Reverting back to XP

[MidnightCowboy]

I suppose if I ever get satisfied with something then I'll become a danger to myself, but Windows 7 is gone yet again. Maybe the problem here is that I can only get a copy in the native Portuguese. Still, no problem MC thought because with Ultimate I can choose English as an option, which I did after about a 150MB additional download Trouble is that not everything changed. The main windows and program menus did but a lot of the system stuff didn't, including the boot screen language, and no way could I find out how to get browser searches to default to English permanently.

OK, so I was living with this until one day when I opened a zip file and the window presented in Portuguese. Then the clock (date) reverted too. This followed a Windows update and a while later I got a message saying my language files were corrupt and that I should re-run Windows update and download them again. No thanks, back to XP!

I've since talked to another editor who had a similar experience.

Now, everything I was used to (and liked a lot) works again. My favorite firewall (Sygate) and HIPS (System Safety Monitor), all my 100 Windowblinds skins (LOL), even Panda Cloud is faultless in this setup whereas in two installs on W7 it locked CPU at around 50% for some reason I was never able to figure out. I can even have a choice of tray clock replacements now which is more than was possible with Windows 7. The most noticeable change is that my resource use and disk space is much less with XP.

This is not blind resistance to change because I fully intend to have a serious re-look at Linux after we move and can have a landline connection. I just need things to work and stay working. Maybe if it wasn't for this language issue the rest would be fine but for now I'm very happy to be back with my antique system. This link also helped my reversion decision.

http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/infor...vs-vista-vs-7/

[emmjay]

XP/64 and you will be in 7th heaven!

[torres-no-tan-magnifico]

After building my first DT last year I pondered albeit very briefly over what OS to install. I had a LT which came with Vista already installed and I was less than happy with its sluggish performance.

I chose XP for the DT and was so pleased with the result that not long after I also installed XP on my LT. I found it hilarious when contacting Dell customer support and they dared to tell me that I had downgraded from Vista to XP!

I have considered W7 but I think in terms of stability and performance XP is no. 1 followed by W7 at 2 and Vista doesn't even make it to the runway!!

Glad you are happy with XP as you don't seem to have had much luck with either Windows or Ubuntu.

[Ritho]

Don't you know? All of those types of problems are designed to just be part of the user experience. Shoot if everything just worked, people would start to get suspicious or something.

Every once in a while when I am working on my Linux Box, I start feeling a little nostalgic and wish something would hang or crash or something like it did in the good old days. Once I even got a wallpaper of the bluescreen of death and put it on my desktop. That made me feel a lot better for a while, but the feelings faded because it just wasn't real. Eventually I began to experience horrible depression and guilt. Depression because my wife was having all the fun with her Windows Laptop, and guilt because no matter how hard I tried I could not find a way to legitimately suffer from data loss.

Then one day I happened on a solution that changed my life, and it was so simple. I strung the power cord to my computer out the door and across the hallway. Now at completely random times, members of the family or household pets come along, and trip over the cord, and jerk the plug out of the wall receptacle. This brings my desktop grinding to a glorious halt, and I am flooded with a deep sense of serenity and peace. So if you too have become a Linux user, and find yourself suffering as a result. I just want you to know, "There is hope!"

[Anupam]

LOL Ritho, that's a good one .

Vista is the worse of all 3 definitely. I have used Vista which is on my brother's laptop, and I totally hate it. Haven't played around much with Windows 7, so can't say much about it. I will be sticking with XP for a long time I think.

Originally Posted by Anupam

LOL Ritho, that's a good one .

Vista is the worse of all 3 definitely. I have used Vista which is on my brother's laptop, and I totally hate it. Haven't played around much with Windows 7, so can't say much about it. I will be sticking with XP for a long time I think.

Sigh, get with the project. XP goes out of support in 2014, some time yet I suppose.

I've used Vista since beta days and yes it sucks. Windows 7, been running it since beta and it's almost as fast as Ubuntu, if you know how to tune it

I support the site sever which is Linux based but do it all using windows tools. That is just due to the fact that the Linux GUI tools are dreadful. Perhaps things will change with the next release of Ubuntu, some how I doubt it.

Thoughts?

Rik

[MidnightCowboy]

Originally Posted by rik

Perhaps things will change with the next release of Ubuntu, some how I doubt it.

Thoughts?

Rik

Well, I've been tapping the Linux intel from amongst some of our new editors which is considerable. The word from the horses mouth is that Ubuntu itself, Mint and Fedora are the ones to watch. By the time the new look Ubuntu is ready for mainstream consumption my landline capability should be installed which will eliminate the network problems I had before with the broadband modem. Otherwise I shall stick with XP because a system which goes Greek on me for no good reason is not very usable, and you'd all be disappointed if I couldn't turn up here every day

[Ritho]

.....and you'd all be disappointed if I couldn't turn up here every day.

Umm...well...of course! What on earth would make you think otherwise?

[parleegee]

There is a way of salvaging a Vista system(with service pack 1). When I first bought my Compaq Presario laptop couple years ago it came with 512MB of RAM. But the problem is that the Vista uses about 500MB of RAM to run properly. It was slower than a Win98/XP system when booting up and power down. Last year I finally installed an extra 1 GB of RAM. Now it runs much faster, and it actually boots up and power down faster than my other laptop, Dell Latitude(Win XP).

[MidnightCowboy]

This is very good advice. All the time here we see posts about getting the "lightest" of this or "tweaking" that to save memory and make things run faster when the obvious solution is to increase the capacity. I do appreciate that for some even this minor expenditure might be beyond their means but mostly it's the cheapest hardware upgrade cost-per-benefit you can do.