Pimp Your XP 272
An anonymous reader writes "Ezinearticles.com has up an interesting article on how you can improve Windows XP to mimic and even surpass Vista — at least some of its new features. Several of the suggestions cost money and others are free. From improving the user interface with Stardock to mimicking new security features with open source software such as Sudown, the article discusses many ways that die-hard XP users can enhance their environment without moving to Vista."
That's all very well... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's all very well... (Score:5, Funny)
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Only if you use a fat bloated and heavy skin, in which case you deserve what you get. Some skins [wincustomize.com] are very, very easy on resources and performance. (They usually correspond to the ones that are easy on the eyes, too.)
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Re:That's all very well... (Score:4, Interesting)
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If it's still running slow with all the eye-candy turned off, I'd say you've suceeded.
Re:That's all very well... (Score:5, Interesting)
I managed to get Vista business running pretty much like 2K, I don't really feel the need to have all the shiny, bloated stuff. One of the main reasons I even switched to Vista (aside from receiving it as a free upgrade) is to check out DirectX 10.
More alarming than some new MS games for windows (Halo 2 and Shadowrun) REQUIRING vista to play, is the fact that to play online you have to pony up for Xbox Live..I wish MS the best of luck convincing PC users to get leeched like they've managed with their console gamers, no way in hell I'm paying for online play for an FPS.
even more alarming (Score:5, Informative)
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I can think of two: (1) DOS 5 versus DOS 4 [5 could put part of itself in the UMB, while DOS 4 was the worst DOS for lower memory hogging], (2) Windows for Workgroups (i.e. v3.11) versus Windows 3.1 -- 3.11 came with VFAT and this vxd made it perform better.
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But isn't being forced (by management) to use the shiny, bloated stuff a form of worker revolt, or at least slowdown tactics?
The employees like it because they can legitimately claim that it's taking time to learn the newest version, the managers like it because they've done their job "improving processes", IT likes it because there's more people needing help and the software
Re:That's all very well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I bought a brand spanking new Core 2 Duo E6600 w/ an X1950 vid card. 4 gig RAM.
I took Vista off and installed XP Pro SP2 because Vista felt like I was trying to jog in a swimming pool. XP runs like a dream, even using Adobe Premiere and Sonar 6 at the same time.
And, there's minimal DRM. And, I don't have to tell the computer that I really, really want to do what I want to do. And, I can play City of Heroes. And, for the first time since I started using computers a couple of decades ago, I feel good about not having the latest OS.
That may be the real legacy of Windows Vista. It may be the turning point in the way many of us have slavishly lined up for every new technology that came along, just because it was the latest and greatest. I see Windows XP sort of like the way I saw the '66 Mustang that I had when I was in grad school in 1977 - as far better than the current model. And you know what? There was something fine in feeling that way about a bit of technology. And there is, again.
When Microsoft removes the DRM from Vista, and I'm convinced all my little productive applets and plugins will work in Vista, AND I get a free upgrade to the latest service pack from the license I paid for when I bought this new computer that is now lying unused, I may take a second look at Vista.
Until then, I'll enjoy my nice new WinXP system and save up for the next gen Mac Pro or quad-core Ubuntu Studio box. And Bill Gates can shove Vista so far up his ass that his eyes look Aero Glassy. That's all.
Re:That's all very well... (Score:5, Funny)
I've been thinking about this, and I think if you poured coffee into all your old peripherals and flushed $120 down the toilet, you might get pretty close.
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Why buy separate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why buy separate? (Score:4, Funny)
You realise you're posting on slashdot, right?
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Re:Well tested? (Score:5, Funny)
Runs fine for me. Only problem I have had is a faulty HP DVD-Rom driver.
All you need to run Vista happily is an Intel quad-core overclocked to 4GHz, 4Gb RAM and twin nVidia 8800 GTX video cards.
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Me, I'm still trying to track down the driver for my monitor, so I can get the blazed thing out of 640x480 16 colors.
