I’ve been fighting with my Windows XP desktops (one virtual, one hardware) for the last ninety minutes - I’ve gotten them to crash, reboot, restart, dump memory and do everything except what I wanted them to do - which was to a) run Outlook and b) run Hummingbird Exceed.
90% of the people in this country run some version of Windows at the office. How in the heck do y’all get anything done?
I’m on my second “recovery” of Windows Vista on my primary home machine (an HP high end purchased in April). As if Vista is not bad enough, HP loads a whole bunch of extra crap that a) by virtue of the recovery disc regime you can’t get rid of and b) seems to be the root of some of the evil.
My office PC (due to the forward thinking of our IT director) has Office ‘97. My favorite experience in when Word crashes after an hour or two worth of inspired legal arguments. Upon allowing it to send an error report to Microsoft, the reply is that the problem is that I am using Office ‘97. Somebody at Redmond has an appreciation of the kind of humor that I, in my more perverse moments, can truly appreciate.
RHG still uses the Mac Mini that I reported on last year, but I never could get their Boot Camp program to work properly with her Windows games, so I set her up with an older P4 machine with XP educational OS and NO Internet access (hence no need for anti-virus software).
I miss my IBM 5150 PC with DOS 2.1, Ashton Tate Framework software, and Oki 93P printer. Admittedly, there was no hard drive (hey, but two floppy drives) or web access. But, I also had all of my hair.
My latest toy is a Blackberry 8820 that occasionally goes dark. Usually I figure it out after being off the grid for longer than normal, and it takes a battery removal and reinstallation to get things rolling again.
On balance, it is all worth it for no other reason than being able to really know what is going on in the world.
Comment by Radar — 20071227 @ 2158
Best way to survive would be with Linux (Ubuntu is very easy to use, I’m told; I’m a Fedora guy myself) with Thunderbird for email. No need for Hummingbird since support for X is practically built-in!
Comment by Ranten N. Raven — 20071227 @ 2214
As the IT director for a fairly decent sized organization, I can tell you XP is much better than anything else out there. Linux (any flavor) is great if that box is doing just one job but it doesn’t multi-task very well at all. Vista? Every machine that comes in this place with Vista gets wiped out and XP installed. Mac’s? Ha, they are great if you got a few grand wasting time in your pocket and don’t want to do much with it. Just my $.02
Brian, have you tried starting in safe mode and going back a few weeks?
If you don’t know what I am talking about drop me a line direct to my e-mail.
Comment by Joe — 20071228 @ 0856
For the life of me I have no idea how people have so many issues w/ XP. I’ve got four computers (two desktops, two laptops), five if you count the work laptop, who all use XP and have zero issues. Networking, wireless networking, Office, internet, games both online and offline, graphics intensive and not, and I never have any issues. About the worst thing I need to do is reboot the desktops about once a week to apply any software updates. I can’t think of the last time I’ve had a computer freeze, or otherwise break
Comment by SFC B — 20071228 @ 1317
On balance, it is all worth it for no other reason than being able to really know what is going on in the world.
Agreed. For all the cantankerous equipment we have to deal with .. it would be darned ugly to live without it.
This hit me a few years ago when we bought a house. The first order of business was to get ‘The Internet’ up and running. Calling the phone company was an afterthought.
No need for Hummingbird since support for X is practically built-in!
I have my reasons for needing XP.
- It’s what the users have on the floor. Having a machine that can duplicate the errors they have is a must.
- Outlook. I use the web interface for most of what I have to do but once in a while I need the actual client.
- Excel. My timesheet is written in Excel, with a lot of VB stuff on the backend to make it go, plus links that only work on a Windows machine.
- Vendor remote control. I deal with a vendor who insists on getting to the server by WebEx. This has been problematic with OS X - it worked once but hasn’t since then.
There are solutions for all of this but .. the path of least resistance is to keep an XP box on my desk and in Parallels as a virtual machine.
Comment by Brian Dunbar — 20071228 @ 1529
Wow - nothing brings out the comments like frustration expressed in an off-hand post.
Let me explain just a bit more ..
One XP pc is a virtual PC, living on my laptop. The other PC is a second-hand desktop that I keep around primarily so vendors can WebEx in and talk to my servers - Windows and Solaris boxes - without having to worry about me picking up my laptop and killing the session.
The virtual PC - once in a while - issues a memory error and restarts. It reliably does this when I launch Outlook and there are many many messages for a particular rule to process. I only get these messages when one of my application servers in Asia has a fit - the trigger can’t find the server and gens one email per error .. which is to say one error for every job submitted in Asia while the server is catatonic.
The desktop XP machine is simply old and needs more RAM.
I can tell you XP is much better than anything else out there.
That might be true but really .. it depends on what you need to do. For example XP would not be a better choice to run Mentor Graphics PCB design suite*, or the tools my previous employer created to manage the design process from customer to fab.**
For me OS X does exactly what I need it to do; it’s a unix workstation with a pretty interface and nifty tools. I don’t have to waste time fooling around with my laptop - it gets out of the way and lets me get to work.
Brian, have you tried starting in safe mode and going back a few weeks?
It’s not worth all that trouble. If they keep acting up I’ll just reinstall from CD.
For the life of me I have no idea how people have so many issues w/ XP.
It’s evil Karma come to bite me for using OS X and getting all lovey-dovey with unix.
*As of 2002, when I left that job behind and stopped having to worry about MG’s peculiarities.
**This might still be true - the tools were a series of really keen PERL and shell scripts - except that employer was acquired and then gradually eliminated by my current employer, leaving all of those fine processes so much dust.
Comment by Brian Dunbar — 20071228 @ 1601
Except for gaming, I can do more on my MacBook Pro than I can on our desktop with XP. I’ve owned this laptop for over a year and it’s NEVER crazhed, NEVER frozen, and does everything faster and easier than anything in windows. When I click an application, it just opens…with the exception of MS Office for Mac…those take longer to open than anything else.
I know they cost more, but they’re worth it.
Comment by Timmer — 20071231 @ 1411
I would suggest going to www.filehippo.com and downloading
a little program called Ccleaner….its registry option will help align the registry to whats currently on your system. It is a good little program….Email me at the above addy if the probelms still persist and I will give you some other options to make things run better
Comment by Dave — 20080102 @ 1133