What to do.....

[Tom]

I have heared the the flash drive technology will be mkaing laptops about half the current weight in 2007, and that new batteries will be delivering up to 8 hours continuous use. Sounds good to me.
The problem?

If I don't buy soon, I will be stuck with Vista on the new ones, and I don't want anything to do with Vista.

Perhaps a solution would be to buy a copy of XP now and install it on one later on? I also hear that MS will stop all support for XP very soon after Vista comes out ( no they support it worth spit now!).

Anyone made a full switch over to Linux? I am concerned that too many program won't work with it. But, then, from what I hear, even fewer will work with Vista!

[bigmack]

I know you loath MS T, but Vista will not be the villain you're making it out to be. XP will still be supported if you choose not to engage with V. Don't go Lin as you haven't the computer prowness to navigate through a new op sys.

Notebooks will probably remain the same through 007. Prices have dropped of note and if you decide to get another just put the old up on Ebay and some sap will bid it up close to the price you paid for it.

All in all, lighten up on the MS, evil empire, anti-Vista, bad IE7, school. They've become more stable & realiable in security.

[michiken]

You need not hesitate making the move over to Linux!

Cons:

Yes there are a few windows programs that won't work, but there are also dozens of FREE alternatives.

There will be a learning curve and it will depend on how willing you are to setup and adapt.

You may have to fuss around for drivers.

Pros:

You can download thousands of FREE software titles. There is a built in compiler in case you want to build from source.

You will not be tied to M$ Machine forever.

No Active X based spyware, malware, virii, trojans, popups, homepage hijackers, etc.

Other:

Virtualbox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) is a recently released software that will allow you to run ANY operating system from a Linux box. You could use it to run the few remaining windoz programs that you need.

The best way to learn Linux is to try a Live CD or install it on a 2nd computer.

I am using Arch Linux (http://www.archlinux.org/) now because it is a minimal install and I can configure it any way I like. (I get daily updates by opening a terminal window and typing in pacman -Syu)

Linux Fanboys are raving about Ubuntu Linux (http://www.ubuntu.com/)because it is very user friendly.

I have setup a dual boot with old Windows ME for the few times I have to run ACAD. You could also set up a dual boot system.

[JustRalph]

You need not hesitate making the move over to Linux!


Tom, don't do it. I know you,............... ;)

I don't think Vista will be that bad. All kinds of people have been running it for a while now.........and 99% tell me the kinks are few and far between and it is being made out to be a lot worse than what it is...............

I know that your time is valuable and your frustration level is low.........but I would wait and see if the monster in the closet is really that bad before I make a decision..............you can always change to Linux if you don't like Vista.........Linux will be out there waiting.............

[Snag]

If I don't buy soon, I will be stuck with Vista on the new ones, and I don't want anything to do with Vista.


Tom, come on over to the dark side!!!!! It won't be so bad. You've gone this far, why stop now?

LOL.....I know how you feel. I don't like change either but it won't be so bad. Help work out the bugs with the rest of us.

[singunner]

While flash drives have established their own version of Moore's Law at about 1 year per double in size, they're also selling at quite a premium. You'd probably have to pay an extra 800 dollars or so to get a laptop with a flash drive, even a year from now.

[JustRalph]

it won't take long for it to get cheaper. The Laptop makers are going to jump on this like crazy. Every son-of-a-mother who has ever lost data on a hard drive is going to want one of these. And you know how many of those types are out there.

The hard drive makers are selling stock and putting their resumes on Monster


Reminds me of the head of Kodak when he made a speech to shareholders and stated that Digital Camera's don't scare him. He said they won't ever be able to capture pictures as good as good old fashion Kodak film.

Rochester NY (the home of Kodak) paid for his misguided views.

He decided to start making digital camera's 4 years after everybody else was playing in the market. In the computer/corporate world it was like Ford re-introducing the Model-T in 1976. The imprint was over. Canon and the like had already stolen the market.

[PaceAdvantage]

Flash drives do not last forever, or has the technology gotten better? Number of writes/re-writes is limited, is it not?

Perhaps it's not practically limited anymore?

[BillW]

I have heared the the flash drive technology will be mkaing laptops about half the current weight in 2007, and that new batteries will be delivering up to 8 hours continuous use.



And BTW, don't hold your breath - BLUE IS NOT YOUR COLOR. Battery and memory technology moves forward, but anything revolutionary is improbable.

[JustRalph]

Flash drives do not last forever, or has the technology gotten better? Number of writes/re-writes is limited, is it not?

Perhaps it's not practically limited anymore?

not anymore. They say they have solved that. In fact they say it was solved back a few generations. That is what made the thumb drives possible. this should be interesting. The hard drive is one of the places that slows your machine down the most.

I wonder about syncing these new flash drives with ram speed and processor cache? I wonder if motherboard makers are going to have this problem. Theoretically this could be a problem.........but then again.........it wouldn't be very hard to solve. Just slow the flash/hardrive down a little.........but in theory this should make your old pc faster.

[singunner]

There are certainly a number of impressive applications for the flash drives. Their read/write cycles aren't unlimited, but even at impressive amounts of usage, they're not going to fail before a regular HD would have. And when a flash drive is about to fail, you just can't change the data. You can still read all the stuff that's on it.

I think I heard someone came out with a 32 gig drive for about 800 dollars recently (or soon to be recently). So in a year, it'll cost 400 dollars and a 64 gigabyte drive will cost 800. Of course, in a year, you'll be able to get a terabyte regular HD for about 500 dollars. Right now you can get 500 gigs for about 150. Modern harddrives aren't going anywhere for awhile. They're like tape drives. I think it's more likely that system functions will be stored on a flash drive and mass storage (movies, pictures, music, whatever) will go on your 700 gig powerhouse.

