MS Vista Who Cares?
 

Had a long talk with a friend who was visiting, has a high level position with MS development, told me massive Vista ad runs will start couple weeks and probably the Home edition will ship and be available. Home only though. There is almost NO similarity between XP and Vista and the UI is 100% different and must be relearned from the ground up but is Kick Ass! Also, features in new Office suite UI are new concepts and unavailable in any other program.

Say goodbye to the standard static menu

File Edit Favoriites Etc.
Gone! Doesn't exist! Nothing but blank screen. Other details can't go into.... but WOW! Too bad, sounds very exciting BUT I never buy the first edition of ANYTHING!

I have read a couple of reviews and seen lots of pictures. looks totally amazing... but we'll see.

It does look different
http://www.microsoft.com/Windowsvista/

I chatted with a Dell tech on this subject to see if we should wait to buy a new pc, and they told me Vista can only run on pc's with 64 bit dual processors and at this time Dell has only one laptop that could run Vista, so I really think this will be a slow switch since how many people can afford new pc's etc?

Torn, it isn't 64 bit dual processors... the recommended business setup is a P4 HT (hyper thread) processor, which is much more than a year old already... and that is the recommended level. That means that there will likely be reasonable performance down to P4 2.4 or so.

http://www.intel.com/business/bss/pr...ns/desktop.htm

it isn't much different from when we went from Windows 3.1 / 3.11 to XP. The cutoff at that point was about 400mhz, which at the time put a ton of PCs into the junk pile.

Alex

I remember buying my first Pentium and wanted to be ready for Windows 98 so I paid an extra $1200 for 24 more megs of ram :) That was the processor that had the math problems. Intel first said they would only replace the bad processor if it was needed in your work. Since I was in Construction Engineering at the time, I qualified. I still had to give intel a $600 deposit for the new chip. Later, intel said they would replace all bad processors. I think that was back in 1994 or 1995.

I was just looking at some new PCs and I just can't believe how cheap they are. I paid over $5k for that first Pentium. Take a look at what $5k will buy you today :)

For the first decade of PCs all usable systems cost $5k. Kaypro 10 cost about $5K. IBM XT was about $5k. IBM AT was about $5k. Every 2 years that $5k purchased twice or even more performance then it did before so it was needed. PCs didn't become home friendly until they went below $2k and once that happened, well now we all have them.

You're right but back then processors technology was making huge leaps in performance and today the jumps seem much smaller. Before you couldn't really run XP on the minimum required hardware because it would have been way too slow for human acceptance.

Maybe they learned from that and the minimum requirement actually performs well or maybe it will be a dog. Only time will tell.

My first computer cost $1,500 and that was with an employee discount. My neigbor took me in posing as my Dad. It was a PCJr with 512k ram (I upgraded from the standard 256k ram) and no hard drive. I learned to program cobol on that sucker, had to swap my program floppy, then the floppy with the code on it to compile it, lol.

Just think what even $1,500 can get you now. I remember PDP 11/70's with no monitors in college, and even puch cards, which we had to do 1 program with just to show what the OLD technology was like. :D

Whoa, just took a trip down memory lane. I had to use punch cards for all of my freshman and sophomore, and most Junior level Comp Sci classes in college. Fortran, Cobol, Pascal... ahhhh, the good ol' days :D

Vista looks kinda purdy, but think I'll wait a bit for em to shake things out some.

Yup, I remember back in college...working on dual floppy systems...and that was cool stuff then! My first system was a 12 mgz 486...custom made by a guy I met through my college professor. Seems to me I paid right around 2 grand for that puppy too...lol.

Though I certainly don't get by with cheap machines these days either. I built the machine I'm using now almost 3 years ago...got about $3k into the machine. It's still fast and stable after almost 3 years...certainly don't get that out of those sub $1k Dells.

Does anyone know how compatible this will be with existing software? I"m with you MrYum, I'm waiting until it is out awhile and the bugs are shook out. It took me forever to switch from '98 being an old dos prompt person, I hated the way 2000 took you more away from that, lol. This last computer I finally caved and went to XP.

Red Cherry, you are young. This is where it all began with me http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/402.html . It was hell to trace those damn wires plugged in the wrong holes.

|loony| |couch|

That was my first Pentium :)
My first computer was an Apple II Plus back in 1982 or 83. My father had one when I was 16 and he had to put the cabinet in another room and had to keep that room air conditioned 24/7, 365 days/year. And it still got too hot sometimes. It was almost the size of my desk :) I don't remember what kind it was but I remember looking at a tiny screen amazed at the little dancing stick figure :)

Moore's Law




Like most things, computer hardware is priced by what the market will bear, not a % based on costs.

I guess I'll do like I always do, I'll wait for work to buy the VLK and then just copy the thing for myself. But at this point I'm not jumping off XP anytime fast. I think it was a major step for MS in stability. Well not really stable, instead of getting those nice blue screens we now get a little pop up asking if you want to send the error message to MS. Man I often wonder who reads all those. Surly they must get millions of them a day, just on the autosend alone.
My first PC was a MAC 128 I think that was the name. My dad loaned a friend money to open a High end PC graphics house and the friend gave me the thing with a tape drive and modem that I could never figure out how to use. Hell that was back in like 82 maybe. Then came the comadore 64 WOW! Color!!! And hey I could program it to repeat my name across the screen a zillion times (you can always tell on forums who played around with "basic", instead of typing GO TO, they type goto). Then I got a 128 which was cool cause I was able to get that modem working, which was mainly used to send messages to my one and only computer geek friend. He fooled me one day. I went over his house an he told me he was able to break into the fbi's mainframe. I have to admit he did a good job making it look real and scaring the shit out of me. The program made it look as though we were caught, he had the modem call his house about 5 seconds after the program said they found us and disconnected our phone in order to call us. lol. Man those were the days. I wonder what that guy is doing now. Good ol Arty such a wiseass.

Its about time for me to get a new computer

I been thinking about going with a lap top and getting a external hard drive and using an external monitor

I wanna get an office outside of the house but I dont wanna work there every day
so a lap top would allow me to always have my stuff with me

rather then always moving stuff between the home and work computer


what do you guys think ??

I would buy a cheap dell for the office and get one of those cheap fandangled new thingamabobs that all the young whipper snappers are using now. What they call black berrys. This way you can approve the listings while on the d train.

Yeah, I checked that out a couple of days ago too and it goes to show you how fast (or not) they're moving. When I saw the site almost everything went back to the first page... now they've added some content, still the "coming soon" was kinda amusing!

That's a cute story, you forgot to mention that crazy little chicklet keyboard. I was working in a beta computer store which was trying to become a franchise (I was a purchasing agent and you wouldn't believe how much stuff was given to me free... software came in plastic baggies and we would round table with Bill Gates twice a year at expos). Very exciting days and you a girl at the time into PC's, very cool.

Right now, all I use is a laptop Tommy. It does come in handy when I do travel (once since I got the laptop) but even better is having everything with me when I go from my office to any other room in the house. I use the 17" monitor that came with the laptop and have bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I also have a home server for bigger files and crap.

I can second the suggestion of Jim's setup. Being able to work pretty much anywhere I want can make the day more productive for me. I use a notebook with a wireless network at home, and a bluetooth connection to the cellphone in my backpack or pocket when I'm out somewhere. External monitor at home, external hard drives too.

Oh yeah, here something I've used for years with my notebooks. Not a nicely-designed website, but a very good product...

http://www.airdesks.com/

.