>Windows XP was the last version of Windows I chose to use.
>I haven't looked at Windows 8 though. If I wanted a tablet OS I
>wouldn't use Windows.
Sorry, but despite my lateness to the party, I just had to add my
tuppence worth... Windows 2000 was/is the last windows version I
chose/choose to use. I have to say, imho & ime, winXP is a festering
pile of shite compared to ms's best effort as exemplified by win2k.
Although it's possible to configure winXP to look like win2k, the
unfortunate lobotomy inflicted on explorer makes the "open each folder
in its own window" option an exercise in frustration.
I know that winXP now looks bloody marvelous in its 'ease of use'
now that we have Vista (and win7) available for comparison but that
doesn't really mitigate its festering crapness in my view.
Win7 (and, probably Vista too) seem to have been designed to distance
the 'users' from the basic technology to the point where it has
perverted what was, essentially, a general purpose desktop digital
computer capable of being a 'Jack of All Trades (one time) Master of
None" machine into "A Magic Box" requiring the _purchase_ of "Magic
Spells", either online from the e-tailors of "Magic" or in an actual
"Magic Store".
With win7, at least, it's gotten to such an extreme that the OS will
behave like a wounded animal when its disk drive becomes afflicted
with bad sectors, electing to hide its malady behind a mysteriously
sluggish response more typical of a very bad malware infestation
rather than admit that it isn't, in fact, a "Magic Box" as would
happen in win2k (and, even winXP) with a copious supply of error
message pop ups under the very same circumstance.
The plain fact is, "The less your customers' know, the more you can
milk them for vast profit". It is this thinking that drives any large
corporate business with no heed of the greater consequences that often
ensue. Don't expect 'computer usability' to improve any time soon with
later windows editions.
<johnny-b-g...@invalid.ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Sorry, but despite my lateness to the party, I just had to add my
>tuppence worth... Windows 2000 was/is the last windows version I
>chose/choose to use. I have to say, imho & ime, winXP is a festering
>pile of shite compared to ms's best effort as exemplified by win2k.
Win2k was already disintegrating under it's own morass - that was when
the video drivers were moved into ring 0, breaking both the security
model of NT4 and stability.
It hasn't got a lot better since...
Cheers - Jaimie
-- To every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong.
-- HL Mencken
>>Windows XP was the last version of Windows I chose to use.
>>I haven't looked at Windows 8 though. If I wanted a tablet OS I
>>wouldn't use Windows.
> Sorry, but despite my lateness to the party, I just had to add my
>tuppence worth... Windows 2000 was/is the last windows version I
>chose/choose to use. I have to say, imho & ime, winXP is a festering
>pile of shite compared to ms's best effort as exemplified by win2k.
>Although it's possible to configure winXP to look like win2k, the
>unfortunate lobotomy inflicted on explorer makes the "open each folder
>in its own window" option an exercise in frustration.
I agree that WinXP was worse than W2K but I had to 'upgrade' because
certain software vendors ensured that their software wouldn't run on
2K.
> I know that winXP now looks bloody marvelous in its 'ease of use'
>now that we have Vista (and win7) available for comparison but that
>doesn't really mitigate its festering crapness in my view.
I don't know. The sheer lack of usuability and stunningly bad
performance of Vista made me feel less antagonistic to XP.
> Win7 (and, probably Vista too) seem to have been designed to distance
>the 'users' from the basic technology to the point where it has
>perverted what was, essentially, a general purpose desktop digital
>computer capable of being a 'Jack of All Trades (one time) Master of
>None" machine into "A Magic Box" requiring the _purchase_ of "Magic
>Spells", either online from the e-tailors of "Magic" or in an actual
>"Magic Store".
Isn't that how most people view computers & software (as magic)?
> With win7, at least, it's gotten to such an extreme that the OS will
>behave like a wounded animal when its disk drive becomes afflicted
>with bad sectors, electing to hide its malady behind a mysteriously
>sluggish response more typical of a very bad malware infestation
>rather than admit that it isn't, in fact, a "Magic Box" as would
>happen in win2k (and, even winXP) with a copious supply of error
>message pop ups under the very same circumstance.
My son has been inflicted with disk problems on his W7 laptop. I
don't know much about W7 (and I don't really want to). How do you
monitor disk health on W7?
> The plain fact is, "The less your customers' know, the more you can
>milk them for vast profit". It is this thinking that drives any large
>corporate business with no heed of the greater consequences that often
>ensue. Don't expect 'computer usability' to improve any time soon with
>later windows editions.
