I have a love-hate relationship with Microsoft, actually come to think of it, most of my relationships are love-hate :) I’ve been using Microsoft’s OSes since MS-DOS. My first Windows OS that I had installed on my home machine though was Windows 95. Wow, that was many moons ago. I was always excited about upgrades to the new versions…I was always among the first. But, when Vista came along I didn’t bother. Forking out more cash for an OS when mine works just fine? Not worth it. XP works great, well, as good as you can get for a Windows OS.
HP Notebook Users Don’t Dig Vista
I worked for a telephone technical support company last year. I was part of the HP Notebook team. Among the numerous calls we received because of crashed hard drives, software issues with the pre-installed software, backlight issues, etc….were calls asking how the heck to get Vista off of their machines and install XP! The answer I was supposed to give… buy a copy of XP from us but you are on your own to do the downgrade and your warranty is void after downgrading….the bastards! The answer I gave? Visit this web site: {I gave them a link to my web site where I sold XP retail} :evil:
I gave them brief installation instructions, gave them a heads up on the SATA drive issues, and told them if they ever call in the future for hardware support just say they have Vista installed when asked. :) The calls were recorded and I knew my days were numbered but I ended up "quitting that bitch". I don’t miss it one bit.
Ubuntu To The Rescue
I love XP, there’s no doubt, but I think that I’m hopping over to a Linux OS for good. It’s free. I can do practically everything in Linux as I can in Windows, and it’s free, oh yeah I already said that. Plus it’s stable! I love XP like I said but to call any Windows OS stable is laughable. Just like I migrated from Classic ASP (with VB Scripting) to PHP, I may be migrating to Ubuntu (a flavour of Linux) from Windows XP. We’ll see. Definitely not MAC though…well I should do a bit more research before making that statement.
Grab XP While You Can
XP is still available for now. You can buy a copy of any version of XP, including XP Pro at TigerDirect . That’s a link to TigerDirect Canada but you can follow over to the US one I believe.
Well, decision making time and some more learning…but that’s what being in this field is all about. I still have time though…just because XP’s coming off the shelves doesn’t mean I can’t still run the one I have…besides, the software and utilities I use run quite well on XP. I have everything I need (PC-wise)…for now.
May 9, 2008
Miscellaneous