Several weeks ago Microsoft said it was going to stop supporting XP, then last week SKYPE offered me a new version. Then the buggers who supply my Internet decided to cut me off over an unpaid bill, and that turned out to be their error.
Since all that, I have all sorts of problems ranging from a sometimes delay between my keyboard and my screen, to a total seizure when I tried to load a really big story on BC. I think barnold uploaded the third installment of it but since I am composing this I can't get back to it and, oh bother, I am just so short of time to mess with this because I do so need to get back to my studies. I was actually just taking a breaky to write this.
So, I have a DELL laptop that is 6 years old running Microsoft XP and IE. I just really need to finish up this school by mid week, and then I will begin to "do risky things". Yes, the obvious solution is to retire my Lappy, and get a more modern one.
There, I have had a good cry and must go back to work. :|
Gwen
Comments
most likely you need to reinstall XP..
most likely you need to reinstall XP, it something a lot of hardcore geeks do yearly or when there system has collect enough garbage that it become annoying to deal with.
If you do go the route of completely formatting your HD and doing a clean install , what I would recommend you get is some ghosting software to take an image of your HD to burn to a few cd's or a DVD. makes restoring your system back to your basic configuration well then 15 minuets
A word of warning.
You do not want Vista. it is hugenormous, and slower than slow, and not very user friendly. You need a guide book even to figure out how to turn it off properly
One of the most difficult things to give away is kindness.
It usually comes back to you.
Holly
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
Holly
Vista
What you say about Vista is not correct. I would not load it on an older machine, or if you have any older peripherals that don't have Vista drivers, but the so-called problems with Vista were just FUD, or misunderstood.
Vista is more secure, more stable (especially after SP1), and is very user friendly.
Just my opinion, but I am running 10 machines with Vista and support about 20 more with clients.
Stephanie
Sorry
My experience with Vista is that it is a pig for memory, time, disk space and human interaction. It runs slow and it does things without being told to do them, or even after being told NOT to do them. If it is possible to avoid these problems with Vista then it is MS's responsibility to get that info into the hands of knowledgeable computer people like myself, not to mention the general public.
I have one machine running Vista, four that run MacOs, two running Linux, four running XP and one running Win2000.
Yes, Vista is more secure. Yes, it is somewhat more stable than XP, meaning it crashes less often. No, it is not user-friendly. It takes too long to come up, too long to shut down and is too hard to configure for anything other than the simplest uses in comparison to any other modern or semi-modern operating system. Even Linux is easier to configure though getting that info on Linux configuration is just about as hard as getting it for Vista. It's a turkey and it may well be the death of MicroSoft, if it isn't fixed.
By the way, FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) is the MS technique first used to promote Vista to the computer manufacturing community. When that didn't work, MS turned to outright threats and extortion. And still, Dell will sell you a computer loaded with XP if you ask for it.
MicroSoft is under investigation in several countries for these tactics. MacOS, Linux and pirated XP sales continue to impede and erode Vista penetration into the markets. Where there is smoke, there is the burning hulk of a crapulous operating system almost no one with a choice wants.
Hugs and apologies,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Examples please...
Hi Erin,
While I respect your position, I have some questions for you...
1. You mention that Vista does things without being told to do them. Can you please give me some examples of this? Same with doing things that you've told it not to.
2. You say it runs slow... Was this a new machine that had Vista pre-loaded, or did you upgrade? If you upgraded, was it upgraded over another version of Windows, or a clean install? If it was a new machine, how much crapware was preloaded on it by the manufacturer?
3. Without knowing the specific problems you are experiencing, I can't way for sure what the solution is, but there are dozens of tweaking and information sites out there for Vista, just as there were for XP. I've never had an issue that could not be resolved with a quick Google search.
4. When you say it takes too long to start up and shut down, what are you running at startup/in the background? Also, how much RAM is in the system.
5. When I ventured into the Linux realm, I had nothing but problems trying to get things configured. Granted, this was pre-Ubuntu and friendly distributions with good package managers and such. In all fairness, I have not tried since, so I cannot comment on that.
6. I like Microsoft products, but I admit that a great deal of their business practices over the last decade or so have been questionable at best, and illegal at worst. They are making changes to counter that, but Microsoft is a big company, and just like other companies that faced similar situations in the past, it will take some time. If you look at many of the current concerns around the world, many are based on business practices that Microsoft has since changed. The other factor that they face, especially from the EU, is a government agency that seems to have a vendetta against Microsoft and frequently sees smoke where there is no fire (ie Neely Kroes).