Quite. I get very frustated with bloody M$ Office which often won't
display a document created by a slightly different version of the
*same* software. Open/Libre Office sometimes also suffers but that is
to be expected.
-- (\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?
Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:45:31 +0100, Johny B Good
> <johnny-b-g...@invalid.ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > Sorry, but despite my lateness to the party, I just had to add my
> >tuppence worth... Windows 2000 was/is the last windows version I
> >chose/choose to use. I have to say, imho & ime, winXP is a festering
> >pile of shite compared to ms's best effort as exemplified by win2k.
> Win2k was already disintegrating under it's own morass - that was when
> the video drivers were moved into ring 0, breaking both the security
> model of NT4 and stability.
> It hasn't got a lot better since...
I used to like NT4SP6a, I think I still have a copy somewhere ...
<i...@dontgetlotsofspamanymore.invalid> wrote:
>On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:45:31 +0100, Johny B Good
><johnny-b-g...@invalid.ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>On Thu, 06 Sep 2012 09:10:49 +0100, Mark
>><i...@dontgetlotsofspamanymore.invalid> wrote:
>>>Windows XP was the last version of Windows I chose to use.
>>>I haven't looked at Windows 8 though. If I wanted a tablet OS I
>>>wouldn't use Windows.
>> Sorry, but despite my lateness to the party, I just had to add my
>>tuppence worth... Windows 2000 was/is the last windows version I
>>chose/choose to use. I have to say, imho & ime, winXP is a festering
>>pile of shite compared to ms's best effort as exemplified by win2k.
>>Although it's possible to configure winXP to look like win2k, the
>>unfortunate lobotomy inflicted on explorer makes the "open each folder
>>in its own window" option an exercise in frustration.
>I agree that WinXP was worse than W2K but I had to 'upgrade' because
>certain software vendors ensured that their software wouldn't run on
>2K.
As was the case with win95osr2 versus win98 regarding USB device
support. MS chose this strategy to 'disown' the better of these two
dos based windows OSes. Relying on a proprietry OS leaves you wide
open to such vendor abuse when they feel it's time to move the cattle
to the next meadow.
>> I know that winXP now looks bloody marvelous in its 'ease of use'
>>now that we have Vista (and win7) available for comparison but that
>>doesn't really mitigate its festering crapness in my view.
>I don't know. The sheer lack of usuability and stunningly bad
>performance of Vista made me feel less antagonistic to XP.
Yes, I must admit that when it comes to fixing a PC with, unusually
these days, winXP rather than Vista or win7 installed, my spirits are
somewhat raised by the prospect (after all, it's not so far removed
from win2k(NT5.0) - just a broken version of it(NT5.1)).
>> Win7 (and, probably Vista too) seem to have been designed to distance
>>the 'users' from the basic technology to the point where it has
>>perverted what was, essentially, a general purpose desktop digital
>>computer capable of being a 'Jack of All Trades (one time) Master of
>>None" machine into "A Magic Box" requiring the _purchase_ of "Magic
>>Spells", either online from the e-tailors of "Magic" or in an actual
>>"Magic Store".
>Isn't that how most people view computers & software (as magic)?
Yes, that's exactly the problem as I see it. I'm outnumbered by
several orders of magnitude by those who are not only computer
technology illiterate but, more worryingly, are quite content to trust
the patently false claims that MS are doing everything in their power
to look after their best interests.
>> With win7, at least, it's gotten to such an extreme that the OS will
>>behave like a wounded animal when its disk drive becomes afflicted
>>with bad sectors, electing to hide its malady behind a mysteriously
>>sluggish response more typical of a very bad malware infestation
>>rather than admit that it isn't, in fact, a "Magic Box" as would
>>happen in win2k (and, even winXP) with a copious supply of error
>>message pop ups under the very same circumstance.
>My son has been inflicted with disk problems on his W7 laptop. I
>don't know much about W7 (and I don't really want to). How do you
>monitor disk health on W7?
Not easily. If the system is behaving sluggishly as if it had fallen
victim to a massive malware infestation, yet there is no sign of such
from your AV scans, you could take a look at the event logs and see if
there are any bad blocks errors listed.
Some laptops actually have disk drive diagnostics built into the BIOS
rom so you might be able to access a hardware test menu from the cmos
setup menu or a dedicated hot key during boot up. This is aside from
the troubleshooting options in the advanced startup menu (F8 just
before the starting windows logo appears at boot up time).
