I hate Microsoft Office!

[tekla]

They would seem to be pricing themselves out of the small business market - hey, ain't that what IBM done did?

[Dennis]

Yep, I'm a small businessperson and there's no way I can afford MS Office 2007 professional, and they cut the calendar out of the lower priced versions, so I'll keep using 2003. My new comp came with Vista and, seeing it's for the office, I don't mind it, but if I get a new gaming rig, it's gonna have xp on it.

Dennis

[MarySue]

U know...

I just realised I actually miss making all those Christmas decorations from different coloured punched tapes this time of year (oh! The Seasonal rattle of the teleprinter...), giving the kids the old "Billion Dollar Brain" mag tapes to tie Grandad's legs to the armchair when he fell asleap,.... and not forgetting those handy old disposable punched cards for scraping the ice of the car windscreen.....

Them were the days when a computer was something to be admired...A single program could dim the lights on a small town when processing....... !

I missed the paper tape generation: I went from programming IBM/360 mainframes with punched cards to PDP11's with 300 baud terminals (anyone remember daisy wheels?). Remember when 256k of core memory (and I do mean CORE!) was big? And a 20 meg disk was the size of a washing machine?

But using punched cards as ice scrapers? Where did you live, Chrissty? Every place I've been, the ice has been tougher than the cards. Or did you have steel cards??

Incidentally, card chaf was a wonderful thing. It had so many uses! Put it in a water balloon, add some soap ... Bam! When that hit your victim, it turned into paper mache. And large computer centers recycled their chaf in the cafeteria, as hamburger helper.

Ah, the good old days .... When Bill Gates was still stuck at Harvard, and life was a beautiful thing.

[tekla]

Yeah, that's mighty light ice, in the Midwest you had to get down and chisel it off.

[Chrissty]

But using punched cards as ice scrapers? Where did you live, Chrissty? Every place I've been, the ice has been tougher than the cards. Or did you have steel cards??

Actually your right, thinking about it..... it was a sort of plastic card that was used as a program pack divider I used to use, not the cardbord ones, and they only ever worked on the thinner ice over here in the UK...

[sd]

I think Gates better have the next product perfect, and I mean PERFECT, or else its gonna be the last thing they release.  If people still perfer the older system to VISTA, and hell, I like 2000 just fine, works for me, but they are toast.

Won't matter, that is the beauty of his ideals
'Don't make people want you, make them need you."
Companies are too invested in MS, and people know it too well. No matter how bad it is, people will be forced into buying it, just as they are new forced into buying Vista.

I wouldn't count on MS going away anytime soon but it is likely that Xp was their peak.

[tekla]

But they were not - or found a way around - taking Vista.  Lots of people in the Bay Area (sort of a geek hotbed) were offering new computers with XP as an added bonus.  When your last product is a 'bonus' so you don't have to use the new one, your not that many more 'new products' away from the end of the line.

What we're finding out these days is that no one is so big they can't fail.

[RebeccaFog]

every time I order a computer for our company, I get it with XP.

Yesterday, some poor staples kid was telling me vista is good.  I should have told him to try installing Netware Networking clients on it.  I don't have to do that anymore.  But when I did, the experience was GRUEsome.

[MarySue]

I think Gates better have the next product perfect, and I mean PERFECT, or else its gonna be the last thing they release.  If people still perfer the older system to VISTA, and hell, I like 2000 just fine, works for me, but they are toast.

Won't matter, that is the beauty of his ideals
'Don't make people want you, make them need you."
Companies are too invested in MS, and people know it too well. No matter how bad it is, people will be forced into buying it, just as they are new forced into buying Vista.

I wouldn't count on MS going away anytime soon but it is likely that Xp was their peak.

Ah, but they're not forced to buy the latest version of Windows. Example: Suppose you have an XP license. That entitles you to run XP on one computer. When you decide to get a new computer, you get a "bare PC" (no pre-installed op sys). You de-register the old one's XP license, install XP on the new one, and re-register.

Net revenue to MS: $0.

People haven't done that in the past because they don't know about it, or it's easier to get a computer with the new OS, or a new computer (or new apps) won't run the old OS. But as time goes on, that will change. If customers resist going to Vista, computer manufacturers, and app writers, will make sure their products run on XP ... or Win/2k ... or even Win/98.

[tekla]

Oh to go back to that 486 with the Win95 platform.  It's gonna go down as the Model T, the DC-6, the Zippo lighter of computers.  I had that sucker running for years and years, with nary a problem. 

I think people upgrade the entire deal because a) in the past just upgrading the OS didn't work all that well, if at all, and b) they don't want the new OS, they could care less about the new OS, they want the hot new graphics card with the amount of memory and clock speed to handle it. 

For myself, and this is about WP programs to begin with, I would never (nor would almost anyone not publishing some newspaper or mag) need anymore WP power than that (486/95) had in it.  I wrote my thesis, dissertation and did my graduate record exams on one, it was fine.

It was really the gamers and graphics people (digital photography included) that drove everything since then.

[Dennis]

Yeah, I pretty well only upgrade for gaming and the only reason I'd thought of vista was for DX10, but meh, I wouldn't bother now. Really all I upgrade is my hardware. I'm not interested in 'upgrading' software if it works fine.

