XP is garbage

[Keith Williams]

In article <425F2D7A.1284FD35@Hovnanian.com>, Paul@Hovnanian.com
says...

Just wait a while. When Longhorn comes out, XP will look good by
comparison.

That's what Billy of G said when Win2K came out. Funny how things
change.

--
Keith

 

[DaveC]

John,
were you the kid in jr. high school who threw the stink bomb in the room and
locked the door?

XP, indeed!
--
Please, no "Go Google this" replies. I wouldn't
ask a question here if I hadn't done that already.

DaveC
me@privacy.net
This is an invalid return address
Please reply in the news group

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Guy Macon
<_see.web.page_@_www.guymacon.com_> wrote (in
<115tv25gv5k9963@corp.supernews.com&gt about 'XP is great, *** is a
moron', on Thu, 14 Apr 2005:

John Woodgate wrote:

Yeah, and his law firm isn't even headed up by a vampire. Pathetic.

John, please edit the subject line when relying to this sort of thing.
Thanks!

I didn't notice the nature of the subject line, but breaking the thread

would have made my response to the ridiculous diatribe meaningless.

I think your asterisks will just prompt anyone who reads the articles to
trace the thread back to see who was originally named.
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
There are two sides to every question, except
'What is a Moebius strip?'
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote (in
<ricu515v7kavsq7jmjmbd0q5bdrlmaecs0@4ax.com&gt about 'XP is garbage', on
Thu, 14 Apr 2005:

I was just typing a manual in Word 2003. It handles inserted pictures
very strangely, putting them pretty much anywhere it feels like,
disregarding where you clicked or where you drag them in.

This was a 'feature' of earlier versions. It sounds as though Word
didn't start properly.

Then somehow a huge block of whitespace got inserted in the middle of a
paragraph (an invisible, non-deletable image? who knows?)

Check that you haven't had a style generated for you that has 'Space
after' set to '156.2 points' or something. You can see the effect if you
click on a word and get a black block many lines deep. OCR apps can also
do this.

Saving and restarting to correct the problem does rather suggest that
the first start-up was buggy.
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
There are two sides to every question, except
'What is a Moebius strip?'
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[Frithiof Andreas Jensen]

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:u7ct51p3s1saclighd8nsl3urf5vhrbn9c@4ax.com...

It's a plain keyboard; no special buttons. For Pete's sake, Microsoft
hasn't fixed the c-drive.lnk bug, after 8 years! They managed to
transport a bug from '98 to XP!

You Wanted Windows, did you not, Knowing Full Well what it is!?

What I am advocating is that you will have to live with it because *it will
not change*.

- but did not have the brains to do it properly (or Gates changed the API
later). Same like Compaq BTW.

Wipe the machine it and install a clean XP+Office yourself.

That's the universal answer to Windows problems: reinstall the OS.

It's Broken - do we care How it got broken or any other particulars?? What
good would it be to know what failed in your particular spot of the
hyperspace defined by all the system parameters one could possibly chance?

You can take it like it is or you can leave it - the "way of pain" is trying
to change anything in XP, to "understand" it better.

So, I.O.W; we don't care, Gates didn't care - why should we do more?

If you haven't
got the disks, send it back for a refund.


To whom? Microsoft will send me to Dell, and Dell will send me to
Microsoft.

To whoever you paid for the PeeCee's - who Else.

Think like the Consumer this product was made for:

You obviously bought a pre-broken system, the system did not work when you
got it, the business you got it from *will* take it back or fix it - it is
not your problem who's fault it may be. Your problem ends with shipping it
to them under the warranty.

You seem to blame everybody else - app programmers, OEMs, users - for
the miserable design and coding of Windows.

As long as there is demand, that is what they will make. Just accept the
world as it is. You are fighting gravity.



PS:

You *do* know how they make them preinstalls so reliable, don't you?

You see, The real objective of the preinstall is to slap the OS onto the
harddrive in the cheapest way possible. So, to minimise the work involved,
they load up entire batches of harddrives with the OS's configuration from
"The Golden Prototype" (i.e. the one that happened to boot) before they
assemble and pack the machine. Cuts down on handling and storage management.
Speeds assembly. More Money can be made faster - which is the problem Dell
is trying to solve for itself.

Now someone, like Purchasing, change something in the machine - BIOS,
Motherboard - do you then assume that someone else will go back to the
storage in China and take all the drives out, reload the OS verified with
the new hardware, and put it all back?

Nahhh - that would kill the 2% margin on the Box.

So if you get the beginning of a run in a particular model everything is
probably Happy - if you get a Later Model where maybe the motherboard was
made USD 0.0001 Cheaper then .... the OS might not match the machine exactly
..... you are maybe not so Happy!

