Happy Birthday Microsoft Windows!

This week is my first anniversary of using Ubuntu Linux for a year! The only sad part is that I still have to use a virtual machine to run XP for programs I have not found an Linux version of.

My main desktop and two servers are running Ubuntu. My Kohjinsha PA series mini laptop is also running XP but only because Ubuntu does not like it at the moment. I also have an old Windows moble phone I want to replace with a Droid X or what ever is the latest when I'm ready to buy. Also my car PC is running XP.

I really hate Windows but it looks like its sticking around for a while yet until I find something to replace it with.

 

A few months back I had an extended chat session with Norton Internet Security support: for some reason both NIS and Windows were warning that there was a problem with NIS's Live Update function, which downloads virus definition updates. The guy ended up completely re-installing NIS, in what turned out to be a vain attempt to resolve the issue.

A couple of days later when it reoccurred, I tried tried a NIS troubleshoot dialogue a bit, and it mentioned something about system date... Hmm:

My wife had been checking in Windows Calendar, looking a month or two ahead, and had clicked OK to dismiss it. Brought the system to it's knees!

I guess Bill Gates comes from the "don't sweat the small stuff" school, LOL.

 

I started developing Windows applications with Windows 1.03. We couldn't ship until Windows 2.0, because 1.03 was full of internal inconstancies. It's gotten better over the years, but I still don't like it. I much prefer Linux.

Tom

 

I am SOOOOO much happier since I gave Bill the boot. Now I won't let anything from M$ on any computer of mine. I'd have liked to use Linux, but I lacked the computer sophistication to get it set up to do what I wanted, and I could not find anyone (though I'd have gladly paid) to do it for me. But I'm very happy with OS X. If I ever switch to a smartphone you can bet your booties it won't run M$ software.

What a sad day for humanity when IBM picked M$ to write the OS for its first PC! CP/M was elegant. In contrast, DOS was always crap. If Digital Research had gotten that contract, the entire world of computing and cyberspace would be a joy today, instead of a miasma.

 

Windows has caused me so much gief that I had a stroke and DIED!!!
Now my cat is homeless!!
Thanks Bill....

meow.

 

my new laptop came with seven. while it has some nice features, there are still bugs, the worst of which (so far) is that it drops the internet several times a day.

 

Sorry to say most of the remarks here are just marketing hate. Having to run XP or someother Microsoft OS to run a program either virtualized or native is because Bill has won fair and square for the consumer market.

Microsoft OS's are very robust. Most issues are due to crappy hardware, or incompatibility. Think of it this way. Apple sells a handful of computers all with the same processor line, same memory line, same motherboard, same devices, same everything. They have a kernel that is made to support those devices and it does so well. Microsoft does not sell hardware, so they are required to run on anything. Any processor, any mobo, any memory, any video card, any PCI device, any usb device, any serial device, anything. I have plugged in my printer from 1983 (dot matrix line feed baby) and Windows 7 doesnt even bat an eye. Within a couple minutes I can be basking in the glory sounds of de-de-de-de-de-de-de-dooooooooooo, de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-doooooooooo.

Blue screens of death rarely ever happen since XP when they took DOS out of the kernel equation. After switching to Vista, they all but disappeared. If something crashed the OS, it recovered gracefully with a little message saying "blah has crashed" and you carry on your merry way. Win 7 is essentially Vista and the truth holds. FYI, blue screens are almost always caused by driver errors. Drivers that Microsoft has nothing to do with.

If you have problems with an OS, it is more than likely your hardware. If you buy a crappy computer expect crappy results. If your network card is dropping your internet connection, then blame the PC vendor for putting in a horrible network card, or routing the antenna through the heatsink, or maybe even your router getting hot and dropping the output dB.... All these things happen and are more common with cheap consumer devices.

I have OSX crash on me. I have had Windows crash on me. I have many flavours of Linux/Unix crash on me. I find myself always using Windows because it works the best if you know what you are doing and want to be able to do anything in the regular consumer realm.

 

Windows first went on the market in 1983

 

I nominate Windows XP as the most annoying software of all time. My favorite feature is when you are ready to logout or shutdown and it places a balloon notification (that I don't give a crap about) right over the logout button.

I only use it at work and for GIS classes that I am taking. Otherwise, I use OS X.

 

I'm not so convinced you're hitting a Win 7 bug. At my former work, all of my machines ran Win 7 and were on for days and weeks straight and wouldn't lose net connections. My main home PC also w/Win 7 is on for several days straight w/o sleeping and it doesn't lose its net connection.

 

A history of Windows - Microsoft Windows says

 

Is it a HP
had bad problems for 3 weeks now it working great

 

....and it's my birthday.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Chuck!

My first Windows was Windows ME. I think that was the worst Windows ever. Then I had Windows 98, which was a bit less horrid. XP was far more stable and didn't crash nearly as often. I dumped it when the NECESSARY security software began using more of my computer's resources than my application programs did!

Yep. For me it's about the security. I used to subscribe to the Ziff Davis security newsletter. Every week a few more stack or memory overflow bugs. There must have been tens of thousands of those memory allocation overflow bugs patched by now, and they still turn up.

When I was programming (back in the days of DOS, purely hobby) the FIRST thing I learned from the beginners' programming book, was ALWAYS CHECK FOR MEMORY OVERFLOW. It seems as though Bill Gates had a policy that his programmers were PROHIBITED from doing memory overflow checking!!!

If I owned a software company, and a programmer failed to check for memory overflow, he'd be fired. And yet Windows is RIDDLED with thousands upon thousands of memory overflow bugs, opening up the OS to viruses and other forms of attack.

That's why I hate Microsoft software.

 

i'm no computer guy, any thoughts? wireless hardware/software? never had this with my last 3 laptops.

 

happy birthday!!! hope you're doing as well as microsoft!

 

ound:
Is that why they were subject to so many antitrust and other legal actions in the US and EU?

 

I will go with IBM warp 2