[Thermodyne]

I see a lot of posts here crapping on VISTA. Question would be this; How many of you have actually used it? And how many are just talking out the wrong end of their digestive tracts?

Vista does have a lot of improvements from a security point of view. I doubt they could make the same changes to XP/2K and not require a complete reinstall. And it has a lot of features for the home multimedia market. But I doubt the end product will be entirely like the 1st beta release. But you can bet that it will sell well, the vast majority of the market being preinstalled on new systems.

As to the post speaking to Win2K and Office 97, why replace something that does what you need it to do. In the cooperate world, 2K systems are just reaching end of life cycle, and being phased out. Office 97 is a dinosaur, but if all you do is word process and email, it’s fine. If you look at the fortune 500, there is still a lot of NT and 9x out their. But they are often the same networks making the news with each new worm. I have 600 plus systems on 2K and XP now, and we have almost no MS related failures. I do build custom images that the supplier installs on the new systems, but the changes are mostly related to configuration and preinstalled software. The biggest problems we still have are stupid users opening email attachments and allowing web sites to install software. If the average MS user had the same skills as the average NIX user, MS products would be seen as much more reliable. But then that is one of the main reasons why people pay for MS, it’s more stupid friendly. And the vast majority of computer users are a step below stupid. I wish some of you could sit in on our help desk calls, you would come away with a whole new outlook on the state of the average joe/jane user.

As to the complaints about the way MS does business and prices products, you guys don’t have a clue. Take a look at Autodesk or Microstation, they have some real draconian license systems. Price out some network support software for NIX. Run a help wanted ad for some NIX network staff. You will never be the same after those interviews!

Now….don’t take this personal or feel insulted. But if you are running 9x you need to spend a few bucks and buy XP. And if you have XP and good hardware, and it’s not stable, you need to buy a book-take a class-hire some skilled help-what ever it takes to get your system set up properly. If you suffer from worms, viruses or spyware, see above, and for god’s sake get a hardware firewall and lock it down. Seriously guys, I don’t have any of the problems that I see posted here with the exception of crappy IDE hard drives, and I don’t buy them any more except for laptops. I do use a hardware firewall, I do run up to date AV software, and I do apply patches ASAP. I also have all of my systems on UPS’s. I don’t visit known loader web sites,I don’t open email attachment from unkiwn senders, and only from known senders when I’m expecting them to send me something. I do scan inbound email with AV software even though live scanning slows down the system. I don’t use protos that are known to be comp’d, and I don’t use crappy hardware just because it was cheap or on sale. I run many flavors of windows, I run some NIX, and I run some FreeBSD, they all work well for me. I can’t remember the last time I had a system crash that wasn’t do to some type of stupidity on my part or a dead hard drive.

In closing let me say this; I used to do a lot of work on home user systems, I don’t do it any more unless I just can’t get out of it. I found that I was working my *** off, not making decent money and more often than not the damage was self inflicted. Usually I had to be bull****ingly polite, all the while I was wanting to say “Here’s your sign”.