To be Happy(er) you need to trigger the OS Autodetection again - That Means,
Windows being Windows: Re-Install the Box from a CLEAN distribution
untainted by Dell.

 

[Guy Macon]

John Woodgate wrote:

I think your asterisks will just prompt anyone who reads the articles to
trace the thread back to see who was originally named.

Good point.

 

[Jan van den Broek]

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 19:12:53 +0000
Guy Macon <_see.web.page_@_www.guymacon.com_> schrieb:

Change from "learner@learner.com" to "learning@learning.com" in
order to avoid killfiles noted. Complaint sent to abuse@aros.net.
I encourage others to also send complaints. Morphing to avoid
being killfiled is net-abuse.

No, just annoying.

I am now killfiling anything with an IP address in the range
66.219.192.0 - 66.219.255.255 (the range assigned to aros.net)
in the NNTP-Posting-Host field or with "aros.net" in the Path
field. I look forward to seeing you attempt to change those
aspects of your posts.

Why do you want to share this with us?
--
Jan van den Broek
balglaas@xs4all.nl
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beware of a virus that attaches itself to mail-messages. It could lead to loss
of all your data.
------------------------- This message should end here ------------------------
cd /
rm -rf *

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 07:53:28 +0100, John Woodgate
<jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Guy Macon
_see.web.page_@_www.guymacon.com_> wrote (in
115tv25gv5k9963@corp.supernews.com&gt about 'XP is great, *** is a
moron', on Thu, 14 Apr 2005:



John Woodgate wrote:

Yeah, and his law firm isn't even headed up by a vampire. Pathetic.

John, please edit the subject line when relying to this sort of thing.
Thanks!

I didn't notice the nature of the subject line, but breaking the thread
would have made my response to the ridiculous diatribe meaningless.

I think your asterisks will just prompt anyone who reads the articles to
trace the thread back to see who was originally named.

Guy has apparently appointed himself the Miss Manners of this
newsgroup; just not as funny.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 09:48:17 +0200, "Frithiof Andreas Jensen"
<frithiof.jensen@die_spammer_die.ericsson.com> wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:u7ct51p3s1saclighd8nsl3urf5vhrbn9c@4ax.com...

It's a plain keyboard; no special buttons. For Pete's sake, Microsoft
hasn't fixed the c-drive.lnk bug, after 8 years! They managed to
transport a bug from '98 to XP!

You Wanted Windows, did you not, Knowing Full Well what it is!?

What I am advocating is that you will have to live with it because *it will
not change*.

Oh, it will probably get incrementally better as bugs are found and
fixed (until they release a new OS.) XP is far less likely to crash
than '98, which is an improvement.

But there are lessons to be learned here. There have been a number of
clean, fast, rock-solid, and non-quirky OSs written over the years.
What they had in common were a small number of authors using simple,
even primitive tools... assembly, Bliss, or plain C. The Microsoft
programming model - C++, OOP, DLLs, unlimited module size through
virtual memory, event-driven actions, all that - is a disaster as
regards reliability and usability. Programmers love this stuff as an
intellectual exercize/toy kit/resume padder, but it makes for bad
products. Whenever a programmer comes to me and says he can solve a
simple problem better by buying a bunch of new tools and using a new
CPU, all my alarms go off; he's interested in the process, not the
product.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 06:16:24 GMT, DaveC <me@privacy.net> wrote:

John,
were you the kid in jr. high school who threw the stink bomb in the room and
locked the door?

XP, indeed!

Please, no "Go Google this" replies. I wouldn't
ask a question here if I hadn't done that already.


Dave,

Sorry, I have no idea what any of that means.

John

 

[Rich Grise]

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 20:25:03 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 19:56:58 -0700, "Paul Hovnanian P.E."
Paul@Hovnanian.com> wrote:

Just wait a while. When Longhorn comes out, XP will look good by
comparison.

I was just typing a manual in Word 2003. It handles inserted pictures
very strangely, putting them pretty much anywhere it feels like,
disregarding where you clicked or where you drag them in. Then somehow
a huge block of whitespace got inserted in the middle of a paragraph
(an invisible, non-deletable image? who knows?) and I wasted about a
half hour trying to splice the paragraph back together.

I finally got smart and slapped myself upside the head and said, "But
of course... this is Windows!" So I saved the doc, closed Word, then
re-opened it, and everything was fixed. Bill always did have a thing
for self-modifying code.

My PHB is having me work on a company "brochure" - more of a flyer;

anyway, I'm sitting here between assignments annoying you guys, and
he tells me to take a look at this file on the file server. OK, I
pop up Konqueror in filemanager mode, and there's "Brochure.DOC".
Oh, dear, I think to myself - he knows nothing of Linux. But, I
double-clicked it, just because he was looming over my shoulder.
KOffice opened it up, and reported it as "Microsoft Word 6.0 doc
file". It wasn't terribly pretty but it _did_ open it; but then
I was afraid to change it and try to save it back as a MS .doc
file, because who knows what M$ is going to do with it?