7. Dell makes available an option for the XP downgrade that has been available for well over a decade. They also are in the process of rebuilding their company and trying to regain the lucrative corporate market that they have been losing. The corporate market is always 5-7 years behind the retail market when it comes to transitioning platforms. If you have 10,000 machines throughout your organization, you want to minimize the support costs of those machines, so you are going to try to minimize the number of different configurations. Many companies also have custom developed applications that may have compatibility problems with Vista.
8. Vista penetration is nearly on track with that of XP after the same amount of time. I don't have the information right in front of me, but many of the negative things that have been experienced with Vista are identical to those that people experienced with XP. The other thing is that Apple caused the same kind of ruckus twice in recent history. First was when they went to the BSD-based OSX, and the second was when they went to Intel processors in their boxes. These are aspects of computer history that have happened over and over with many, many companies and operating systems throughout the years.
I respect that you've had problems, and that you are an experienced IT person. I also respect the fact that you are able to work with the many different platforms that comprise the industry right now. I would love to be able to dive in and work with OSX and Linux. I just don't have the time (or the money). I work with clients who need to stay on the Wintel platform, and that is where I focus my efforts.
I would be more than happy to try and help you with the problems that you are having with Vista, if you'd like. If not, that is OK also.
On everything else, I guess we may just have to agree to disagree.
Stephanie
Answers
1. I don't have an example handy but mostly they involved it going out and searching for things on the internet or performing obscure checks on internals operations.
2. New machine with Vista pre-loaded. I removed a lot of the HP pre-loaded crap. 3 Gig of ram and a fast processor.
3. Google searches turn up a lot of people complaining about the same stuff I complain about and a lot of solutions that don't actually work.
4. 3 Gig of ram. And nothing added to run at startup with the HP stuff disabled. It's so slow that sometimes I just leave the room and make coffee while it's loading. And shutting down is even slower.
5. Yeah, up until a year or so ago, Linux was a nightmare for the non-techie or non-Unix initiated techie even. :)
6. MS should have been broken up during the trial here, it would have been better for everyone. Someone got paid off somewhere, that was pretty obvious, even if the payoff may not have been literally in cash.
7. Exactly. The whole computer industry is rebuilding and Dell is doing better than a lot of other companies partly because they make sure their hardware will still work with both Vista and XP, smart.It's not been ten years that they've offerred the XP option though, ten years ago Win98 was new.
8. That does not track with what I read in industry news except in press releases from Microsoft. And Apple maintained complete compatibility in both of their recent transitions -- and both changes were legitimately improvements, not questionable like Vista.
As for MS changing business practices -- I haven't noticed. Seriously, everything I hear is the same old same old extortion and bullying and abandonment of old bases. IE7 is a good example. It breaks a lot of websites that worked fine with IE6, including this one.
Your position is tied up with your job and I understand that. But please don't use my website to promote Vista and tell people that all the bad things they hear about Vista are not true. Some of them are surely not true but a lot of them are.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Fair Enough
I'm done.
Stephanie
Can't speak for Erin
But I know that when we had to replace our two old machines at home, we bought a new laptop and desktop, which had XP on them, only to discover that the software my wife needs to use when she has to dial into work will not work on Vista. It is still not supported on Vista, and her company still cannot help her to make it work. We had to go out and buy a copy of XP and load it on an old 98 machine just so she could dial into work.
Unfortunately since we are on the home version, we can't even use a virtual pc with XP on the new machines to try to get around it that way.
We could of course have loaded our XP copy on one of the new machines, but chose not to do that.
Kristy
anecdotal evidence
I recently received a new computer with vista - long story, but its not hot - the first thing I did was try to load firefox, and it could not be done (OK, I had gotten on the internet already, with ie), not after ten tries (and yes I had turned off the firewall; figured that part out after a search with my old 'puter.) Finally I had to resort to asking a seventeen year old for help, and we got it loaded by using the old machine and a flashdrive. But if you have to do that every time you download something, what is the use?
The computer I use now is about three years old, and my experience is that they last four or five years (why that is, I haven't a clue.) I dread when this one dies and all that I have is vista.
Jan
Vista may be Bloatware, but it's PRETTY!
