I really have tried to like Vista - I've been using it for a year now on my work laptop - a Macbook (2 gigs RAM, Core Duo 2Ghz, 80gig Windows partition). I quickly turned off all the eye-candy (Aero Glass etc) but even so for the last year I've spent more time gazing at the spinning blue thing whilst waiting for trivial things (opening explorer windows or files to copy). It put me in mind of what I'd read Nicholas Negroponte say about modern electronics;
You can listen to his keynote at CES this year - I lifted this from The World Technology Podcast's coverage. I like the way he compares the bloat of modern hardware/software with an SUV. You think that the multi-processor machine of 2008 should be able to hand file copying etc. better than the 80486 I was running in 1994!
So there you have it - Leopard, Ubuntu, and XP all run brilliantly on this machine and there are no compelling reasons for me to stay with Vista.
Prices of electronics keep dropping, but if you keep handing savings to the consumer, then there won't be a high price or margins. So manufacturers keep adding features, so the price can stay the same. Laptops, cell phones, etc. So an obesity occurs and turns most things into SUVs. Most of the gasoline is used to move the car, not the person....
You can listen to his keynote at CES this year - I lifted this from The World Technology Podcast's coverage. I like the way he compares the bloat of modern hardware/software with an SUV. You think that the multi-processor machine of 2008 should be able to hand file copying etc. better than the 80486 I was running in 1994!
So there you have it - Leopard, Ubuntu, and XP all run brilliantly on this machine and there are no compelling reasons for me to stay with Vista.
3 comments:
You are not alone in your dislike of the cursor of unproductivity. I think the fundamental problem is that Vista is a memory hog and a lot of the issues stem from memory contention. If you turn off VM and superfetch, it goes like greased lightening. Only problem is that the OS takes over a GB on my machine which doesn't leave enough to run VS, Blend, Outlook etc. Lets hope Windows 7 is better :-) (or maybe you just don't any more)
Yeah, but isn't Vista, like Windows itself, inevitable? I just read about XP support drop date (was it 2009?) Eventually we'll have to go with the herd if we want security patches for our non Mac hardware.
I tried Ubuntu for the desktop last week and was dissapointed with the first 6 things I tried to get working (flash player, mp3 and Audacity, etc.). The tools for resolving patch dependencies and doing all from the GUI were good, but about half the time it didn't work in the end--Audacity, for example).
Ah yes - but did you see what James said about Windows 7?
Audacity is the prefered DAW package for all flavours of Linux - it's what I run and I don't recall it ever being a hassle to install. I've only ever installed it from the Ubuntu repository - never via website.
My eldest has pretty much migrated to Linux - he thinks it gives him geek kudos!
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