What Operating System Do You Use?

[onedomino]

About three months ago, I bought a Dell Precision laptop. It has two processors so I can run some special applications with some speed. But I told Dell I would only order the computer if it was shipped with Windows XP, not Vista. I had read so many negative reviews of Vista that I decided to stay away. Now this:

Should Microsoft Throw Away Vista?

Complete article: http://advice.cio.com/laurianne_mclaughlin/should_microsoft_throw_away_vista

Throw Vista away. That's what my colleagues at our fellow IDG publication InfoWorld have now argued that Microsoft should do. Give it a dignified resting place, as a stepping-stone OS, and come up with a replacement that's more sensible for enterprise IT. There is historical precedent in the consumer OS space for such a move; look at Windows ME and how it became a footnote in Microsoft history.

"Microsoft should toss Vista in the trash, as the company did with Windows Millennium eight years ago, then issue a Windows XP Second Edition (as it did with Windows 98 eight years ago) that capitalizes on some of Vista's key benefits. Then the company should focus on Windows 7, rather than keep trying to push Vista down unwilling customers' throats. If that's too radical, how about doing an XP Second Edition while also continuing to rework Vista?" writes InfoWorld executive editor Galen Gruman, who created a petition that 100,000 people have now signed asking Microsoft to save Windows XP.

and this:

100,000 customers tell Microsoft to save XP

Complete article: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/17/12NF-save-xp-100k_1.html

Windows Vista was supposed to be a shot in the arm for Microsoft, which had gone five years without a new desktop operating system. It hasn't worked out that way. Instead, Vista sales have been slower than XP's (when adjusted for market size) and there's been a distinct lack of passion for the new OS. In Vista's first year, InfoWorld detected a deep anxiety over Vista among technologists and consumers alike. We decided to do something about it, launching a petition drive to ask Microsoft to keep selling XP after the planned June 30 end-of-sales date. Nine weeks after that Jan. 14 launch, more than 100,000 customers worldwide have signed up. And that doesn't count parallel efforts by our colleagues in Germany and Canada.

So what operating system do you use? Any Vista users? Is your PC now slower as claimed in the negative reviews?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I won't use Vista, one reason is most games are not tested to work on it and on the boards I go to all I read are horror stories of how NEW games will not run properly on Vista without major work by the owner. In some cases not at all.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Shogun your mail is full I can't send my reply.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Ok For Online games, especially well known heavily successful ones , they all maintain online forums. They will have a technical support section and may have a technical support by gamers section also.

This will include a FAQ. Those FAQs are almost always up to date on current and old problems. But if you can not find the answer there they usually maintain a way to either email, online chat or call ( or all 3) the support section.

A BIG fixer for freezes and blackouts are drivers. Not just video drivers but Audio as well and occasional other support items. Usually new drivers fix problems though occasionally a known problem will occur with a new driver and the FAQ will tell you to load a specific older driver.

Usually these Online games also have links to needed drivers for the major companies.

 

[onedomino]

I won't use Vista, one reason is most games are not tested to work on it and on the boards I go to all I read are horror stories of how NEW games will not run properly on Vista without major work by the owner. In some cases not at all.

The University of California refuses to introduce Vista on its networks. It only grudgingly supports Vista for students who have brought it with them to school.

But Vista has been out for more than one year and even has a massive Service Pack recently released. Is it possible the Vista will bomb completely and that MS will have to introduce Windows 7 early to stop the market share bleeding to other operating systems? If so, Vista will have been a huge financial blunder costing MS we can only guess how much.

 

[Annie]

I'm now an Apple affaciando.

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook2,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB21.00A5.B07
SMC Version: 1.17f0
Serial Number: W8736M3PZ5V
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

It corrects problems on it's own, truly intuitive. I'll never return to pc's, which is what I learned computer jargon on.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I'm now an Apple affaciando.



It corrects problems on it's own, truly intuitive. I'll never return to pc's, which is what I learned computer jargon on.

Again, Apple has almost no games. No reason to own it at all.

 

[Annie]

Again, Apple has almost no games. No reason to own it at all.

I don't do games.

 

[Shattered]

I still use WinXP.

Why f*ck with what works?

 

[Diuretic]

Linux - I finally settled on Ubuntu (running Gutsy Gibbon) after trying just about every Linux distro in existence at one time. It does make you work but at least you get full control over the OS. Support is very good, all you need to sort a problem out is Google.

 

[Toro]

OS Leopard.

 

[Toro]

I'm now an Apple affaciando.

Me too. A friend of mine is a networker, and for a decade he kept bugging me to get a Mac. I finally got sick and tired of my PC crashing, freezing, getting infected, and so on, that I walked into a store and bought a Mac on the spot.

Its not as perfect as some Appleheads would have you believe, but it certainly is easier and more stable than Windows. It is no where near as good for spreadsheets, so I wouldn't run a business on a Mac, and I don't play games, but otherwise, I find it way better than Windows.

 

[Shogun]

Shogun your mail is full I can't send my reply.

ok. I emptied some space.