A read of the user guide should reveal those options, usually in the
index under 'troubleshooting tips' or what have you. Failing that, you
could always download and burn a UBCD image from which to boot wherein
you'll find various hardware diagnostics options to choose from (the
UBCD iso image can even be written to a USB pen drive which usually
boots faster than an optical disk on those systems that correctly
support boot from usb devices).
>> The plain fact is, "The less your customers' know, the more you can
>>milk them for vast profit". It is this thinking that drives any large
>>corporate business with no heed of the greater consequences that often
>>ensue. Don't expect 'computer usability' to improve any time soon with
>>later windows editions.
>Quite. I get very frustated with bloody M$ Office which often won't
>display a document created by a slightly different version of the
>*same* software. Open/Libre Office sometimes also suffers but that is
>to be expected.
That, in the whole scheme(scam?) of things, is a very minor issue.
I'm making an educated guess here, but I think what gave MS the
confidence to mess with their customers' heads when they inflicted
Vista (and then win7 and now win8) on them was the fact that over 90%
(perhaps something closer to 99%) of their winXP user base elected to
leave the teletubby desktop settings alone, effectively accepting what
was obviously an insult to their intelligence (lack of).
WinXP's desktop UI was obviously designed with child appeal strongly
in mind since that would be where the next stream of revenue would
ultimately be coming from ("There's one born every minute." applies in
spades here).
-- Regards, J B Good
::::
:::: Windows XP was the last version of Windows I chose to use.
:::: I haven't looked at Windows 8 though. If I wanted a tablet OS I
:::: wouldn't use Windows.
:::
::: Sorry, but despite my lateness to the party, I just had to add my
::: tuppence worth... Windows 2000 was/is the last windows version I
::: chose/choose to use. I have to say, imho & ime, winXP is a festering
::: pile of shite compared to ms's best effort as exemplified by win2k.
:::
::: Although it's possible to configure winXP to look like win2k, the
::: unfortunate lobotomy inflicted on explorer makes the "open each
::: folder in its own window" option an exercise in frustration.
::
:: I agree that WinXP was worse than W2K but I had to 'upgrade' because
:: certain software vendors ensured that their software wouldn't run on
:: 2K.
::
I had a long standing gripe with W2k which made it unsuitable as a mass market product. Out of the box it lacked any registry backup and recovery facility.
One corrupt registry = complete reinstall
Registry corruption is common and a recovery of the registry can often be the only way to get the OS back up and running following a system botch up.
En el artículo <ac6idiFa17...@mid.individual.net>, Tired <n...@no.com>
escribió:
>I had a long standing gripe with W2k which made it unsuitable as a mass >market product. Out of the box it lacked any registry backup and recovery >facility.
>>On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:45:31 +0100, Johny B Good
>><johnny-b-g...@invalid.ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>>On Thu, 06 Sep 2012 09:10:49 +0100, Mark
>>><i...@dontgetlotsofspamanymore.invalid> wrote:
>>>>Windows XP was the last version of Windows I chose to use.
>>>>I haven't looked at Windows 8 though. If I wanted a tablet OS I
>>>>wouldn't use Windows.
>>> Sorry, but despite my lateness to the party, I just had to add my
>>>tuppence worth... Windows 2000 was/is the last windows version I
>>>chose/choose to use. I have to say, imho & ime, winXP is a festering
>>>pile of shite compared to ms's best effort as exemplified by win2k.
>>>Although it's possible to configure winXP to look like win2k, the
>>>unfortunate lobotomy inflicted on explorer makes the "open each folder
>>>in its own window" option an exercise in frustration.
>>I agree that WinXP was worse than W2K but I had to 'upgrade' because
>>certain software vendors ensured that their software wouldn't run on
>>2K.
> As was the case with win95osr2 versus win98 regarding USB device
>support. MS chose this strategy to 'disown' the better of these two
>dos based windows OSes. Relying on a proprietry OS leaves you wide
>open to such vendor abuse when they feel it's time to move the cattle
>to the next meadow.
It's not only with proprietory OSs though. It can be a pain
supporting multiple versions of any OS. Although we manage to support
several versions of Linux, Solaris & AIX and we're much smaller than
Microsoft. And I was never that keen on any of the Win9x OSs as none
of them were very stable. However there were few technical reasons
why vendors stopped supporting W2K AFAIK.
