another nite of MS downloads

Jim2121 · Post by **Jim2121** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 12:06 am

I forgot this was the 2nd tuesday of the month... again, MS updates to xp & OE... appx: 4mb of downloads... this has been going on for a few months I believe? Is it ever going to stop?

kb0nly · Post by **kb0nly** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 1:02 pm

Doubt it..

You know Microsoft, a patch for a patch for a patch.. etc..

On a related note.. July 11th 2006 was the cutoff date for 98, 98SE, and ME, all of them are no longer supported and no further patches will be released other than what is already on the update site.

440roadrunner · Post by **440roadrunner** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 1:37 pm

Just one more example of big business knowing better what "we the customer" can put up with.

Microshaft ASSUMES that every man, woman, and child has access to a high speed internet connection.

If we the consumer weren't so darn stupid, we could form an organization with enough power to force Microshaft to issue grouped updates on CD's for people with dialup

On the other hand, at least they DO patch the thing, if you'll all remember supposidly advertised as the most secure operating system, ever, bar none, etc.

Jim2121 · Post by **Jim2121** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 2:17 pm

oh well, when my HD is full of MS patchs & updates, I'll bill MS for a bigger HD !!!!!

Yea Scott! I heard about no more support for 98 & ME ... well were using xp now... don't want to step back.....

___________________________________________________________
as Gen. George Patton said: " I hate to pay for the same real-estate twice"

untill next month updates.........

OX · Post by OX » Thu Aug 10, 2006 3:13 am

You guys DO know that AMD, Intel, Seagate and other manufacturers funnel money to Microsoft right? Why else would computers have to constantly have more processing power, more memory and more storage? Well I guess if you wrote the code poorly then that would also be an excuse...

I'm having a conversation with someone yesterday and still can't figure out why do I need to have a dual processor system at home? For sure why do I need one with no OS to properly support it? I think that Longhorn was released as a beta version but scrapped and we all know that the first of anything from MS is bug fodder (Vista).

Supposedly I can run a P2 machine with a *nix OS and have comparable speed to a P4 machine with WinXP.

Maybe it's just me.

mr.syntrx · Post by **mr.syntrx** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:52 am

Nobody's holding a gun to your heads forcing you to use Microsoft products.

As for processing power, I use a Dell Latitude C400 on the road (866MHz P3, 80GB HDD, 512MB RAM, Windows XP), and a Sun Blade 150 at home (650MHz UltraSPARC-II, 2GB RAM, 2 x 80GB HDD, Expert3D-Lite video, Solaris 10 6/06). Both do the job fine for anything I do.

kd5wyu · Post by **kd5wyu** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:55 am

OX wrote:Supposedly I can run a P2 machine with a *nix OS and have comparable speed to a P4 machine with WinXP.

You'd be surprised how responsive Linux would be on such a machine. The trick is throwing some RAM at it.

My main machine used to be a Celeron 400 with 256MB of RAM running various iterations of Redhat (then later Fedora) with a full Gnome desktop. I later upgraded it to 512 then 640 MB of RAM, where it is today.

When you first started it up, it would take a while for apps to load, especially Openoffice (oink oink) but once it got most of that cached in RAM it was very usable.

Still have that box. Right now I am using a minimal Centos install on it to play around with OpenVZ . (OpenVZ is a free subset of SwSoft's Virtuozzo virtual-server product)

I finally had to replace the 6 year old HDs in it (bad sector hell finally) but the box itself is still going strong.

Main box now is a Celeron 2.4 with a gig of PC2100, and that is complete utter overkill for what I am doing with it.

440roadrunner · Post by **440roadrunner** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 8:35 am

"Nobody's holding a gun to your heads forcing you to use Microsoft products"

Really?

and just what do you suggest as an alternative?

Linux? Please

Macintosh? Well I dislike the ever snob Jobs even more than I dislike the big M

You should like the guy who told me that, hey, your power company IS competitive. You don't HAVE to use our power company. You can do without.

mr.syntrx · Post by **mr.syntrx** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 8:53 am

Let's see...

Mac OS (quite viable, despite any delusions of snobbery)
Linux (any of about a dozen, distinct distributions, several of which are more than of enterprise quality)
Solaris
QNX
FreeBSD

The only issue here is that you don't want to change.

