Windows XP still as common as Windows 7 !

[MagnusB]

TIL, thanks for the info I always thought it was based on Unix, which as I understand is still partly true, though not in the way that I was thinking

As for Windows, I basically have the same setup as you describe. My main development environment is Mac OSX and I have Windows 7 running on a VirtualBox VM. For my gaming needs I bought a dedicated gaming rig which just runs windows for gaming purposes and only because there simply is no alternative.

We are connecting to a remote location, I saw it after I hit submit, it isn't WMware viewer, it is WMware remote or whatever it is called. There are several 100 concurrent users. To put it simply, Outlook crashes if you try to search your emails, opening a PDF gives you time for a cup of coffee or a cigarette if you smoke.

At home I use a desktop with Windows 7 (which is bearable, IMO), though my preferred OS is actually Xubuntu, but I decided earlier this year that I wanted to game some on my computer, and Crossover / Wine just isn't good enough for that. I do miss Linux for my day to day use, there are so many handy tools that just isn't available for Windows

BTW, if you really want to learn a funfact about Linux, Linus hates (or dislikes) people calling it GNU/Linux, and Stallman is obsessed with calling it GNU/Linux, however GNU and Linux are two separate entities.

 

[Naatan]

We are connecting to a remote location, I saw it after I hit submit, it isn't WMware viewer, it is WMware remote or whatever it is called. There are several 100 concurrent users. To put it simply, Outlook crashes if you try to search your emails, opening a PDF gives you time for a cup of coffee or a cigarette if you smoke.

At home I use a desktop with Windows 7 (which is bearable, IMO), though my preferred OS is actually Xubuntu, but I decided earlier this year that I wanted to game some on my computer, and Crossover / Wine just isn't good enough for that. I do miss Linux for my day to day use, there are so many handy tools that just isn't available for Windows

BTW, if you really want to learn a funfact about Linux, Linus hates (or dislikes) people calling it GNU/Linux, and Stallman is obsessed with calling it GNU/Linux, however GNU and Linux are two separate entities.

If you ever have +/- 700 bucks to spare I seriously recommend getting a dedicated gaming rig so you don't have to compromise. I used to be in the same boat (although I chose to dual boot) and now being able to just run my dev environment and gaming environments independently from one another is just priceless.

Didn't know about that fun fact It makes sense Linus dislikes it as when he refers to Linux he refers to the Kernel, whereas Stallman probably refers to the whole package (much like people use the term "LAMP"). To be honest I'd be annoyed too if someone prefixed their product name to my product for the sake of credit.

 

[Taylor J]

I still use XP. But I don't think I'll be using it for long.

Money problems are plaguing our family, so we're going to have to use XP until we can't anymore.

I was going to buy Vista, but I have been using it at my College, and what a #@^&ing resource hog! Then not to be outdone, I see a lot of reports of Vista crashing, riddled with bugs enough to have it eventually at blue screen of death, and other stuff such as viruses for Vista.

I've seen both blue screen of death on Vista, and virus spreading.... at a college computer. WTF.

Seems like Win 7 was M$'s best product since XP. Win 8 seems to follow suit because M$ is listening.

You're really late to the party...

 

[MagnusB]

If you ever have +/- 700 bucks to spare I seriously recommend getting a dedicated gaming rig so you don't have to compromise. I used to be in the same boat (although I chose to dual boot) and now being able to just run my dev environment and gaming environments independently from one another is just priceless.

I did dual boot, but I never booted in to Linux, so when one of my disks failed, I took the time to reformat to just use one system. My current desktop is very much a gaming rig, so I would be getting a "linux rig" instead I think I have a stock Asus PC down in the basement, still alive and kicking, but I have no room for another desktop standing around, and I don't want a laptop. I think I sold my last laptop to my little brother for a beer a few years ago...

 

[Naatan]

I did dual boot, but I never booted in to Linux, so when one of my disks failed, I took the time to reformat to just use one system. My current desktop is very much a gaming rig, so I would be getting a "linux rig" instead I think I have a stock Asus PC down in the basement, still alive and kicking, but I have no room for another desktop standing around, and I don't want a laptop. I think I sold my last laptop to my little brother for a beer a few years ago...

You could still try a Mac Mini or similar, those don't take up much space and are fairly cheap. And use a KVM to share monitor & keyboard/mouse. Sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth in your case though

 

[Wildcat Media]

I've seen both blue screen of death on Vista, and virus spreading.... at a college computer. WTF.

Seems like Win 7 was M$'s best product since XP. Win 8 seems to follow suit because M$ is listening.

I've been in I.T. for decades and never heard of that many problems with Vista. Complaints about the UI and other issues, definitely, but never any gross instability. The main complaints were for UI concerns, as well as the overly-protective dialogs that popped up almost any time you did something. There were also driver concerns when it first came out since it was based on a new NT core.

In our experience, blue screens have almost always been hardware related (whether it's failing hardware, a faulty or incorrect device driver, etc.). As for viruses on a college network--that's a problem with their I.T. department. At the college I've gone to, they were using something called Steady State for Windows. It is a Microsoft add-on to Windows XP (and hopefully, MS has it now for Vista and Win7) that completely returns a computer to its originally installed state. So even if a student copies files to My Documents, they are erased. Any cookies or configuration settings? Erased. I believe it flashes an image of a "new installation" desktop computer when the computer is first turned on. Accounts are all limited (no administrator accounts on any school desktop), and quite restricted, but they work fine on the installed software. In the computer classroom for the Systems Analysis class, we even had MS Project, Visio, and other developer-related MS-based software which the school licensed.

