** Reply to message from Harry Binswanger <hb@xxxxxxxxxxxx> on
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:50:49 -0400
> And that raises my unanswered question: is there any reason to prefer XP
> over Win7 for either XyWrite or things like Word and Excel?
Win7 is getting good reviews, mostly compared to Vista. Vista
is simply huge, and although I've tuned my machines to work
pretty snappily & inexpensively (killed a million background
services), the damn thing is still a monster. I'm for slim &
trim. If not for the fact that a few important programs work
under XP but not 2K, I would recommend the latter, simply
because it's inexpensive -- by which I mean, it doesn't chew up
resources and it does the job, fast, with little overhead.
Increasingly I use *nix for the critical, task-focused 24x365
stuff, and Windows to run the gamut of GUI stuff. I also have a
couple of Mac boxes -- mainly for testing cross-platform
database interfaces that I maintain -- and I must say,
familiarity has bred a genuine disdain. It's a schizophrenic
operating system, on the one hand the most childish and impotent
GUI around, on the other a potent underpinning. When I use a
Mac, I find myself drifting toward Terminal, and basically
staying put. (You can't keep a command line guy down! Not
after 40 years. Only one of my Linux boxes even has X
installed.)
So, without direct experience of Win7, I can't answer your
question. But I'm leery of the direction Windows is taking. I
think XP remains a viable option, even 9 years down the road.
The ramped-up security on the newer OpSyses is a total PITA, a
hindrance to everything you try to do -- it's also the only
drawback to Linux, which is simply ridden with it, from bottom
up. (Bottom-up is the right way to do security. Windows and
its developers all build their applications "in the clear" and
then wrap them in a security cocoon, usually purchased from a
third party. A fatal mistake, because at some point everything
must be unveiled in order for the software to deliver the goods,
and smart crackers can always hook the machine at these moments
and peer at the unprotected code. Whereas in Linux, security is
at the core, and everything is built on top of that. The right
way, if you want to be really secure. But it's still a
PITA/hindrance.)
I should say that most users really need security up the wazoo.
It's amazing to me that most have no idea how to look at email
headers, for example, to determine whether a message from your
bank, or Ebay, or PayPal, is legitimate. They just click on the
supplied link! Game over.
XP is troublefree, every software supports it, and "it just
works". A phrase usually applied to Macs. They work too, but
they're mainly aimed at (and, in my experience, used by)
computer illiterates -- there are signal exceptions, but most
Mac users I know have a real aversion to tech. Things might be
different if there were a larger and geekier universe of Mac
users, because these are very capable boxes, if you ignore the
GUI that Apple sticks you with. And the proprietary nature of
everything, especially hardware. (My Mac boxes are all recycled
Dells and Thinkpads, just to thumb my nose at Apple. I really
respect the open source concept -- spent most of my life
supporting it, under different guises. That's what a maillist
like this is all about. Or U2. It's despicable that OS X
enables use of *nix packages, but denies *nix users access to
Apple packages. Bloodsuckers! Wealthy bloodsuckers.)
-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxxxx
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