I gave up on the mouse. It was a Microsoft mouse, but last year's rev.
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Are you serious when you say you have to have drivers to get your monitor, mouse, etc. to work? I have no plans on "downgrading" to Vista but I'll at least be able to warn some friends.
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Re:Well tested? (Score:4, Informative)
You do not need drivers for your mouse or monitor to work in Vista or XP for that matter. Drivers may allow some additional functionality, but nothing that I've ever seen to be necessary in either OS.
I've installed vista on numerous PCs, at home, in the office and on an old Lenovo R50e. I've not had hardware conflicts, I've not experienced instability, and the only showstopping incompatibility I've experienced is ironically with MS' own
I've managed to find drivers for every card and peripheral except an older Soundblaster.
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O RLY!?
Try writing an OS kernel and NOT including drivers for keyboard or VGA, and see how it works.
Generic driver == no driver?
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Vista doesn't support SLI properly yet. Any support it does have, causes massive performance cuts. Trust me. I saw a 50% increase in speed when going from Vista to XP on a monster PC. 3DMark2006 score went from 10,000 to over 13,000 just with an OS change.
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Not that SLi provides much of a performance increase for what you're spending, anyway. nVidia chips are faster per-card, but the truly great scalers are the ATi cards, whose Radeons (and Radeon HDs) offer
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Great!! So we should all upgrade to Vista next summer?
Huh, this seems familiar, seems like with every Windows OS there's a bunch of groaning about the system requirements when it's first released, then a year later everyone eventually upgrades and everyone's happy.
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And keep dreaming if you want that in a notebook PC! Because you're also going to need a 2 foot diameter fan, and a heat sink the size of the original Apple ][, in order to cool all that stuff off so it doesn't melt within two hours of use!
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Re:Why buy separate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Vista, however, when you look at it for what it is, is basically Windows XP with a hardware-accelerated GUI (which is cool), some parental controls, an idiot check, and even less compatibility with both software and hardware than I believe even XP had when it was first released (especially if you consider 16-bit apps). So many of the planned features were ripped completely from the OS, and its continued delays caused me to personally become quite skeptical of the necessity of Vista to begin with, not to mention another bout of the need for relatively powerful hardware that many OEMs aren't even providing (512MB of RAM on Vista? What are you guys thinking?). The security aspect of things really hasn't changed much, IE7 is still more insecure than any other browser, (early) video drivers can often crash or lock the system outright, and the installer takes forever just to get to the point where you can choose a destination drive and enter your serial - No disk activity is happening, just a long, drawn-out three minute pause between clicking "Next" and actually seeing the next screen. Vista takes forever and a day to install in comparison to other operating systems, even on systems that easily exceed the system requirements. XP's install was closer in completion time to 2k's (probably because it was pretty much the same installer), which was very reasonable. All this not to mention Windows Live OneCare, which, while a separate product, is very much related to Vista, and is one of the worst products in the security market.
Vista's cool, though. It has that flashy cool factor, but that's not really a selling point for an MS OS; I want something that's going to work, and something that's not going to bring my system to its knees just to boot the damned thing.
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Humorous. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Humorous. (Score:4, Funny)
Cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention, this is a hell of alot of software, I mean, he's talking about installing several toys that will run 24/7 and of course this is gonna sap your processing power, and its not integrated, so it'll probably end up using more resources than vista.
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$240? Chasing around a myriad of shareware tools? No thanks.
Re:Cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
The creators of WindowBlinds are fighting this notion of "it's integrated so it takes less resource" really hard as of late.
People seem to believe that if it's integrated, it should be better, but it's not the case. In their benefit, I downloaded and tried WindowsBlinds. It seems to indeed take less RAM and CPU than XP's theme compared (for simple themes). Then of course when you account for all the glows and transparencies running without DirectX who knows.