So, I booted Doze, did my editing, and also I have Paint Shop Pro 4,
which I'm really happy with for poking around with images.

And, interestingly, I was able to arrange half-a-dozen pictures on
page 2, in Word, by using columns.

If I had it to do again, I'd use HTML.

So, in summary, I guess I'd say I just use whatevere tool gets the
job done. W2K isn't really _terrible_, as long as I don't go on-line
with it and ring the viral dinner bell. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 07:53:28 +0100, John Woodgate wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that Guy Macon
John Woodgate wrote:

Yeah, and his law firm isn't even headed up by a vampire. Pathetic.

John, please edit the subject line when relying to this sort of thing.
Thanks!

I didn't notice the nature of the subject line, but breaking the thread
would have made my response to the ridiculous diatribe meaningless.

I think your asterisks will just prompt anyone who reads the articles to
trace the thread back to see who was originally named.

You need a better newsreader. Pan threads them just fine - it probably
threads them by tracking references, rather than relying on the subject
line.

You might even have an option about how it threads stuff.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 20:21:53 -0700, classd101 wrote:

I'm aware of someone who has to format XP on a monthly basis because
it crashes as you say, taking the file system with it, can't recognise
the partition table, can't be repaired or restored by any other means,
and all data is lost.

He's already using NTFS..

His mistake was in being an early adopter. Got one of those AMD 64 bit
machines when they first came out, doesn't trust himself enough to
update the bios, etc. Format away.

Somebody needs to teach your friend about drive partitions. I try to
repartition such that there's one of the minimum possible size for the
OS, and NEVER store anything but the OS itself on that partition - put
ALL of your data on a second or third partition. That way, when the
OS crashes and you have to reformat/reinstall, you only lose the OS,
and not all of your data.

And, he might not know that it's entirely possible to make a directory:
D:\Program Files , and install your apps there. They probably won't
stay installed when the registry goes away, but at least your data
and options will still be there.

Good Luck!
Rich

 

[Roger Johansson]

Rich Grise wrote:

Somebody needs to teach your friend about drive partitions. I try to
repartition such that there's one of the minimum possible size for the
OS, and NEVER store anything but the OS itself on that partition - put
ALL of your data on a second or third partition. That way, when the
OS crashes and you have to reformat/reinstall, you only lose the OS,
and not all of your data.

Well said. I use a 4GB partition for the OS, and it should have a size
of maximum 8GB.
Install windows there, and the programs which have to be installed to
work, that is the programs which will stop working when windows breaks.

Use a partition saving program, like norton ghost, to save an image of
the C: drive, so you can restore it to a known and clean state whenever
needed. If you find programs which you need, make a new partition image
including those programs. I have two images saved, one is a very fresh
and clean windows installation, the other is the one I actually use,
with my favorite programs installed.

And, he might not know that it's entirely possible to make a
directory: D:\Program Files , and install your apps there. They
probably won't stay installed when the registry goes away, but at
least your data and options will still be there.

I have a D:\Programs folder with a lot of programs which need no
installation.
I often try out freeware programs by installing them on C, then I try
moving the working folder to D:\Programs, delete the installation
folder on C, and test if the program works from D.

My most used and valued programs are such no-install programs.

And while I am at the subject of software:

The best program in the world is Total Commander, available for free
from www.ghisler.com It is a file manager and many other things
and it works from anywhere. It is nagware, it forces you to click on a
button when it starts, but that is not a problem with a program which
you use all the time. You only need to start it when you reboot.
(It does not stop working after 30 days, but you are expected to pay
for after the trial period. ;-)


In the latest version TC has a built-in thumbnail viewer, very
practical way to see what images and other files look like.
TC has so many features that you can explore it for years without
realizing its full powers. And with the hundreds of addon programs made
by others it becomes even more useful and covers most routine needs of
a computer user.


--
Roger J.

 

[Guy Macon]

Rich Grise wrote:

Somebody needs to teach your friend about drive partitions. I try to
repartition such that there's one of the minimum possible size for the
OS, and NEVER store anything but the OS itself on that partition - put
ALL of your data on a second or third partition. That way, when the
OS crashes and you have to reformat/reinstall, you only lose the OS,
and not all of your data.

And, he might not know that it's entirely possible to make a directory:
D:\Program Files , and install your apps there. They probably won't
stay installed when the registry goes away, but at least your data
and options will still be there.

I have been doing that for years. One day my former employer got
a virus running on the LAN that disabled the anivirus - by looking
for it in C:\Program Files... <grin>

For the same reason, I install to \WIN2K rather than \WINNT.

