So...microsoft is spinning-up their snake oil salesman number over vista--
"You don't want useful features...look how pretty it is!"--and the natives will finally go for it, like they always do. Give 'em shiny beads and glittery stuff, and they'll let you kill them and take their land.
Feh.
Anyway, my wife has finally been forced to upgrade to xp, simply because of hardware support, or lack thereof to be very accurate about it, and gaming. The box from Amazon arrived a couple of hours ago.
"Do it!" she told me on the phone,
"I want it working by the time I get home...but don't trash all my photos, or you're dead!"
Fair enough. I'm on safe ground anyway, because data recovery is something I do very well and, if you use windoze, you'll eventually need the services of a detestable, geeky, Linux 'fanatic' like me at some point in time--or spend three or four times what you reasonably should on added hardware and software to prepare for the inevitable.
NOTE: I have done two Linux installations to two different, scrap hard drives on my wife's computer: SimplyMEPIS 3.4-3 and SimplyMEPIS 6.0-Final. In both cases the installation time was around 20 minutes and all hardware was supported without my having to do anything except configure a printer definition (using only the drivers that came on the downloaded MEPIS CD). The installation automatically detected all network resources and configured access to same. The hardware has not changed since doing either/both MEPIS installations--except for removing the drives upon which MEPIS was installed.
Have you seen the outside of the box those Bozos, over at microsoft, came up with?
"For installation and use on one computer (see License Agreement for license terms). You must accept the enclosed License Agreement before you can use this product. If you do not accept the terms of the License Agreement, you should promptly return the product for a refund. To review the License Agreement, go to www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/eula. The product uses technological measures for copy protection--you will not be able to use the product if you do not fully comply with the product activation procedures. Product activation procedures and Microsoft's privacy statements will be described during the launch of the product."
Read their EULA, sometime. It's a royal joke.
Screw-it. microsoft customers are, according to microsoft, crooks. I'm a Linux user, so I'm not a crook.
Let's start-up that install, shall we?
OK. The statement before-last lacks something in the logic department. Let's try: I'm not a crook, and I happen to use Linux; so, that makes me even better. (Do ya hear that, Santa?) How's that for the Critical Thinkers, out there?
OH OOPS...
Problem: The xp install driver hangs--hard--when I try to use the HP DVD-Writer drive for installation; so I had to hunt-up a standard CD-ROM drive (robbed it from another machine in the house, actually) to pop-into my wife's machine to do the installation from.
A half-hour later...restart the install...
Uh...more problems:
There is unsupported hardware in the machine.
3 entries under hard disk and floppy controllers--great. I have to see this.
1 entry under digital imaging devices.
1 entry under network adapters--Internet is out at this point, huh?
1 entry under printers--the Epson photo printer won't be used real quick.
1 entry under SCSI controllers. Oh goody!
1 entry under sound cards--forget sound?
Tape devices are out of the question.
The USB controllers and hub devices are not supported. Wait a minute!?!?
Incompatible software...
JAVA
nVidia drivers and desktop software. Cute!
Incompatible programs
Partition Magic
Speed Disk
Settings that won't be upgraded
NetBEUI will be completely trashed...can't have SaMBa support, now, can we?
No matter, there's a work-around on this website anyway.
Software that might not be compatible
HP Disc Compatibility Settings
MSI Live Monitor
Notes about other software
You'll have to reinstall Outlook 2000, at the cost of several restarts--probably losing all your email archives, too.
General Information
We're gonna trash your back-ups and delete everything in your Recycle Bin.
Other
DirectX needs to be upgraded--fall-down easy to do without NIC drivers, huh?
Uh-huh...I see the sign too...Bridge Out Ahead. {shrug} Let's get the ordeal over with anyways.
Install...
It claimed that it will take 73 minutes (what a waste of time!) but, it actually took 113 minutes. Oh, that's MUCH better!
(BTW: My wife's machine isn't what even most gamers would consider to be slow, if you get my drift. OK?)
Problem:
"Hey crook! You need to activate the installation, and you can't do it over the Internet because of our poor hardware support. Call us to activate your installation."
20 minutes of going over waaaaay tooo many numbers later...Houston...we have activation. See now? Wasn't that quick and easy?
No. It wasn't. It was an unwarranted imposition upon my time; and I hate talking on the phone, or even listening to recorded voices on same.
Now the fun begins.
OOPS! Another problem:
The display aspect ratio is whacked-out, after one of those required reboots that isn't required by xp (or am I the only one who remembers the tripe-laden xp ad copy from a while back?). It seems that xp can't handle Samsung SyncMaster 192N LCD monitors without hand-holding.
No. I cannot help myself. I simply have to interject at this point that:
microsoft is a corporation that blusters and swaggers when it comes to bragging about their programming prowess; and they charge out the ying-yang for their software, but they can't get hardware as right as Linux does--and Linux is both FREE and Free!
...and you people actually pay through the nose to put up with this crap--on a daily basis, even? WHY?
Are you freaking brain-dead?
Seriously, folks. You would benefit from a fatal encounter with
The Clue Stick; and, judging by the level of SPAM traffic out there, on the Internet, WE would benefit from your proposed encounter with said stick of clues as well.
Back to hunting-up drivers....