I run xp. I have to admit a fondness for poking mac addicts with a stick. have been building cpus since my first amd k5 chip in the days when playing a single mp3 could crash your non-pentium system. I think I still have a few simms collecting dust somewhere. I remember spending money on both an AOL account minutes AND a local access number (long distance) just to play the old gold box version of Neverwinter Nights. I beat The 7th Guest in high school and once formatted a gf's PARENT's computer while installing win95 because I didn't realize 16 mb of ram was simply not enough. I also copied the config.sys and autoexec.bat thinking that I didn't need to copy actual drivers. I was totally wrong. ahhh.. the memories.

 

[onedomino]

There's a lot of noise in the ether that Vista cannot be salvaged and that it will never be adopted to anywhere near the extent of other MS operating systems. What were they thinking introducing a OS with a 4GB Ram "sweet spot" and breaks so many older programs and XP drivers? Doing so excluded 95 percent of all PCs.

I have not spent any time with a computer game since Quake 2 days, then networked at the UCLA dorms. We also played a lot of Q2 on an outside server from CIT. Q2 is a twitchy shooter and the characters look like punk soldiers. But we often used other character "skins" and would run around the game as Kenny from South Park, or even cows with rocket launchers. In our UCLA v CIT games it was fun to show up in the CIT server with 10 cows and read their whining laments scroll on the screen. Kid stuff, but fun.

 

[Shogun]

dude... I still miss playing q2 over the t4 lines on campus. I hate to brag, but I used to be accused of being a bot when i'd go on a railgun rampage. Of all the games I really miss, Q2 is it. Mechwarrior 2 was fun to play against the computer science geeks.... bought Diablo the day it came out. the intro to Halflife (which, I thought, had a badass deathmatch mode but no one ever wanted to play)..


*sigh*


thooooose werrrree the dayyyyyyys..

 

[onedomino]

dude... I still miss playing q2 over the t4 lines on campus. I hate to brag, but I used to be accused of being a bot when i'd go on a railgun rampage. Of all the games I really miss, Q2 is it. Mechwarrior 2 was fun to play against the computer science geeks.... bought Diablo the day it came out. the intro to Halflife (which, I thought, had a badass deathmatch mode but no one ever wanted to play)..


*sigh*


thooooose werrrree the dayyyyyyys..

Q2...not that I am a judge of lots of different games, but q2 was a very fun game. The game play itself was zoomy and funny (remember rocket jumping?), but the best part was the interaction with other players. The UCLA and CIT servers were pure, unmodded q2 with mostly id made maps, and spawn camping was a laugh out loud scourge. Sometimes we would camp just to drive the CIT guys insane, which for them was a real short trip. I was an ok player, but I never spent the time to be excellent. Some players were unbelievable and it boiled down to anticipation. We had one guy who camped 98 percent of the time named "The Claw." And he had all kinds of goofy places to camp that were unexpected. He made the CIT guys foam, and when they would type sniveling complaints, The Claw had key-bound canned come backs that made us laugh. My favorite was that the CIT guys should be ashamed for mocking the disabled. He was forced to camp, since he could not run because of his "trick knee."

I wonder if there are any q2 servers out there yet today...

 

[Paulie]

Again, Apple has almost no games. No reason to own it at all.

Because games are the epitome of a computer's overall worth.

I pretty much HAVE to use a smily for that.

 

[Shogun]

Q2...not that I am a judge of lots of different games, but q2 was a very fun game. The game play itself was zoomy and funny (remember rocket jumping?), but the best part was the interaction with other players. The UCLA and CIT servers were pure, unmodded q2 with mostly id made maps, and spawn camping was a laugh out loud scourge. Sometimes we would camp just to drive the CIT guys insane, which for them was a real short trip. I was an ok player, but I never spent the time to be excellent. Some players were unbelievable and it boiled down to anticipation. We had one guy who camped 98 percent of the time named "The Claw." And he had all kinds of goofy places to camp that were unexpected. He made the CIT guys foam, and when they would type sniveling complaints, The Claw had key-bound canned come backs that made us laugh. My favorite was that the CIT guys should be ashamed for mocking the disabled. He was forced to camp, since he could not run because of his "trick knee."

I remember that I started playing q2 after learning how to learn how to mouse look playing Jedi Knight Outcast. thank god for that considering all the nooks and crannies reached by some of the mods. I remember the rocket maps fondly but I was always a fan of the rail gun (I snipe on BF2 these days).

We had a lot of mid eastern comp sci major kids who would absolutely dominate Q2. Using only a keyboard no less. I ruffled some feathers but THEY would close the bar.

I've thought about installing it for old times sake.

My University was something of an experimental state school insomuch that it was the first to have a campus wide network with net access in every dorm room (they have vax terminals before that.. YUK) in tis state. In fact, sometime that spring a student crashed the campus network by sharing all of her thousands of mp3s (instead of copying, people were playing them through the network) and a gestapo like clamp down on server abuse nixed all non-academic traffic until the following year.


Might have to grab RGS and convene on a USMB Q2 server sometime.

 

[Shogun]

Because games are the epitome of a computer's overall worth.

I pretty much HAVE to use a smily for that.

well.. to be fair.. the end user market for gaming IS what propels our quest for bigger, badder, faster, harder hardware. I mean, photoshop is great but it's not why nvidia came out with it's ninth series of video cards.


Maybe your smiley can explain the laughable mac market share.

 

[thewaiting28]

windows vista business on a dell xps m1330 laptop