Steady State is also great for a shared family computer. Might store data on an external hard drive, but it's worth locking down the computer when there are teens surfing to all sorts of unknown places.

I jumped over Vista, going right from XP to Win7. Both have proven to be incredibly stable. Blue screens? Sure. My video card crapped out a few times (the fan froze up, and the GPU overheated), and I had an issue with the USB ports on my newer motherboard. The only time I've had a blue screen from software was, ironically, using a print preview function in an older version of MS Word.

 

[MagnusB]

You could still try a Mac Mini or similar, those don't take up much space and are fairly cheap. And use a KVM to share monitor & keyboard/mouse. Sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth in your case though

Don't want a Mac, I am PC through and through I do miss Linux, but what I miss most is to tinker with it (like one time my GFX card refused to recognize my screen, so I had to create a EDID file using the onboard card, which was quite fun). This image comes to mind:

 

[Naatan]

Don't want a Mac, I am PC through and through I do miss Linux, but what I miss most is to tinker with it (like one time my GFX card refused to recognize my screen, so I had to create a EDID file using the onboard card, which was quite fun). This image comes to mind:

Oh I agree, I love tinkering with Linux. Ironically I use OSX because you can hardly tinker, which means I get to be productive when I use it

 

[MagnusB]

Oh I agree, I love tinkering with Linux. Ironically I use OSX because you can hardly tinker, which means I get to be productive when I use it

That is why I dislike Windows, 7 might be good enough, but you can't really tinker with it....

 

[a legacy reborn]

Is MAC OS linux enough for you ?

Well, no. It is an excellent OS but just because it is UNIX-based like Linux does not mean that they are one in the same. Mac OS is a great OS, arguably better than Windows in many ways, but still not Linux.

 

[Carlos]

You're really late to the party...

Uh huh....and your point is....?

 

[Sador]

I've been in I.T. for decades and never heard of that many problems with Vista. Complaints about the UI and other issues, definitely, but never any gross instability. The main complaints were for UI concerns, as well as the overly-protective dialogs that popped up almost any time you did something. There were also driver concerns when it first came out since it was based on a new NT core.

In our experience, blue screens have almost always been hardware related (whether it's failing hardware, a faulty or incorrect device driver, etc.). As for viruses on a college network--that's a problem with their I.T. department. At the college I've gone to, they were using something called Steady State for Windows. It is a Microsoft add-on to Windows XP (and hopefully, MS has it now for Vista and Win7) that completely returns a computer to its originally installed state. So even if a student copies files to My Documents, they are erased. Any cookies or configuration settings? Erased. I believe it flashes an image of a "new installation" desktop computer when the computer is first turned on. Accounts are all limited (no administrator accounts on any school desktop), and quite restricted, but they work fine on the installed software. In the computer classroom for the Systems Analysis class, we even had MS Project, Visio, and other developer-related MS-based software which the school licensed.

Steady State is also great for a shared family computer. Might store data on an external hard drive, but it's worth locking down the computer when there are teens surfing to all sorts of unknown places.

I jumped over Vista, going right from XP to Win7. Both have proven to be incredibly stable. Blue screens? Sure. My video card crapped out a few times (the fan froze up, and the GPU overheated), and I had an issue with the USB ports on my newer motherboard. The only time I've had a blue screen from software was, ironically, using a print preview function in an older version of MS Word.

I've used Vista for a couple of years. It generally worked well enough, but it certainly has issues and pretty much everyone agrees that Vista is the worst of the major windows versions that are still supported (XP, Vista, 7). Windows 7 was more or less the software that Vista was meant to be.

No instability with Windows Vista? Try googling "Vista freezes". It became a term of its own. Basically, when I got my computer, which I got from Dell and did nothing to by that point, every few minutes it would freeze entirely for a few seconds, sometimes longer. Wireless connections would be dropped, I was unable to do anything, and then suddenly you could get on with it. It was entirely random and entirely very frustrating. Eventually it got fixed by Dell, but I won't ever forget the issues I had with it. Other than that, Vista is a very slow system that takes forever to boot, shut down and so on, and is taking up quite a bit of resources windows 7 isn't. The ridiculous amount of protection was annoying as well, I once tried to copy a file (just a document or image) to the C disk and I had to click "yes" 3 or 4 times, including administrator access, before I finally could do it. Overkill doesn't begin to describe it.

Vista worked well enough for me to use it until I got a new computer, but it certainly has its number of issues.

 

[mike os]

vista....in reality about 30x more stable than XP ever was... i have one machine that has run on the initial install (2007) until about 2 months ago, (hdd failure... not unexpected after 5 years), my only real complaint is it is very resource hungry, but just needs a suitably spec'ed machine..... as does every os.... no software can cope with inadaquate hardware & resources.

only crashed 3x in that time... i wont mention the sw that did it because the fruity crowd will get upset... never seen a bsd since i switched from xp... until my lad got a w7 laptop

Linux, fine if you want to play, but no where near a "consumer" product yet, 99% of users dont wat to play, they just want it to work out of the box, somehting the several versions of linux i have played with singularly fail to do.

 

[jack lance]

Ya it is..i`m proud user of xp(desktop) seven(2 laptops)
Win win for Microsoft, apple sux at all