Found the article. Second half of 2007, you'll have a 32 gig for 600 dollars. That's $18.75 per gig. At the same time, I predict a terabyte for the same price. $0.58 per gig.

[Red Knave]

XP will still be supported if you choose not to engage with V.
...
All in all, lighten up on the MS, evil empire, anti-Vista, bad IE7, school. They've become more stable & realiable in security.
Tom, the only big negative (at least for me) that I have heard so far about Vista is the heightened security measures in regards to protected media files. Here's one example
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt (http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt)

[headhawg]

Perhaps a solution would be to buy a copy of XP now and install it on one later on? I also hear that MS will stop all support for XP very soon after Vista comes out ( no they support it worth spit now!).Microsoft's official policy (current version) is that they will provide support for 10 years from the OS release date. For XP, I think the release year was 2001.

[tupper]

Anyone made a full switch over to Linux? I am concerned that too many program won't work with it. But, then, from what I hear, even fewer will work with Vista!

No Windows nor Mac here. I run Vector Linux. When visiting my 81-year-old mom, I use her Mepis Linux machine.

The most difficult part of Linux is choosing your distro (version of Linux).

Before you install a distro, it might be good to try a few Linux live CDs. A live CD (or live DVD) boots and runs from the CD (or DVD drive) and does not touch your hard drive, unless you tell it to. So, these disks allow one to test a Linux distro without having to install it.

To make a live CD/DVD, one downloads the disk's "image" (usually an ".iso" file), and then "burns" the image from this single .iso file into a CD/DVD containing multiple files. If the .iso image is merely copied to a CD/DVD, the disk will not boot.

If you try to boot a properly burned live CD/DVD, and your hard drive boots instead, check that your bios is set to boot from the CD or DVD drive before the hard drive.

Because these "boot-disks" are running from an optical drive, the OS and software reacts more slowly than it would if it were running from a hard drive. However, a live CD/DVD should give you a good idea of the default look and feel of a distro.

Some of the smaller live CDs (such as Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux) load the entire OS into memory, and, consequently, such live CDs run a lot snappier than most OSs running from a hard drive.

By the way, if Puppy is burned as multi-session CD/DVD, it can save everything back to the CD/DVD, so one can travel with their OS and their data files and work on any PC with a CD or DVD drive.

Regarding flash drives, Puppy and Damn Small have had for a long time the capability to run from a USB flash stick. More Linux distros are starting to offer this capability for those who want to carry their OS on a keychain.

Many live CDs can also install the distro onto your hard drive -- Mepis, Kanotix, Gobolinux to name a few.

In addition, there are several Unix (BSD) distros available. For the most part, BSD Unix and Linux are very similar and run the same software/applications. Incidentally, a major BSD live CD was just released -- FreeSBIE 2.0: http://www.freesbie.org/

Distrowatch.com keeps tabs on over 500 Linux/BSD distros: http://distrowatch.com/
Around 350 distros are active. For a newbie, I would suggest looking at the more popular distros first.

As michiken mentioned, Ubuntu is a hot distro, but I am not sure if it is any more user-friendly than distros like Mepis, Xandros, Freespire, OpenSUSE, Mandriva, etc. Ubuntu defaults to the Gnome desktop environment (DE), but there are alternate versions that feature as default other popular DEs and window-managers: Kubuntu (KDE desktop); Xubuntu (XFce desktop); Fluxbuntu (Fluxbox window manager). I run IceWM, which is a light-weight, snappy window manager.

In regards to using virtual machines or emulators to run Windows programs in Linux, I only have experience with the Wine emulator. In Wine, some programs run fine, some are sluggish, and some won't run due to missing libraries/modules.

I know of at least one web-based handicapping application that runs on Linux, and I have also found one that will run on one's local machine, but the large majority of horse racing programs are Windows based.

Hope this helps.

-Dale


michiken:

Thanks for the link to Virtualbox. Looks promising, and I'll probably try it when it makes it to the software repositories.

I like pacman and the spartan concept of Arch, but I have only tried it briefly. I'll run it for a while on my next machine.

[chickenhead]

Buy a MAC.

[michiken]

No Windows nor Mac here. I run Vector Linux.

I have also tried Vector, Gentoo, Slack and just about every option listed on Distrowatch. I was a big fan of Fedora too but I got sick of upgrading and having to download 5 cds every 6 months.

Arch Linux has a rolling release system which means you are always up to date. To date, every problem I have had with anything was solved by reading the wiki or posting to the forums.

(By the way, I am not a programmer, I just have a certain disdain for MS who forced everything down the throat of the consumer).

Tom:

I was unable to PM you because your box was full. Good luck on your decision.

[bigmack]

Buy a MAC.
Fairly sound advice Chickybaby. The dual OS PowerMac runs Vista, yeah Tom, VISTA, incredibly well. It's as stable as the Government of Poland.

By the way, if anyone is familiar w/ the level of knowledge that one, Leo Laporte has, here's some podcasts that are quite informative:

http://leoville.tv/podcasts/kfi.xml

[tupper]

I have also tried Vector, Gentoo, Slack and just about every option listed on Distrowatch. I was a big fan of Fedora too but I got sick of upgrading and having to download 5 cds every 6 months.


I started on Debian and Slack, and Arch seems like it has the best of both those distros (although the Arch repository is not yet as huge as Debian's). I might give Gentoo a try, too, now that there are quicker ways to install.

-Dale