Charlied · Post by **Charlied** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 2:14 pm

Question, if I may, on Linux.

Just what version, by whom, would directly take the place of XP?

Let me add, I have never used Linux, but wouldn't mind experimenting.

mr.syntrx · Post by **mr.syntrx** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:08 pm

There are a couple of nice offerings.

In the commercial space, it's generally either Novell, SuSE or Red Hat Enterprise. I quite like Novell's offering.

For individuals, Ubuntu seems to be flavour of the month at the moment (though the current release is a little buggy, with even more patches etc than Windows. Stick with 5.10.)

440roadrunner · Post by **440roadrunner** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:31 pm

Mac OS (quite viable, despite any delusions of snobbery)
Linux (any of about a dozen, distinct distributions, several of which are more than

Well, I beg to differ. Mac, and one or two (Suse) of the better Linux distros might do for the average Joe just wanting email and surfing, but neither Mac nor Linux is hardly "ready for prime time" when it comes to many, many specialized applications, many of which are just not written for them to start with.

(I haven't kept up, can you even BUY big M software for Macs or Linux? I doubt it)

Looking back in my better years, I've dealt with many specialized equipment, including the now obsolete SRX/ Centralink, that certainly did not have either Linux or Mac as an option. There were many, many programs and utilities for various Telco switchgear that what Mac? whuuu?????

you claim there are as many as a dozen distict Linux distros, but here again, I claim foul. Many of those distros are hardly ready for the average public.

THE POINT IS that there is hardly "real" competition to Microshafted. In the world of beer, cars, and pool cues, there are many, many brands and offerings. When you add accessories, like tires, there are again many more. All you have to do is go downtown and plunk down your money. Mac is hardly "real" competition to MS, even given the rumers of their so called superior better graphics.

On an aside, I think Jobs the snob's decision to lock up Mac OS to proprietary hardware, now that it's leaning toward PC based, is a HUGE mistake. It is my belief that if MAC would open the OS to retail sales, and common open architecure, then they might actually cut a slice out of MS's share.

mr.syntrx · Post by **mr.syntrx** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 5:56 pm

There are several hundred Linux distributions. About five or six have found their way onto enteprise desktops.

Anyway, you're in a specialised situation, where it is not the operating system limiting what you do, but the applications.

At the other extreme, I am a system administrator responsible for almost 700 Sun Ray / Solaris users, who can't use Windows at all for what they do.

Windows itself has nothing going for it but an established application base. It's insecure, hard to maintain on a large scale, and expensive. On purely technical merits, it has nothing at all going for it.

Apple is a hardware company. Mac OS sales have never made a single dollar's profit. Its development is funded by hardware sales, and slightly subsidised by retail OS upgrade sales.

MattSR · Post by **MattSR** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 6:09 pm

Linux is still a shitfight. Windows just works, is easy and compatible....

mr.syntrx · Post by **mr.syntrx** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 6:57 pm

MattSR wrote:Linux is still a shitfight. Windows just works, is easy and compatible....

"Just works" is a pretty subjective definition. I know at least fifteen desktop support engineers who don't quite see it that way

kb0nly · Post by **kb0nly** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 7:40 pm

Not to step on anyone's toes in the Win Vs. Linux debate, but, i agree with other comments that Linux is of no use to most people in general, and it's also not very user friendly or ready for the average joe to use.

I have used and reviewed MANY a linux distro. Right now i have a quad boot on one system, XP, Suse, RedHat, Xandros, and i play with them all on a regular basis.

While i do like the security and features of the email and browser apps in some of the Linux distros, and some of the games are neat, other than that it's pretty much useless to me as a replacement for windows.

Why?? Simple, i need to use applications that are specific to the windows world.

First of all i don't like any of the office type packages that linux has to offer, they all lack in features, usability, and compatibility with other formats. They all leave me wondering how to do something that i can do in minutes on Office 2003, yeah, some of it is the learning curve, but some of it is just lack of features and user friendliness.

Next is software availability. Go into your local Wal-Mart and point out some Linux software. What? Can't do it? Hmmm... I think the main problem is that most of the software companies out there see Linux as a small niche market, not enough profit to be had developing software for it.