I have 2 machines running Vista, one running Vista Ultimate one running Vista Home Premium. While certain things are annoying (I have turned off UAC which negates 90% of all the security improvements), for the most part, I LOVE Vista.
I had some REALLY REALLY scary incidents running a 64bit version of the Vista Beta ( I was actually part of the beta program), but I had these SAME issues with the supposedly STABLE version of XP x64 edition so go figure.
Vista is NOT WinXP, just as much as WinXP was not Win98.... It's a evolution of an os... Done not to make it more user friendly, but to make it look PRETTY on updated hardware. But then again, I LIKE pretty!
I Run Mac OSX, on apple hardware (PPC) I run Hackintosh on Intel hardware (OSx86). I also run several forms of Free BSD and/or Linux on both server and desktop PC, and I have to say, Vista and OSX rule the world when it comes to pretty, but Linux is starting to really get in there and give the others a run for their money.
Yes, Vista is a Memory Bloat.... And you need a pretty substantial processor also... And a nice string graphics option definitely won't hurt.... But it's PRETTY! Super PRETTY!
-HuGgS-
-P
I actually LIKE image SIGs!
Puters
Hi Gwen,
Puters are just overgrown calculators. Do you know someone who can do the re-install for you? Probably more memory would help as well.
I have a laptop running Vista and it takes 10 mins to start and 10 mins to stop. So I had more memory fitted. Better now but not as good as it should be.
Stick with XP but seek advice if you can. 6 years old isn't that old but it might be short of memory after this time.
I worked against computers for 30 years and I still don't know much; I turn it on and if it doesn't go I take it to the shop.
Try simple things first, like disk cleanup and defragment. You can do those yourself and not have to pay or get someone else to do them.
Susie
XP Support
Microsoft has NOT stopped supporting XP, they just stopped selling it. Support for XP goes until at least 2012, but I think it is longer, I will have to look it up.
I agree with the other person that said that XP probably needs to be reinstalled. It is a task that I do about every 6 months on my XP machines (down to 2 now, everything else is running Vista).
Stephanie
I just can't take on another thing right now. :(
So far, the Dell Laptop is still running, so I will do nothing with it until I can get a breather.
Thanks
Gwen
Vista, and Microsoft Products in General...
I'm very pleased to see that *someone* has had a wonderful experience with MS operating systems.
In my own experience, the biggest problem with Microsoft products is the legacy of a lot of really bad decisions that blithely touted "productivity" whilst introducing gaping holes in system security. The last I heard, even Microsoft didn't trust the security of Microsoft products, runnning most, if not all, of their firewalls and public servers on Unix machines.
Vista's attempt to plug the most glaring of these holes has broken many, possibly most, third-party applications, since running everything as "root," the old MS default, a legacy from the days of DOS, which had no concept beyond a single geek on a Z-80 box running a few "hobby" programmes. As mentioned above, many are forced to turn off the new access controls so that they can actually work, or Vista forces them to refit their software in total, an expense rarely mentioned in MS literature, but a very real justification for moving away from the MS platform entirely, which many sensible organisations have done, leaving behind only MS workstations for the sake of minimising the impact on employees.
Similar legacies crippled MSIE, so HTML is *either* coded with special tricks to work around MSIE "features" or Microsoft ia ignored other than to place a warning on the splash page advising users that IE might not display the site according to international standards and to choose another browser if it mattered. It's my opinion that these *features* were deliberately included to make switching away from Microsoft, once having had the poor judgement to choose them, difficult and expensive, but perhaps their designers and architects were only incompetant.
Sure, Vista is "improved," but twice as strong as Kleenex, and twice as well-built as the contraptions of Rube Goldberg, is not suitable for creating firm foundation walls.
Another problem was grossly inadequate system tools. When I used MS a lot, I loaded MKS (a Unix look-alike) tools on every Win machine just so I could function with a reasonable level of ease.
And then there are MS' Server limitations, which required, as I recall, buying a separate server for every service more robust than a toy, so a typical organisational setup was a server for file sharing, another for Exchange (mail) service, and another for Active Directory, because the MS server OS as a whole is so bloated that it can't get out of its own way fast enough to perform useful work. And then, of course, you have another server or two to run whatever the company uses to make money. So even small businesses required server farms, and per user licencing charges could be, and often were, ruinous.
Having been lied to by MS so often, I dodn't trust them very much.
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style