Mike -
On 9/13/07, serasoft <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Mike's Rant:
>
> You know I have been a huge fan of MS until just recently. I have been
> having tremendous trouble with IE 6.0...freezes, aborts, etc. I thought
> it
> was just my machine but my other 2 machines are doing it too, one is
> Vista,
> the other 2 are XP. I am moving to Firefox for browsing and web stuff.
Don't forget to checkout the many great Extensions for Firefox. Start with
the a few of the 10 most popular.
There is another issue I have with MS and that has to do with their
> licensing of MS Office. I have it on one machine but wanted to put it on
> my
> 2 other machines; all 3 machines are used by me and my kids for work and
> play. According to their licensing I could not simply copy it to the
> other
> machines, no, I had to buy new copies for them. Now I want Word, Excel
> and
> Outlook. These were in excess of $300 a copy for each machine. Quite
> simply, that sucks! No wonder Gates is a multi-billionaire. I bought
> Corel's Wordperfect for $79 and it had a $30 rebate; it also has a
> spreadsheet tool, and I bought Wordperfect Mail for $49. I can use these
> on
> up to 3 machines, XP and Vista. Works great.
Sounds like you should be checking out OpenOffice.org *free* office suit,
compatible with MS Office w/o macros, and runs on Windows, Linux, various
Unixes, etc. Can do some things that MS Office can't.
While I am busy ranting let me add one more thing. I have been with the
> HP3000 and related technologies for almost 25 years. Loved it all. Made
> a
> great living at it, etc. But the world is changing and I am fast learning
> LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). One major difference I see in this
> technology is that by and large, most of the source code and databases are
> free. Compare this to Oracle or MS or HP, for that matter. I don't
> begrudge anyone for living large and making a ton of $. But I am getting
> sick and tired of paying out huge $ for them to do so. If someone came
> out
> with an on-line word processor, cheap, I would abandon desktop software in
> a
> heartbeat. I don't think I am alone in thinking this way either. The web
> is just starting, all you old HP COBOL programmers and the like, get on
> board! We don't want the Indians having all the fun do we?
You could run OpenOffice on a server with thin clients for the family.
Makes upgrading fast, simple, and easy.
You might also try an accounts on Gmail (Google mail). Online, available
from any Internet connection, and compatible with MS Office.
Thanks for your time.
>
> Mike Serafin, New Hampshire
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> Of James B. Byrne
> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 12:48 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [HP3000-L] OT Re: Visual Studio 2005
>
> On: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 5:05 PM, Ray Shahan wrote:
>
>
> > I just finished reading "Visual Studio 2005 for Dummies", and I must
> > admit, I'm thoroughly impressed with the MS view of the world.
>
> Well, I just bought two brand-new Toshiba Satellites for my daughters each
> with MS Vista Home Premium (allegedly pre-installed - what a joke), and
> after spending the better part of an hour on each (with considerable
> parallel, if manual, processing) both machines were finally ready to do
> some work. No problems mind you, just tedium.
>
> Except... every three minutes or so each machine gives a warning message
> that .net has encountered a bounds violation. Both machines are
> exhibiting exactly the same condition and both have been updated to the
> very latest hot fixes. The only software besides that pre-loaded at the
> factory that I have added is open-office and Firefox. Neither of these
> need to be running to get this error so I doubt that either has anything
> to do with it. I will look into the matter further when I have time.
>
> Further, from what little I have seen I am not impressed with MS's recent
> conversion to security. In Vista every program that you invoke causes the
> OS to request that you confirm that you started it yourself before it
> will run. No doubt this feature will prove a great productivity enhancer
> until the user figures out how to turn it off. You think these people
> would have learned from "Clippit", but noooo, let us roll out the same
> annoying little aids so beloved by the under 20 set.
>
> My next laptop is going to be a Linux box. I just cannot decide whether to
> go Ubuntu or CentOS. I lean toward CentOS because I prefer a stable core
> and I am willing to source and build my own personal apps. But, Ubuntu
> seems to be more in tune with the desires of a desktop user. We shall
> see.
CentOS (RHEL clone) is a server orientated Linux distribution. Ubuntu is
your best choice for a desktop and especially a laptop. With CentOS on a
desktop or especially a laptop, you are likely to have multiple pieces of
hardware fail to work when you first install it, and will have to spend time
figuring out what pieces (drivers) are missing, and how to get them
installed. CentOS is a very conservative environment and you won't find
much more than the minimum, albeit stable, server packages as the base. The
community has added more "missing" pieces, but that is from a user base far
smaller than Ubuntu's. Ubuntu's motto is "it just works", and is why it is
so popular.
Get Ubuntu! Once you are comfortable with it, there are literally hundreds
of general and special purpose Linux distributions to try.
--
> *** E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel ***
> James B. Byrne mailto:[log in to unmask]
> Harte & Lyne Limited http://www.harte-lyne.ca
> 9 Brockley Drive vox: +1 905 561 1241
> Hamilton, Ontario fax: +1 905 561 0757
> Canada L8E 3C3
- Pete
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