Gaming.. This is a big one. The biggest increase in PC sales over the years has been due to gaming, over half of my customers are hard core gamers that want the latest video card, the latest processor, the fastest hard drive, etc.. Some games have made it to the Linux world, albeit in a handicapped form. About the only thing Linux is good for in the gaming community, and i see this on a regular basis, is to take an older but capable machine and run it as a dedicated server, or configure it as a router/firewall at a lan party. In that situation Linux excels, after all, it was born from the server side of operating systems to begin with.

As i mentioned, i play with Linux but it won't ever become my primary and only O/S.

I even have an old Mac in the closet, i don't remember which model it is though. The kids used to like the funny "eep" and "chirp" sounds it would make, but other than that, well, it collects dust. Anyone want it? It would cost a fortune to ship it, heavy as heck, if your local and want it let me know and it's yours..

OX · Post by OX » Fri Aug 11, 2006 3:14 am

Take the mac and make a "I hate mac" video like the other guy.

techie · Post by **techie** » Tue Aug 15, 2006 3:54 am

I run FreeBSD on most every machine I own, with a couple linux and NetBSD boxes for good measure.. I have one XP installation on a multi-boot box for those times when I need to run something windoze specific.. I even have a windows CE device (HP jornada 680) running NetBSD.. (no X yet, but we're still playing with the config..)

AEC · Post by **AEC** » Tue Aug 15, 2006 8:51 am

(quote)THE POINT IS that there is hardly "real" competition to Microshafted. In the world of beer, cars, and pool cues, there are many, many brands and offerings. When you add accessories, like tires, there are again many more. All you have to do is go downtown and plunk down your money. Mac is hardly "real" competition to MS, even given the rumers of their so called superior better graphics.

On an aside, I think Jobs the snob's decision to lock up Mac OS to proprietary hardware, now that it's leaning toward PC based, is a HUGE mistake. It is my belief that if MAC would open the OS to retail sales, and common open architecure, then they might actually cut a slice out of MS's share.(440RoadRunner)(/quote)

This was my exact problem back in 1983 with Apple, or as I coined them; Crapple.
Their ROMs were listed as 'secret' even to us at Zenith Data Systems in Milwaukee, WI.
We HAD to pay in advance for a pair, THEN had to rapack them in the same box they were shipped in AND insured for at least $500.00!
Crapple never accepted anything for warranty or replacement that was not in its 'original' shipping boxes, and if you did ship a drive, card, modem or anything in a 'standard' box, it was rejected and no credit was given for the defective parts.

Crapple had sucky 'standards' as well....a 400K and 700K floppy drive?

No path to upgrade UNLESS you stored it on the desk beside or under your Mac?
WTF?
Ever price a case removal tool for the MAC series?
Try OUR cost was $180.00 for essentially as long lipped pliers, not to mention the 'special' phillips screwdriver that 'had' to be attached to a ground strap or again, no warranty credit would be given if used without.

Then you get to Crapple's GARBAGE plastic cases...talk about spray on EMI 'protection'...yeah right, two case openings and there goes the shielding!

Everything Crapple did was 'proprietary' in nature and labeled 'secret' as well, I had several documents relating to this.

Anybody recall the short-lived portable that used the MAC ROMS?

They got sued for IP theft and were driven out of business for allowing their product to be used as a 'swap' for the MAC OS, simply because they used them, but did not come with tthe ROMS, you had to remove yours and install them in the portable in order to use it.

Crapple gave the dealers the same shaft they gave the customers, so I did them a favor and never bought any Crapple products, and still don't have any and have never felt guilt or post-partum feelings, and in fact, I know I am much better off NOT owning anything related to Crapple than with.

When Z.D.S was bought out by Group Bull, of France, I was given the opportunity to relocate to Ill. and retain my position as an S.E, but saw the handwriting on the wall and I am glad I rejected the offer as every Milwaukee employee that did relocate, was unemployed and on the street within six months.

As a side note to KB0NLY, I agree, Linux is still a long way away from ever becoming 'main stream' in the OS distro biz...too many hands, not enough stable features to make it a worthwhile platform for the average user, not to mention the fact that text conversions in Email environments results in simple text showing up as random characters all too often, that tells me it is not yet 'there' for daily usage one can trust.