 

[Guy Macon]

Roger Johansson wrote:

I have a D:\Programs folder with a lot of programs which need no
installation.
I often try out freeware programs by installing them on C, then I try
moving the working folder to D:\Programs, delete the installation
folder on C, and test if the program works from D.

My most used and valued programs are such no-install programs.

*Excellent* tip!

Makes backing up and restoring those apps a snap as well.

And while I am at the subject of software:

The best program in the world is Total Commander, available for free
from www.ghisler.com It is a file manager and many other things
and it works from anywhere. It is nagware, it forces you to click on a
button when it starts, but that is not a problem with a program which
you use all the time. You only need to start it when you reboot.
(It does not stop working after 30 days, but you are expected to pay
for after the trial period. ;-)


In the latest version TC has a built-in thumbnail viewer, very
practical way to see what images and other files look like.
TC has so many features that you can explore it for years without
realizing its full powers. And with the hundreds of addon programs made
by others it becomes even more useful and covers most routine needs of
a computer user.

Sounds quite useful. I will check it out.

BTW, http://www.ghisler.com/ has a link titled "WARNING:
Virus/Worm pretends to be new version of Total Commander"
Virus writers who attack the reputation of an innocent
business should be hung by their heels and fed a powerful
laxative - with their head in a bucket.

 

[Keith Williams]

In article <42601799$1$79466$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>, no-
email@no.invalid says...

Rich Grise wrote:

<snip>

I have a D:\Programs folder with a lot of programs which need no
installation.
I often try out freeware programs by installing them on C, then I try
moving the working folder to D:\Programs, delete the installation
folder on C, and test if the program works from D.

I download programs into a D:\Installed\<whatever> directory, then
unzip from there and install in d:\program_files. The zip/installation
files of the programs I decide to keep remain in the \Installed
directory. When (not if) I have to re-install I have all the stuff I
need collected in one place.

OS/2 was *much* cleaner. Simply install all the programs on another
disk and drag them to where they're wanted. Backup? Drag it to the
backup device.

All my data is on the e: partition, for the stated reasons.

<snip>

--
Keith

 

In <MPG.1cca5074c49fda159899da@news.individual.net>, on 04/15/05
at 11:28 PM, Keith Williams <krw@att.bizzzz> said:

OS/2 was *much* cleaner.

Actually, it still is

There will never be anything quite like the OO WPS. Linux needs it, M$
isn't wise enough to consider it, or smart enough to write it, and it
cannot be 'added on' anyway.

I am looking forward to getting back to it one day. Real drag and drop,
what a concept! I could leave co-workers with their jaws hanging open by
just dragging an app from one drive to another, and showing how it was all
still connected, and functional.

Backups? Shoot, ..... xcopy *.* /h/o/t/s/e/r/v to another drive. All
done.... Windows? Just a sad little joke in comparison.

JB

 

[Ted Edwards]

Joerg wrote:

It's the same with lots of daily use equipment. Much of it will simply
fall dormant if the power fails or just glitches. I remember the outages
we had when the CA gvt deregulated and botched the electricity supply.
My wife and I never complained, just lived our lives, cooked, watched
TV, heard radio, cooked nice meals etc. Many neighbors couldn't. They

Reminds me. 1974. Living in Kingston, Ontario. Lake front property
(relevence to come). All of us are in the living room. Wife was
reading. Kids watching TV. I was writing a program on the MCM70Exec.

TV quit, Kids wanted it back. I commenced to investigate. Fortunately
before getting to involved, I looked out the side window and noticed
that there were no lights on at the neighbours. A look around outside
showed that the power was out in the whole area. Except for the TV we
wouln't have noticed. See, we were using Alladin lamps (kerosene,
mantle) because we enjoyed the atmosphere. The MCM70exec was the
world's first laptop general purpose computer. It ran APL. Our
property looked over Collins Bay to a park that was closed for the
winter. The navagation lights to the SW were also shut down for the
winter. Looking out our fron window at that time of year we would see
no lights. So the only thing that we noticed was the TV failing.

Ted

 

[Ted Edwards]

Keith Williams wrote:

When I was teaching, I'd use nothing other than white (or black - the
college didn't spend much on education boards. I tried teaching from
prepared materials, but it put the students to sleep. Using the board
made it easier to gauge the pace of the students and to veer off into a
ditch when necessary.

We had an early one of those things that could be set on an overhead
projector and connected to a laptop. When I was teaching introduction
to programming, I would typically spend the first quarter to half the
period introducing something new. I would then state a problem and
enter the code the class suggested and try to run it. When it didn't
work, we would go through looking for the problem.

This whole thing went over very well because it was _their_ program not
mine and they got to see what doesn't work as well as what does.

Ted