LOL.
The next service pack will contain a self-destruct sequence for all XP Operating Systems that will cause them to cease functioning after 2010.
Oh, the disloyalty of Microsoft customers, not upgrading to Vista the way they were told to. Lousy ingrates, after MS gave them flying children and forests sprouting in their living rooms.
Tech PING!
Apple Breaks 20 per cent barrier in the US and ten per cent barrier worldwide
Apple's market share in the US has broken the 20 per cent market for the first time in its history........
http://www.pcretailmag.com/news/29628/Mac-market-share-on-the-rise-globally
That’s one way to make cheap desktops expensive. You know, cause these will be the only Windows machines anyone wants.
Got tired of dragging my old laptop in and out of my office, so last week I bought a new Vista laptop that I leave at home or take on the road. The old laptop runs great and has XP, Office 97, etc. I got the new Office suite on my new laptop.
Let me tell you........... I’ve had every problem from printer drivers to file problems between the older and newer Office programs. I’m not a happy camper.
Just switch to Linux and avoid all the MS angst. Problems solved.
I am in no hurry to switch to Vista. Even though I had my custom computer built with a 64 bit processor and higher end video card, I figure I would need to triple the amount of RAM and probably upgrade to an even better video card if I were to seriously look at running Vista. The rest of the family has gone to Mac.
I have an HP Pavilion Media Center with an AMD processor. FYI, when HP computers with AMD processors download XP SP3, there are reboot issues and/or your system crashes. When you go to the HP website to download,the HP utility patch to correct this problem (before installing SP3), you get an error message when you click the download button. I’ve sent almost a week exchanging emails with HP Tech Support. (1) HP finally acknowledged that their patch isn’t working; (2) they don’t know when they will have one that works; (3) they know their customers are angry (4) they advised me to set a system restore point; (5) they advised me to turn off automatic updates so that SP3 doesn’t automatically download; (6) I’ve now been through 6 or more people at HP before I found one that didn’t want to charge me for Tech Support and before they understood that I was major pissed!!! BTW, I recommend calling Palo Alto Corporate so they get the message.
A very wise decision for future operating systems would be to have them set up with a complex ala carte system.
That is, for Microsoft to *give away* disks that only connect the user with the Microsoft website with an interface and a complex system diagnosis.
Users can then select just what they want, when they want, direct from Microsoft, paying as they go. Users are provided a complex listing of features, with clear dependencies, and experts “out there” can easily publish popular configurations for things like home or business use and gaming.
Importantly, every bit of non-MS software then installed would have to automatically check with Microsoft to insure that it had all the OS support software it needed.
This could also mean that junk software that Windows installed that most consumers *don’t* want, like checking content for copyright licenses, would be right out. If users wanted that, fine. Microsoft could even include it for free, if they really want to kiss up to their corporate buddies. But don’t force it on people.
Otherwise, a user’s purchase would look something like a price list, so they could tell to a penny how much their OS would cost. Every time they changed their system, it would mean another connection to Microsoft, and possibly a small fee.
The advantages to both Microsoft and Users would be enormous. To start with, there would be frequent user verification, that would make pirating of MS products much more difficult. Microsoft could radically reduce the cost of its provision of OS disks, except to specialized users.
Every part of the OS could be kept up to date with both free and retail system upgrades. Microsoft could have a desktop icon that would include the price list. By being ala carte, even a new OS kernel could be as cheap as $75., because you would be getting just that.
Optimum users could have a continual Windows upgrade happening once each week, for just a few dollars. A system mirror could even be maintained by Microsoft for a fee. So if you had a crash, or needed to upgrade your hard drive, your executable and data files would be recoverable by download.
Finally, Apple computers have long had the advantage of an OS chip on their motherboard. If PC hardware was modified to have an OS chip as well, heavy encryption could be used so that only Microsoft could write to the chip via download, with accessory data only on the hard drive.
"The last Windows computer you will ever need!"And you know they were RIGHT!
It was indeed the last pre-loaded Windows computer I will ever buy!(All my Win machines these days are VMware VMs, using my existing licenses. The old hardware is long gone.)
Win 2K - still the winner.
Question: I have a customer’s machine coming in for maintenance and software install and one of the requests that I fielded was whether or not I could swap out Vista for XP. Any suggestions on how to do this short of having to buy it (assuming I can find a copy)? It is, after all, a “downgrade” -and he just can not work with Linux (gets totally frustrated with it).
All you people who use manufactured computers are a bunch of useless parasites anyway. I built my own computer from a pine cone, three rubber bands and some of my own skin, and I run it with software that I wrote myself using only 4 lines of code.
Hmph. Lightweights. You all disgust me.
/self-important geek mode
Windows XP, service pack 3, just installed for me in 40 minutes with no problems whatsoever.
Ha! Microshaft loses to market forces! The little OS that could wins! XP lives on!