Since I pretty much use hotmail, msn messenger, etc... for my services, it being more or less "built" into the OS doesn't bother me like it would some people, but my rig can't even really run true DX9 games (Intel 865G), let alone DX10, and I can't for the life of me figure out a reason to upgrade at the moment. XP hasn't crashed in years, even running 16-bit scanner drivers for an old Canon, and I can't find anything in Vista that I don't have just fine ATM, without a hardware upgrade. Not an MS hater, but still scores a huge "Meh".

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"I have this theory that the Apollo missions were faked when NASA found out that general relativity was wrong because the Earth was expanding due to the Sun's iron core being influenced by magnetic waves from the electric universe after being perturbed by Planet X and thereby causing global warming. Where should I start a thread about this?" ~ ToSeek

"Those are the people that wonder how a thermos knows whether to keep something hot or keep something cold." ~ NeoWatcher

My university will be adding the business edition to the MNDA ... MMDA ... err some acronym that lets us download it for free. It's going to take them a couple weeks to get the license set up proper. By then I'll see what the reviews are, I might wait for the first of the service packs to come out.

Of course, from the EULA, I have to shoot my wife if she even so much as looks at the monitor since she's not a student. I think the shoot orders includes anybody who even sees my window glowing as they drive by.

I guess that means I also have to buy it at some point prior to graduation too ... But that's not for 2-3 years.

At the same time, the compatibility program is telling me I don't have an expensive ... I mean advanced enough graphics card to run it with all the features.

Here, Bill 'splains it in 30 seconds:

You can have a lot of arguments against XP, a lot of them valid, but when people say "and your PC crashes 5 times a day" they're either lying or there is something seriously wrong with their PC. Since having XP I own my most stable computer ever. I had it over a year before it first crashed. It virtually never crashes on me, the only issue I have (and I think that is a software conflict rather than XP) is that sometimes during boot it never gets out of the "welcome" screen. But I know that there is some conflict at startup (I suspect AntiVir), as the office toolbar refuses to automatically load and show up on boot since a while. Even when I command it to. Even when I set it directly in the registry. If I command it to load, it doesn't. At least it isn't visible. If I command it to load twice, one is visible and I get an error saying a toolbar is already there. So now I just manually load it afterwards.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

When they say their pc crashes 5 times a day ireckon they mean their software does. Theres loads of buggy crashing sftware out there and whatever OS it was on would not change that. XP itself though has been rock solid for me. The only crashes ive had are down to NVidias drivers heating my graphics card way too much (Changing back solved that).
I can run xp for days and days on end (probably lots longer but ive not tried) without a hint of a crash due to the OS.

MSDN??

I have heard that all the versions are on the same disc for ease of upgrade so you buy say the basic one but ultimate is on the disc too but you cant access it. Is that true? If so i give it about 5 minutes before people find a way round that one!

The whole DX10 thing and vista bugs me though. There is no real reason for it from what i can tell. Direct X is just and API thats all. As such i dont see why it should require a new OS. I cant think of any effect it would add that would need a different OS to XP.

Because Microsoft realised that Vista doesn't offer anything significant over XP. Essentially, they're blackmailing you. Buy Vista, or no DX10 games for you. There is no technical reason behind it at all...it's purely a marketing exercise, forcing people to either upgrade to Vista, or 'give up' on newer DX10 gaming and see their new £350 DX10 graphics card underperform.

Personally - Vista is just about the best piece of marketting I've ever seen....for OSX. I will be moving to Apple this summer.

Doug

I average a system crash about once every two weeks, but thus far, none are remotely the fault of XP.

The big three:

1) EVE Online has the sorriest sound support of any game in history. I had to turn sound acceleration all the way down to "Emulation" in order to run it stably, even with my SoundBlaster SB Live! 6.1 Card. I was crashing to restart every ten minutes with the acceleration any higher than that.

2) I tend to be a hardcore taskmaster with my cable modem, so two online game clients, three web brower instances (I'm getting better about using tabs), and an Internet Radio feed cramming themselves in the line is not unusual. The cable modem periodically gives me fits. Crashing to restart from time to time.

