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Post by clarencebunsen on Jun 27, 2015 5:36:24 GMT -5
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Post by dave on Jun 27, 2015 6:39:46 GMT -5
No sage advice to offer here, just rancor. I'm still happily chugging along on XP SP3. I may be old fashioned, but when my mother bought a lamp for reading in 1947, she expected it would serve her needs for the rest of her life. I can't imagine what she would say if told she needed to pay for an upgrade every few years so that no one else would use the lamp to steal her data. That the "hardware" was hers, but the act of reaching up and twisting the knob to turn the lamp on was known as software and she was allowed to do it only with a license from the lamp company. And they would charge her new fees every few years to allow her to twist the knob, but they would improve the twisting process. All of that and, by the way, the lamp company was absolutely dedicated to making her lamplighting the worst experience possible so that she would continue to pay fees to ensre the lamp did what she expected it to do the first time she paid for it. I may be old fashioned, but Mom would have called that a racket and never dealt with the lamp company again. The fact that we don't have a similar reaction as consumers says more about us than Mom.
I paid $39 for an XP to Windows 8 online (no media) upgrade a few years ago and the machine upon which the deed was accomplished sits over there in the corner as a large paper weight. Actually, it runs Linux Mint, and has also run Ubuntu. It's a nice test deck, but it has more memory than my current XP machine and I wish I had the memory for XP. It needs it. Alas, the two memory systems are not physically compatible.
(Speaking of memory, I have a question. When I first got involved in PC's, I used to load all manner of software from diskettes which each held 1.4 meg. The largest programs I ever loaded, like Windows itself and MS Word, were maybe upwards of about ten diskettes or 14 meg. My question is: How can a program product today be tens of times larger and do hardly anything new?)
When I slapped down my credit card to pay the $39, Microsoft disappeared and turned me over to a vendor. I would have trouble in the future getting a re load when I needed it. In fact, I never got it.
Before I made a decision to upgrade, I logged into a Microsoft system that sent tentacles over the Internet and into the very bowels of my XP installation. After a full fifteen minutes of probing, it announced that I would need nothing else but their download to install and run Windows 8 and that every driver was compatible except for possibly the CD rom driver, a problem that could be solved with a quick and simple download. Everything on my machine was perfectly in order and ready to be upgraded to Win 8.
I pushed the button and said Go. Five minutes later my machine ran out of hard drive space. The tentacles didn't probe that? You could attempt to install the King Kong Kiddie Math Show program and it would first check to see if you had enough hard drive space!
Two days of fevered work later I fashioned a work around and got Window 8 up and running. (But I had to throw part of the saved old system overboard and that prevented me from returning to XP.) Only to find hardly any of the drivers worked. In fact, in many, many instances, the instructions said to not bother with a Win 8 driver. Use a Win 7 driver instead. But the system kept saying it couldn't use a Win 7 driver, dammit, and it wanted a Win 8 driver. Alas, there weren't any, because device manufacturers realized Win 8 was a sham and didn't bother to write or revise drivers for Win8.
So that's my How I Became A Linux User Story (on at least one machine.)
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Post by Clipper on Jun 27, 2015 7:19:47 GMT -5
I did go ahead and "reserve" a free download of Windows 10, but it is not likely that I would go there until it is tried and proven to be relatively trouble free. I have enough trouble without downloading any more problems that could possibly require outside technical help.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2015 8:32:19 GMT -5
There is also a new Operating System with the download for Windows 10. No more Internet Explorer. I read that Windows 10 doesn't have its Windows Media for playing CD or DVD's.
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Post by Clipper on Jun 27, 2015 10:08:24 GMT -5
I haven't used Internet Explorer for quite a few years now. I leave it on my machine as a back up browser and will occasionally go there to look something up while leaving a page or window on Firefox open. Since first loading Firefox I have been pretty satisfied with it. Even with it's drawbacks and shortcomings it outshines IE in my estimation. The only other reason I keep IE is to use it should Firefox go down for one reason or another.
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Post by kit on Jun 27, 2015 19:51:09 GMT -5
Clipper... how do you feel about Firefox vs. Google Chrome?
I didn't care for IE so I switched to Chrome because it gave me a couple of advantages, but I don't know how it stacks up against Firefox. Can you or other gurus provide any comments?
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Post by Clipper on Jun 27, 2015 20:25:13 GMT -5
I had chrome on my old computer for a while but I only used it like I use IE. Strictly as a back up browser. I guess I simply like firefox and I am fairly familiar with it. I have had few problems. I have been told it uses a lot of space on the hard drive but it has caused me no troubles.
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Post by clarencebunsen on Jun 28, 2015 5:40:10 GMT -5
I use Firefox more than Chrome but that is probably just a matter of habit and familiarity. There was a period of time when I regularly using a desktop, a notebook and a netbook in the same day. (When we were a bigger household it wasn't unusual to have 4-5 computer users on line simultaneously.) I found it easy to synchronize FF on all three machines so that the favorites were the same no matter where I logged on. My display is customized for me and others probably fine it confusing. I have the favorites bar displayed but most of it it folders not individual sites. If I click on the "News" folder I get a drop down menu of news sites I've bookmarked. Same for Sci/Tech, Forums, Humor etc. It's not unusual to have half a dozen tabs open with at least 3 pinned.
To further add to the potential confusion, I normally have Chrome logged on but just running one thing, my lodge secretary's Gmail account. Add in that I usually have my Bad Jokes file running, perhaps a couple other files and most people just look at it and leave it alone.
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Post by dave on Jun 28, 2015 8:09:50 GMT -5
In order of amount of usage, I use Firefox, Chrome, Opera (distant third, but I like their html editing better when I'm doing web pages) and IE hardly ever. I usually have FF and Chrome running simultaneously so I can take advantage of what I like in each.
I would probably use Chrome almost exclusively if their speed dial wasn't so confusing and so unlike FF's. I don't like speed dial destinations disappearing just because I don't use them as often as Chrome thinks I should. For Netflix I use nothing but Chrome because it's supposed to be faster. It might be, but I sense some flim-flammery when Chrome comes right up, but when you want to do a function THEN it takes more time than FF. So the game is evidently how best to make it APPEAR faster.
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Post by kit on Jun 28, 2015 15:32:35 GMT -5
Thanks for the input, guys. I didn't know you could run both Chrome and FireFox at the same time. I'll try FF and see if I like it better than Chrome. By the way... somehow Yahoo got into the act and behind my back installed something called "Chromium" on my computer. It really screwed me up until I told a friend who knows something about computers and came over and uninstalled it for me. Naturally, this earned him a nice cup of coffee on me. By the way... did you know that a cup of coffee isn't a dime any more? I was shocked.  |
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