From POBox-LWD-Austin at pobox.com  Sat Oct  3 21:12:14 2009
From: POBox-LWD-Austin at pobox.com (Loyd W. Dreher)
Date: Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:12:14 -0500
Subject: [Windows SIG] Operating Systems and Open source Software
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20091003203926.023178c0@pobox.com>

To: Local at www.ccaustin.org
From: "Loyd W. Dreher" <POBox-LWD-Austin at pobox.com>
Subject: Windows XP
Cc:

I am on Amazon's E-Mail List and I ran into an interesting tidbit 
today about Windows XP Pro.

Quote:

  "Step up to the reliable computing power of Windows XP Pro and rest 
easy knowing that Microsoft has extended technical support of XP 
through 2014. "

This prompted me to express a Personal opinion. I don't want to start 
a blog and will not answer any replies.
Most people in our club, I hope are interested in being productive , 
using browsers for information gathering, word manipulation, creating 
and working with graphics,  creating all kinds of documents, 
presentation , spreadsheets  (you name it) and a few other things. 
Predominately , most people browse and communicate through e-mail.


First,  XP is Windows NT/5 . NT has been a relatively stable MS 
windows version for many years.

Support for PRO usually applies to Home.

The only real difference in Pro and Home is essentially  a few 
programs and diagnostics for network administrators is installed in 
the Pro installation.

Networks installed by people in the " Know" run Unix or  Linux . 
I  haven't seen .any statistics recently , but about 80 % of the 
world's servers run on Unix , Linux, or Star Mic (java people) software.

A number of the MS programs loaded by a PRO install, jf you need any 
of them, are on the CD if you look around on the CD you can find some of them.

I don't advise anyone to invest time or money in "Vista" .  "Vista" 
seems to be a 'Bad work over of XP' with more "candy and ice 
cream"  with impediments to the user "in the name of security".  With 
a lot of work, you can return it to behaving like XP.  It is just 
another MS attempt using a lot of "Hipe" to sell you a program that 
is less powerful than XP and less compatible with other systems. It 
looks like MS has recognized Vista is short lived and another "ME" 
mistake , which by the way an unfinished system.   MS is working to 
convince you to buy Windows 7 , which appears to be another version 
of addons to XP and perhaps some "dumming down" of some things as was 
done with "Vista"

I am biased, I want a stable Operating System program that runs 
programs that accomplish the functions that I want to perform. with a 
few exceptions. Ultra edit is a program that up to now only available 
forms windows machines.  This program is one of the top rated editos. 
The author of this program currently recognized the wave of the 
future and is developing Linux Windows and other Multi platform 
(Operating systems). Nearly all the other programs I use are open 
source .  I run them on MS Windows , Linux Windows and (yes) even on 
my MAC BSD Unix, better known as OS-10 Windows machines.
Most of the operating systems , except MS) adhere to the standards 
set for data and almost all data is readily  exchanged between 
systems or can easily be converted with a couple of clicks.

My advice to everyone is to Look at  What you want to do with your 
machine, quit listening to the "hype" put out by the marketers.

Look at what kind of machine you really need and .inexpensive updates 
of hardware may be appropriate.  Some have observed the club's laptop 
has shown down .  I never use that laptop because I use my own 
equipment for SIGs I present.  However, I do have an identical 
machine to that one  and have no problems. The machine is a 3.88MHz 
machine,  with 2GB of memory. My machine "runs very fast".  The Club 
machine still  had 512MB memory (factory Installed). The machine has 
been updated at very little cost with some Improvement. If you do 
have an older slower machine , you should try to find out the cause 
and do need a replacement. You can buy very fast remanufactured 
machines  for less than $200>

This is enough for NOW!

  Signing off: Loyd W. Dreher