Bob said:
There are ways to defeat all the "mandatory" crapola. I used to fight it,
but not any more. Every time I upgraded my motherboard and CPU, I had to
re-activate it. I got tired of that pretty quick.
Bob,
Hmm. So I'm assuming that you probably downloaded some kind of hack
or wrote one yourself. Sounds good. Illegal, but good. See my comments
two inserts down.
Drivers? No problem. All the negative talk about drivers is overblown from
what I've seen. I have never had a single driver problem in XP since day 1.
Remember, it's the HARDWARE vendor's responsibility to develop drivers.
Don't blame Windows.
Not always true. I tried using the HP Deskjet 850/855C driver that
came with Millennium Edition and which was written by Microsoft
(according to a HP customer relations executive that I contacted), and
the output looked like it was from an old worn out dot matrix printer.
Indesperation, I tried using the old drivers for Windows 95 and
luckily it worked. However, since the old W95 drivers are 16 bit, they
won't work with XP and I know what to expect now from MS designed
drivers. I kept seeing something to the effect of "not all features
will be available when using the XP drivers" when I looked around to
see how my other stuff (scanner for instance) would work. NO THANKS.
Understand, if I had unlimited funds and could afford to upgrade
all of my hardware every time I bought a new computer (as Microsoft
and the hardware vendors would have me do) this wouldn't be a problem.
But I spend almost $500 for this printer, over $600 for the scanner
and it's transparency lid. They're gonna last no matter what. The way
I see it, $500 is about the amount I'd spend for a good T.V. or washer
and drier. I'd get real pissed if I had to buy a new one of those
every two or three years.
Privacy? Unless you work for the CIA or you are a criminal, you have nothing
to worry about. I think the XP privacy issues are overblown. For 1 thing,
never put anything on your computer you don't want the world to know about.
I've heard this argument before. However, here's the deal: I reserve
the right to break the law when laws become oppressive. Period. This
means that I (by extrapolation) reserve the right to protect my
privacy. No, I don't put anything on my computer that I've got to
worry about, but that's not the point. I don't like (for instance) the
way MS Media Player has to be choked to death by a firewall in order
to keep it from calling home. On my system, even Windows Explorer was
trying to call home and that's pure bullshit. Hell, I just hooked up a
replacement keyboard ABS Computers sent me, installed Microsoft
Intellitype software and *IT* tried to call home!!!! I ask, what in
HELL does a frigging KEYBOARD PROGRAM have to call home for??????
(pant, choke, gasp.....)
Excuse me while I go take a med. 80)>
Bloat? I agree with you wholeheartedly. Although I find XP very fast, the
size on disk and memory requirements are a scandal. I think the next release
of XP should not add features, but reduce bloat. For what it does, however,
XP is no more bloated than any other version of Windows. They are all
bloated.
True true. What it boils down to unfortunately, is attempting to
maintain backwards compatability to a certain degree.
XP's stability is more than worth the extra HDD and RAM requirements.
As far as I'm concerned, I've only upgraded windows on one computer
that I bought. That was from W3.11 to W95 on a Pentium 90. It took so
many service packs and so much tweaking that I yanked it off of the
system and went back to 3.11. After about a year and a half, I finally
caved in and resigned myself to getting used to it. The process was a
nightmare.
*This* system (a Pentium IV with 256 mb RDRAM) was supposed to come
with XP. After having worked on several computers with XP, I'm very
glad I made the choice to go with ME. However, W98SE would have been
even better...
To me, Linux is looking better and better. And if one sets up a dual
partition and dual boot program, you can learn how to use Linux and
get the kinks ironed out while still using Windblow$.