3) Winter usually sees one or two graphic card overheat crashes because of the heat running. Its a twin edged sword, its nice in the summer, because the A/C vent keeps it cool, in the winter, I try to keep the vent blocked to prevent overheating. Doesn't always work.

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BTW, You can extend the 30-day Windows Vista grace period to 120 days.
This is an official, supported operation from Microsoft.
To extend the grace period another 30 days, simply start a command prompt as Administrator, and issue this command:

slmgr -rearm

Reboot for the change to take effect. You can only extend three times, so the total grace period for a Vista evaluation is 120 days.
Once your 3 months is up there is nothing stopping you from reformatting and repeating the operation....But 3 months is all you really need to see the beta nature of the OS.

But things will improve ...

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Video Cards: I recently upgraded from a near $300 video card purchased in the fall of 2002 to an $80 video card that's more than three times as fast, with NO fans, and more than 100 frames per second for any game I own (which is MS Flight Simulator IV). Even with all the scenary detail set to max and the resolution set to a higher mode than is comfortable looking at.

That's not fast? That's wicked fast, and at $80, pretty darn cheap!

On, XP, of course.

Nope, I'm waiting for a while so my upgrade doesn't cost me $1,200 including the OS, a new case, motherboard, power supply, fans, graphics card, etc., and so on...

As for Gate's 30 second rant, I've already got all that on XP, so what's he blabbering about??? Sure, it's add-on software, but it's good add-on software.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

Never had this before, and this evening my PC completely froze twice. I feel a CT coming up...

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

I've enjoyed XP. The silver theme looks cool. It is very functional. It has also never crashed without intensive provocation from an unstable programme and even then only a couple of times. The rest of the time, XP manages to shut down the programme and resume normal operation.

Vista on the other hand has royally screwed up a friends computer. Sure, Windows Aero with its frosty translucent windows looks cool, but it is also perhaps overly ostentatious.

IE7 on the other hand has been great, but I've got that on XP.

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2 good 2 need 4 engines

I despise IE 7. The bars at the top take up too much space, and I have yet to figure out how to put them on one line. In IE6, I had the menus, and one line with the standard buttons and the current address. Now, there's the mandatory search box and address on one line, and another whole row for buttons and tabs (which are too big). What a waste of screen space.

I had to turn off tabs, too, because they irritate me. I'd much rather have a bunch of boxes on the start bar.

WRT Vista, I just installed XP64, and I really like it. Lots of control over the OS, and reasonably fast. I have a free upgrade to Vista, but I'm not entirely sure I'll use it. I mean, I'll get it because a) it's free and b) eventually I'll have to use it, but I probably won't install until I really have to.

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"It's turtles all the way down."

That's the puppy. Well, actually it's the MSDN Academic Alliance (which isn't a true part of the MSDN) I just found out.

Anybody wanna buy a copy of it from me? Just the serial number

Guaranteed unused with the full 2 installs left.

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Nikon D200
Nikon D50
Nikon 300mm F4D ED-IF AF-S
Nikon 50mm F1.8
Sigma 70-200mm F2.8EX DG Macro
Sigma 24-70mm F2.8EX DG Macro

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Er, until someone says “End Hologram”

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Considering that as a gamer, I have both Ventrillo and Teamspeak installed, AND have a headset microphone/headphone combo...

This software's looking more like a dog every time they talk about it.

I was making jokes about this type of stuff years ago. Imagine some disgruntled radio announcer telling everybodies computer to delete all their files

Speech recognition software has to get a lot better before it can be trusted, good enough to tell people apart and be able to discern direction and intent. We are a long ways away from that.

Since IE7, I turned off the google toolbar as I have the search field already, and hid the menus as I have the buttons already. That makes 1 url/search line, and 1 tab/button line. It's smaller than what IE6 had on my PC with the same functionality + tabs.

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Luckily, my PC stopped freezing now. I had placed a huge tuner standing close to the pc (in front of the monitor = 1 table top and 30 cm away from the pc itself) when it froze twice. Can it have anything to do with it? The pc stopped freezing since I shut off the tuner and put it aside (haven't plugged it in since).

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.