--snip--
>>> Win7 (and, probably Vista too) seem to have been designed to distance
>>>the 'users' from the basic technology to the point where it has
>>>perverted what was, essentially, a general purpose desktop digital
>>>computer capable of being a 'Jack of All Trades (one time) Master of
>>>None" machine into "A Magic Box" requiring the _purchase_ of "Magic
>>>Spells", either online from the e-tailors of "Magic" or in an actual
>>>"Magic Store".
>>Isn't that how most people view computers & software (as magic)?
> Yes, that's exactly the problem as I see it. I'm outnumbered by
>several orders of magnitude by those who are not only computer
>technology illiterate but, more worryingly, are quite content to trust
>the patently false claims that MS are doing everything in their power
>to look after their best interests.
For most people computers 'are' Microsoft. Few know there are any
alternatives. And those who do think they need Microsoft because
'everybody' uses it. TBH a PC isn't really a true consumer product
IMHO. They are too complex and hard to look after for most.
>>> With win7, at least, it's gotten to such an extreme that the OS will
>>>behave like a wounded animal when its disk drive becomes afflicted
>>>with bad sectors, electing to hide its malady behind a mysteriously
>>>sluggish response more typical of a very bad malware infestation
>>>rather than admit that it isn't, in fact, a "Magic Box" as would
>>>happen in win2k (and, even winXP) with a copious supply of error
>>>message pop ups under the very same circumstance.
>>My son has been inflicted with disk problems on his W7 laptop. I
>>don't know much about W7 (and I don't really want to). How do you
>>monitor disk health on W7?
> Not easily. If the system is behaving sluggishly as if it had fallen
>victim to a massive malware infestation, yet there is no sign of such
>from your AV scans, you could take a look at the event logs and see if
>there are any bad blocks errors listed.
General performance was OK and there is nothing in the event log but,
when doing a backup, it failed (with predictably cryptic error
message). Eventually a chkdsk found an error in the system disk (and
fixed it). I am concerned it's a sign of future problems though.
> Some laptops actually have disk drive diagnostics built into the BIOS
>rom so you might be able to access a hardware test menu from the cmos
>setup menu or a dedicated hot key during boot up.
I didn't know this. I'll suggest he looks into it. I did tell him to
download and run the manufacturer's diagnostic tool but I doubt he'll
bother.
>A read of the user guide should reveal those options, usually in the
>index under 'troubleshooting tips' or what have you.
"User guide" LOL! IIRC The user guide is a small booklet telling you
how to connect up the power cable and health and safefy instructions
in 8 languages. There's nothing useful in it.
--snip--
-- (\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?
Mark <i...@dontgetlotsofspamanymore.invalid> wrote:
> "User guide" LOL! IIRC The user guide is a small booklet telling you
> how to connect up the power cable and health and safefy instructions
> in 8 languages. There's nothing useful in it.
That's the "getting started" guide - there's usually something a bit
more useful on the hard drive.
:: En el artículo <ac6idiFa17...@mid.individual.net>, Tired <n...@no.com>
:: escribió:
::
::: I had a long standing gripe with W2k which made it unsuitable as a
::: mass market product. Out of the box it lacked any registry backup
::: and recovery facility.
::
:: ERUNT:
::
:: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/ ::
:: Still useful on XP upward if you don't use System Restore. I have
:: ERUNT back up the registry at midnight every day.
::
:: Comes with an emergency facility, ERDNT, allowing you to restore the
:: registry of a non-booting system from the Recovery Console.
::
:: Recommended.
::
:: --
:: (\_/)
:: (='.'=)
:: (")_(")
Not out of the box though, which means the first time you need it, you are up shit creek.
> My son has been inflicted with disk problems on his W7 laptop. I
> don't know much about W7 (and I don't really want to). How do you
> monitor disk health on W7?
Boot the PC using the disk manufacturers diagnostic routines.
I have just had a disk from my NAS replaced by Seagate under 3 year warranty because the Seagate diagnostics said the disk was faulty - though it did still work to the extent that I did not lose any data. The Netgear NAS alerted me to the fault.
>"Nick Le Lievre" wrote in message news:k25oo3$7l7$1@news.albasani.net...
>Just cancelled due to the fact this upgrade will be offered as a download >from Microsoft for just £ 24.99 at that price I can afford to upgrade both >my machines.
Just sold my spare 21.5" BenQ 1920*1080 DSUB & DVI Monitor for £ 40 it cost me £ 77 ex VAT just under a year ago and new ones start from about £ 67 ex VAT now, I wanted £ 50 but got talked down to £ 40. That will pay for my Windows 8 download @ £ 25 and renewing my provisional driving licence for £ 15.