I started this posting at 12:10, two hours after beginning a non-OEM installation of windoze xp on my wife's computer. It is now 15:38, and I'm not done yet but, I'm sure ready to stop right here and now; even though I have a long ways to go before all hardware is correctly installed and configured on the computer humming away behind me.
With luck, I'll be done sometime around the time my wife gets home from work (18:45, usually).
You people, out there, who gush all over yourselves about the "wonderful hardware support" in windoze xp are either on some serious drugs, or are terminally stoopid.
A few months back, I installed Linux to a scrap hard drive that I popped into my wife's computer (same hardware and everything!), and I was up and running--with full hardware support--in something around 20 minutes, IIRC; but I do so many things with software that it may have actually been a bit longer than that. It definitely wasn't anything over an half-an-hour--of that much I'm certain.
You windoze fanatics are in a choke-hold by microsoft. You don't know what's good and what's bad; therefore, you simply don't know what's worth paying for, and xp ain't it, kids...not even if they cut the price by a factor of ten. microsoft has you exactly where they want you, and you are willing victims--sheep led to the slaughter.
You WILL (eventually) cheerfully throw yourselves onto the vista hook; as you throw your money, freedoms and personal information away.
All microsoft has to do is
reel_you_in.
[UPDATE]
The time is 20:35, and I've been working on my wife's computer since just after 10:00 this morning--installing freaking xp home - upgrade. I finally have the situation stabilized thusly:
Network adapter: Downloaded drivers to my Linux machine, and burned them to CD. Sneaker-netted them over to my wife's machine and installed 'em.
Local Net Resource Sharing over SMB: Installed NetBEUI from resources found on this web site. I'll fiddle with share access permissions later.
Sound: Sound refuses to work at all. I will need to buy a new sound card for this machine. Yes, hardware vendors, $cha!$-$ching!$. (Anyone wonder why hardware vendors love microsoft? Wonder no more.)
Don't post suggestions--most of them self-evident--because I know what I'm doing with digital sound systems. It did work (with a boat-load of drivers) under windoze 98se. It worked perfectly at installation-time under Linux--no drivers or hassle needed. It does not, nor can I make it, work under xp. I've wasted hours trying to get this to work, because microsoft is inept.
Printer: Epson Photo printer R300 works well, after finding the driver disc, and installing the drivers and software. I didn't need a driver disc with Linux.
DVD Writer: HP DVD300i refuses to work correctly. It sort-of worked under win98se, and worked just fine under Linux. There's a lesson in there, somewhere, for you.
Floppy drive: It's totally weirded-out. Same-old...it worked like a floppy drive under w98se and Linux. I need to figure this out...maybe ms thinks floppy disks really are obsolete. Feh. Nit-picky point, I'll admit; but, for the bucks microsoft is raping you for, they should at least be able to get FLOPPY DRIVE ACCESS right, fer Buddah's sake!
USB controllers and root hubs: Finally work correctly. (Yup. Drivers. Much time search and download.)
Video card: Updated drivers got that back up to full capabilities...but, as nearly ubiquitous as nVidia is, microsloth should be able to do something about THAT!
LCD monitor: Found the disc and installed the drivers and color correction software. Fiddled with settings. It looks as good as it does (without drivers) under Linux.
PIDE/SATA: Downloaded drivers and installed. Didn't have to do that with Linux. I swear, Grettle, didn't we pass the same tree about an hour ago? Uh...is this sounding repeatedly, repetitiously, redundantly circuitous to you, too?
Software: Removed stuff that doesn't work. No replacements are to be had. Too bad there aren't Open Source replacements for these proggies ported-over to windoze.
Settings: Ha! Forget it. She can't even access her email or email accounts. That'll take her a while to get squared-away, as I come-up with a way to save her email archives.
Photos: Still there. I disconnected the hard drive that they live on, because I don't trust Redmond's professional-grade ineptitude.
OTHER: It will take me another few days of off-and-on work to get this machine back the way she wants it; which is only my time invested...then it'll be a constant stream of battles trying to keep this thing free of viruses, worms and trojans. (She uses Outlook Express, and accesses the Internet, on a daily basis.)
POINT: This is not an OEM install.
Neither is any Linux installation that I've ever done, and the Linux installs have always gone better than this!
POINT: The hardware support of xp is nearly non-existent.
Without third-party driver resources, you're up the proverbial creek.
POINT: The hardware support of Linux is demonstrably superior to that of xp.
I rarely, if ever, need third-party drivers on a Linux installation. It just works!
POINT: microsoft wasted just over 10 hours of my time on what should have been a straight-forward OS installation.
Moreover, I'm not even done yet!
POINT: None of this wasted time would have been necessary under a 20-minute Linux installation.
I could have been done by 11:00 this morning!
POINT: Corporate PHBs know nothing about Operating Systems.
With all the hoopla over workplace productivity and data system security, the enterprise should be moving to Linux in verifiable droves; and, they would be, were it not for microsoft's under-handed, illegal, tactics.
In the face of facts like this, why do people even bother to dispute the fact that 1 Linux/Unix admin can handle the machine count work load of 5 to 6 of the very >ahem< "best" MCSEs out there?
This, and
this seems appropriate for my mood, today.
