OT: Which is better: XP or 2000? > Another Piracy Discussion

[David E. Gervais]

Win XP Home is running fine for me. I installed it Last Xmas and haven't had any crashes since. My bro had Win 2000 Pro and his comp locked up and crashed very often. It generally ran like a turtle on valium and he had to re-install 2000 every other month. He now runs XP Home and has virtually no more problems.

I find that way too many people blame the OS because their systems are not running well. I think the Hardware is a bigger culprit where compatability is concerned. I did have some problems when I upgraded my computer but quickly found that way too many devices were sharing the same IRQ's I moved the various cards (sound and network) to alternate slots and they no longer share any IRQ's. Think of it people, you have one OS, but there are 1,000,000's of different hardware configurations. Nuf said.

The only thing I find apauling about Win XP is that when it came out I paid $139 cdn for it. the other day I walked into a store and saw that XP Home now sells for $249 cdn and XP Pro sells for $399 cdn. I feel sory for people who have to pay that kind of price. I also see no justification for the OS to have gone up so much in price.

Just my 2 cents. Cheers!

[Suicide Junkie]

You don't need multiple IPs to split the connection with a hub... hubs are a switch + router.

Switches are the big fancy boxes, hubs are the "dumb" wiresplitters.
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue42/tag/6.html

[JayBdey]

I have XP and I never had to register it. I have changed my GFX card and it never asked my to register XP either.

And if it did, I could EASILY find a way to "circumvent" the registration.

[PvK]

Did XP perhaps activated itself "for" you? I'd be interested to hear if it complains if you try installing the same copy on another machine.

This is a typical strategem for gradual changing of rules and laws, though. They introduce new ones but try to make it as painless as possible, so that people will accept them, and to test the waters. Since they're being nice about it, people don't complain. Eventually they get more and more serious about it, until they eventually gain acceptance for paying monthly subscriptions per computer, per user, whatever they can get away with, for every piece of M$ software. They can take their time at it, since they have a monopoly and enough income from interest on cash reserves that they can make a profit without selling anything at this point.

I don't disdain XP activation because I think it would cause me great inconvenience. I disdain it because I don't like the proposed contract "you can install it on one machine only".

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by Alneyan:
PvK, what changes in XP user interface were you talking about? For me, XP looks almost like 98 after a few tweaks (removing the horrible basic interface, disabling Messenger and so on). Of course, with the basic interface, I can understand your problems. ...

I try not to think about them, but I remember the frequency with which I groan. Yes, although it is a pain in itself, one can evict a lot of the crap. The Search is still crap (annoying, clunky and doesn't always work, even once you kill the animated characters). You can get it to stop creating thumb.db files too... Sorting files by date backwards - any way to fix that? There is weird stuff going on with the "My ..." folders - they are trying to force you to use them with shortcuts that I haven't figured out how to destroy, but if you rename some of them, they will appear with one name in one place, but the "My..." name in others. The "My..." items appearing as default in the Explorer windows, and as if they were their own hierarchy seperate from the actual C: D: etc. The "you have some unused icons on your desktop" wizards. The further attempts to pretend like there is no DOS, thereby breaking some DOS program compatibility. The annoying features I haven't figured out yet how to exorcise from the new "Start Christmas tree". I already mentioned the way the auto-updater is trying to force me to have the virus-target MS Outhouse Express on my computer, even though I turned it off in Windows Components. The updates every few days about the endless security bugs which could let someone take complete control of my XP computer are ... well, they have good comic value.

I expect I could reduce more of the annoyances by devoting more time to learning how to kill them, hanging out on Annoyances.org more, etc. However, I'd rather be gaming than dealing with new innovations from M$.

PvK

[ November 27, 2003, 19:43: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Alneyan]

Windows XP has to be activated here and complains heavily if you don't. (It almost threatens you to destroy your computer if you persist in your efforts not to register. We all know how these Messages look like, don't we? *Thinks of the red alert when you try to install a non-standard driver*)

I wonder why you didn't have to. Was your connection Online during the installation? It could have happened while you weren't watching over XP. Otherwise I have to admit I am puzzled. Or Microsoft sent special Versions in France. *Smirks*

PvK, it did complain for me when I tried to install it on one computer while it was registered on another. I was asked to phone Microsoft if it was a technical problem due to extensive hardware changes. It worked fine when XP wasn't registered on the first computer though. Yes, I was somewhat bored to install Windows on two computers just to run tests.

[Alneyan]

I see what you mean about XP, quite a lengthy list if I may say so. I managed to get rid of quite a few of these, but not of all. Not yet. (The Search function is still not really working, and I couldn't bring the DOS back to life, as it should still be there, lurking in deep waters)

I didn't run into some of the other issues you mentioned, so I gather I should knock on wood. (Especially the part with the My folders, probably because I regard them as a bane for humanity) But I have met some other "options that do want to help you, but which turn to be really harassing in the end" you haven't spoke about, so I guess we are even. (Such as my keyboard going to and fro from Azerty to Qwerty, some accessibility wizards opened by pressing five times the caps key for example, a save option for hard drives which destroys Mozilla settings files, and so on. (Strange that only Mozilla files would be affected out of 40 gigas of data, isn't it?)) I should stop the list here, as someone else will likely add a few other items to it.