Anything since 3.1 has been fine with me. 3.1 was a bit of a pain in the butt because you had to manage your own IRQ's and stuff whenever you installed new hardware, and I do remember chasing conflicts all over the place.

Dennis

[Jay]

I just hate Microsoft all together!

[sd]

I think Gates better have the next product perfect, and I mean PERFECT, or else its gonna be the last thing they release.  If people still perfer the older system to VISTA, and hell, I like 2000 just fine, works for me, but they are toast.

Won't matter, that is the beauty of his ideals
'Don't make people want you, make them need you."
Companies are too invested in MS, and people know it too well. No matter how bad it is, people will be forced into buying it, just as they are new forced into buying Vista.

I wouldn't count on MS going away anytime soon but it is likely that Xp was their peak.

Ah, but they're not forced to buy the latest version of Windows. Example: Suppose you have an XP license. That entitles you to run XP on one computer. When you decide to get a new computer, you get a "bare PC" (no pre-installed op sys). You de-register the old one's XP license, install XP on the new one, and re-register.

Net revenue to MS: $0.

People haven't done that in the past because they don't know about it, or it's easier to get a computer with the new OS, or a new computer (or new apps) won't run the old OS. But as time goes on, that will change. If customers resist going to Vista, computer manufacturers, and app writers, will make sure their products run on XP ... or Win/2k ... or even Win/98.

Most people are unaware you can do this, and many manufacturers refuse. Take them to court... In the end you you get $50.

Most newer components from Intel and HP do not support Win98. It can be done if you know what drivers are compatible with what, but not always.

[sd]

But they were not - or found a way around - taking Vista.  Lots of people in the Bay Area (sort of a geek hotbed) were offering new computers with XP as an added bonus.  When your last product is a 'bonus' so you don't have to use the new one, your not that many more 'new products' away from the end of the line.

What we're finding out these days is that no one is so big they can't fail.

The pressure is on for companies to stop selling Xp and despite the publicity, only about 1% of my customers have bothered and then only when I tell them they can. Vista = shiny.


MS has one of the biggest cash reserves in history. Most people are unaware that for a long time now, they have pocketed 10% of their income just to ride out the hard times, this is on top of what they reserve for legal fees and such. I have no idea if it is true, but last I heard they had $60 billion in liquid assets alone. While that may not be a lot for a company like GM to operate on, we are talking about a software company. I believe they said 12 people initially wrote OSX. MS could quickly scale back and still do what they do without any problem. It's primarily a software company, it can be run from a closet.


Even then, Apple may garner 10% of new computer sales, but much of that is the public, not corporations. If MS cuts of Xp support, which can be done in a little more than 2 years time (10 year support cycle), no major company will switch from PC to Apple. It costs too much to change out everything. Like Bill said, make them need you.

Besides, if things got bad, they can always buy into another company.

[tekla]

Besides, if things got bad, they can always buy into another company.

I'm sure that's the way this song ends.

And I'm not going to say anything bad about Bill.  He was smart, he knew innovation and incorporated it (even if he didn't invent it) and both made and changed history.  Not a minor deal.  But he's not running the day to day anymore, he's not overseeing the writing of the OS like he once did, and life is a whole lot different now in the biz then when he invented it.  Kind of like Henry Ford in a way.

[RebeccaFog]

Yesterday, for the first time ever, A virus slipped by me and trashed some of my windows system files.  I blew some hours fixing it, but it's still got problems.

So, today, it occurred to me that I may as well just install Linux.  I can get it for free.  The apps I use mostly on that system are opensource like GIMP and openoffice which have Linux versions.

Goodbye microstink. Now you'll have to spend your time screwing me over on my second system. So, come and get me!

[Ellieka]

Yesterday, for the first time ever, A virus slipped by me and trashed some of my windows system files.  I blew some hours fixing it, but it's still got problems.

So, today, it occurred to me that I may as well just install Linux.  I can get it for free.  The apps I use mostly on that system are opensource like GIMP and openoffice which have Linux versions.

Goodbye microstink. Now you'll have to spend your time screwing me over on my second system. So, come and get me!

Welcome to the dark side Rebis!

We have pie 

What Distro do you plan on using?

[Kaitlyn]

Yesterday, for the first time ever, A virus slipped by me and trashed some of my windows system files.  I blew some hours fixing it, but it's still got problems.

n00b

Welcome to the dark side Rebis!

We have pie 

What Distro do you plan on using?

Distro?  That's just an archaic word for Ubuntu, right? 

[Ellieka]

Distro?  That's just an archaic word for Ubuntu, right? 

I admit, I'm biased.

[MarySue]

For myself, and this is about WP programs to begin with, I would never (nor would almost anyone not publishing some newspaper or mag) need anymore WP power than that (486/95) had in it.  I wrote my thesis, dissertation and did my graduate record exams on one, it was fine.

It was really the gamers and graphics people (digital photography included) that drove everything since then.

Unfortunately, bloatware WP programs, like Word, also suck up a lot of cycles, particularly if you enable the on-the-fly WYSISWYG interface.

BTW, the page layout programs used for magazine publishing, particularly for large-format color mags with fancy graphics and high res photos, also suck up a lot of cycles. Look at the pages in Architectural Digest, Vogue, and so on. Those programs routinely import multiple 30 meg images, and have many of the features found in image and vector editing programs (layers, blending modes, transparency, effects, etc).