Why I hate Windows.....and why I have to use it!

[Justin]

I'm opening up a lot of old subjects recently I know....I'm just hoping for some miracle answers I guess! lol.

Windows, where do you start? WinXP usually runs ok for me but these last few months I've had more and more problems so I thought I'd give Win 7 64bit a try. On the whole, a bit quicker maybe. I try the System Restore feature.....is it me or has that really never worked? It seems to delete more than it restores.

I'd love to go over to the dark (Mac) side or at least Linux...Ubuntu etc. but I live and breathe Coreldraw and CS3 and ubuntu simply can't offer any viable alternatives for me. I know I can pay through the nose and get Adobe on a Mac and perhaps even an earlier version of CDraw, v11?

Someone please tell me there's a viable alternative....I know, we've discussed this before but I need a rant.....and a new PC...OS....etc!

[Justin]

Me again.......

I used to run 2 PC's both with WinXP on them. One went nowhere near internet and so never had updates etc. No need for virus protection, everything checked before installing etc. Always ran like a treat. Could this be the answer?

[John G]

I have a dedicated xp computer just for invoices and backing up - it works a treat. I love xp, didn't like vista and cannot get my head around win7

[Matt Quinn]

Me again.......

I used to run 2 PC's both with WinXP on them. One went nowhere near internet and so never had updates etc. No need for virus protection, everything checked before installing etc. Always ran like a treat. Could this be the answer?

Pretty much - for a raft of reasons we run XP PRO on the Edit Suites and they too are internet-free - in fact the ONLY programs on them are those strictly necessary to do the particular job they need to do. I've NOT upgraded either Premiere or Photoshop since Pro-2 and 6 respectively... MAINLY because they require internet access to register. I still use RAW shooter for RAW processing... We also run Maya and Lightwave for 3d... We rarely get trouble out of these machines...

The admin PCs basically get re-formatted every year. ALL data is kept on a seperate 'd' drive on each machine as it eases this process. Occasional glitch, nothnig to worry about...

At the college we have 24 machines all running CS4 all internet enable and all a 'kin nightmare!!! Premiere seems to be a particular problem as it keeps de-activating itself!

My daughter's machine winds up on the bench once every 5-6 weeks with all the cack she downloads and signs up for!

Frankly, with the exception of the HD work we do on the edit machines there's nothing of note I achieve now with these PCs that I couldn't do back in 1998! DON'T 'update' XP beyond SP2 as that seems to throw up a load of problems.

Kermit Gates can shove Win7! - NOT impressed, can't see any advantage to it. NOT buying it!

[Justin]

Maybe it's time for another dedicated PC with no internet access then. XP with SP2 installed. SP3 certainly does seem to throw up a few issues here and there.

[Bob700]

I've just bought an old PC with XP installed and will use it purely as a tool to run stuff on, it will never be connected to the internet

[phoenixalpha]

Get a decent Win7 PC and get a decentish graphics card capable of running two monitors. The only thing that will slow you down from then on in, is yourself. I can print from Quark, edit Photoshop files, run RSS feeds, monitor email and invoicing all at one time. What I cant do is make products, print, edit PS files at the same time tho. So the PC will always be faster than I am capable of being.

[Justin]

Really not liking Win7, I'm sure it's running better but I find XP so much cleaner. XP 64bit maybe the way to go.

[JSR]

I've been running XP on a netbook for three years now. Haven't touched my desktop since. I even got a second one last year (refurb for half the price) because I've no intention of moving to Windows 7 until I have to.

Windows 7 is too much bloatware to run on my netbooks anyway. Gawd knows why it needs so much bloat to run a simple OS. The system requirements for Windows 7 lists 16GB free hard drive space. 16GB? What for? Some Linux variants require just 10MB (yes, that's MBs - not GBs) of disk space.

Okay, so netbooks aren't the fastest beasts on the block but I do love the way I can just pick the thing up and take my whole life with me - without being weighed down by a battery-deficient laptop. Wherever possible, I run PortableApps so that, when it comes time to clear-out Windows, I just put in the original DVD and let it wipe everything out with minimal downtime.

[Matt Quinn]

Windows 7 is too much bloatware to run on my netbooks anyway. Gawd knows why it needs so much bloat to run a simple OS. The system requirements for Windows 7 lists 16GB free hard drive space. 16GB? What for? Some Linux variants require just 10MB (yes, that's MBs - not GBs) of disk space.

It's always been the way with both OSs and a lot of software - As I seem to recall remarking earlier, there really isn't very much of note I'm doing today with PCs that I wasn't doing a dozen or more years ago. Microsoft always was prone to P-ing the power of the supporting machine up against the wall. And it's one big con - It's actually very rare for developments to be really new; or particularly useful... Certainly very rare for 'new' features to appear that would truly be totally unachievable with properly coded software on the machines of 8 or even 10 years ago...