[PvK]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

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Almost always such restrictions have been empty power grabs by contract lawyers which have been ignored in practice, however. Humane companies would not cause a stink, for instance, if you want to install, say, a game both on your desktop and your laptop, etc. XP goes one step further and actually tries to sabotage itself by analyzing your machine, using your Internet connection to phone home to the M$ Mother Ship, etc. That's not a practice I care to support by paying someone hundreds of dollars for XP. No way, Jose.

No... almost always such restrictions have been how software is sold. It has nothing to do with being humane. Note that I said RUN, not INSTALL. There is a world of difference between having a piece of software installed on two computers and only using one at a time, and then having that software installed on two computers and using both installs at the same time (such as pirating an OS by installing it on more than one computer).

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So you're saying the XP activation scheme intentionally lets you install one copy of XP on multiple computers, as long as you only run one at a time? That certainly wasn't my understanding.

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there are cases, who knows why, when it just fails to find files that are there. I've tested and had XP search and find nothing, followed by another search program running the same search, which finds files.

I have used the XP search extensively and it has never once failed to find a file that was there. I have used it on other computers without a hitch as well. You might have gotten your copy of XP from a OEM manufacturer that did something to the kernals to alter the search function.

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I've seen this problem on three computers I've worked with, one of which I installed the OS myself with install disks directly from M$.

Again, it seems pretty silly for you to tell me how many times you haven't noticed that some files aren't found by the XP search. After all, it's only noticeable if you know a file is there, and it fails, which only happens every so often. However, the fact that it fails makes the search useless for the purpose of conducting an exhaustive search, such as for insuring that a certain virus file is not on a computer. At least this provides a good reason to find a 3rd party search program and never use the annoying-as-heck XP search interface.

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Of course you can have it re-sort manually. That's not a fix, though, it's a known work-around.

That is assuming that the order you want it sorted is the only correct order. They had to pick an order. That is not a bug in any shape or form.

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I'm sure that you prefer that "sort by date" show you the oldest files first, right? I suppose you really like being force-fed BS, since you like XP so much, so it's no wonder you figure "they had to pick an order". Sure it's "by design" and not a "bug", but it is something I don't like about the interface, which is what the topic was. If they can go to the trouble to reverse the sort order, and to provide options like "hey, would you like to be annoyed by an animated puppy?", then why not have an option to sort either way by default?

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Sure. You must've turned it off, but by default, every few days or weeks, XP decides to launch a wizard in the user's face, perhaps with a hateful cartoon character and cutesy "speach bubble", saying something like, "Hey, XP has noticed you haven't used some of your desktop icons in a while. Would you like to stop what you're doing, and go through a wizard that asks you about all of them, and gives an option to delete them?" Yeah, there's a way to turn it off, but it's just an example of the many annoying goofball innovations of XP.

Hmm... I have never once turned that off, nor even heard of such a feature. Must only be in some Versions of XP home...

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I've never run XP Home. I have seen it on XP Pro, XP Tablet, and XP MCE. Maybe there's a way to get it to shut up for good, and you shut it off when you were first disabling all the default nonsense.

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I do that on my own XP box at work, but there is still some crud left over that is not on 2K or 98. And the extra 2K stuff isn't particularly useful, except for disabling as many as possible of the unwanted default processes that launch and waste resources and CPU.

It is quite easy to customize what is in the start menu (especially easy to do in XP). Again, how you want it to look is most certainly not the "right" way to do it, nor the only way. Just because you don't like the default start meny does NOT mean that there is anything wrong with it, just that you don't like it and need to customize it.

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Again, I was replying to one or more questions of the nature "PvK, what don't you like about the XP interface?" I wasn't standing on a soapbox telling everyone that it was wrong for everyone. I'd recommend XP to simple casual Users who want to blow a bunch of money or are getting it relatively free somehow. After all, it's "user friendly" to a saccharine fault.

And no, I don't "need" to learn how to exorcize all the crud. That would be an annoyance in itself. I do fine by just killing the crap that I've already seen how to kill, and avoiding XP as much as I can. After all, my 98SE boxes give me no problems and run faster than my XP box at work, so I rarely need to use XP at all.

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I suppose it reoccurs because of the frequent "updates" which sometimes reset default system options, such as the existance and IE association of MS Outhouse Express.

You can easily remove those two programs, and they do stay removed if you do so.

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I did do that. I always remove all signs of Outhouse from any computer I'm allowed to do so on. As I explained before, this didn't help - it came back, apparently in one of those poorly-documented automatic updates. The only "proper" way I might kill it now appears to be to uninstall the update. Though, it's always fun to find the Outhouse folder and delete it. Too bad that method tends to leave turds in the registry, etc.

PvK