One things though, it misbehaved a lot and lots of artifacts where the skin authors didn't account i'll use the skin in this fashion (such as put the task bar on left vs bottom). I wished hard it'd work, since I wanted to mod the default XP skin a bit so it has smaller titlebar and taskbar (and not blue). But, not good enough. Pitty.
Looks like the best skin ever created by Microsoft is the Windows 95/2000 classic look, which I use now on XP, and will most likely use on Vista.
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Apart from using the 3D hardware, I don't know if OS X impleme
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Your point about OSX not having the hardware previously is also false. Macintosh computers, even those based on X11 have had 3d accelerated hardware for just about as long as the PC has. The reason is that it uses the hardware that the PC uses.
As far as WDDM goes it is a gimmick and unnecessary done for the reason of making microsoft mon
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I'm sure you're trying to be helpful, but when you don't understand what you're talking about, it's actually just a nuisance. I would be interested to hear from someone who knows how the graphics system in OS X works, but sorry, I don't think that's you.
Free. Re:Cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention, this is a hell of alot of software, I mean, he's talking about installing several toys that will run 24/7 and of course this is gonna sap your processing power, and its not integrated, so it'll probably end up using more resources than vista.
Vista is running all sorts of DRM on top of it's not very efficient or thrilling UI. The cost of adding a few skins is going to be less than that. Yahoo widgets along give the user a clock, weather and that kind of thing, without any performance hit.
But really, the further you get away from M$ the better your computing gets. The real upgrades are free [slashdot.org]. Most of the visual elements have been available in the nix world for decades. The performance gain of moving to GNU/Linux is incredible and it can be had for less than 2GB of system files that auto configure and run live off a 650MB boot CD. Why buy car tweaks or a new car when you could just download a space ship for free?
Re:Cost? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, Microsoft changed their licensing on how many times that could be installed on a new motherboard and it relented, but they have never relented about OEM copies. You bought an OEM then you are stuck with it on that board. There are no options unless you lie...and who knows how much more effort MS put into ensuring you don't try to lie about moving that OEM license to another board.
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Installing Vista is like welding a trailer hitch onto the Civic and attaching a trailer with 7000 pounds of brick in it.
But carry on, people! When Vista II comes on the market and inevitabl
So someone got the idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, the article has a nice list of things you can do instead of upgrading to Vista,
however the main principle that is highlighted has been logic to most developers for decades:
1. Seperate logic from userinterface
2. Seperate into small logical components
3. you achieve better programs which are easier to maintain and upgrade. (which is often as good as profit)
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2. Seperate into small logical components
3. Store settings in human-readable, human-editable configuration files so you can manage, control or otherwise reproduce them.
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2. Seperate into small logical components
3. Store settings in human-readable, human-editable configuration files so you can manage, control or otherwise reproduce them.
Shell replacements? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Shell replacements? (Score:4, Informative)
You can replace the Windows shell with LiteStep very easily [litestep.com].
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Re:Shell replacements? (Score:5, Informative)
I found that LiteStep was a PITA to use. Too much playing with config files.
SharpE [sharpe-shell.org] was a decent and simple to use. Same with geOShell [geoshell.com].
AstonShell [astonshell.com] is a nice shell with lots of features, but it costs money and it can't do anything that LiteStep can't.
I tired BlackBox [xoblite.net] for windows when it was first released and liked it quite a bit. Very minimalistic.
There is quite a lot of shells to choose from, though, sadly, not as many as there used to be. DarkStep was a stripped down LiteStep shell that I REALLY liked, but the maintainer abandoned the project many, many years ago. Seranade looked promising, but the site doesn't even exist anymore.
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What exactly's crap about Explorer? I quite like WinXP's Explorer.
DirectX 10 Is The Difficulty (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, maybe game developers will shy away from DirectX 10 because of the risk of losing a sizable market share. Diehard gamers could also prove finicky. Could this artificial attempt to tie DirectX10 with Vista to force upgrades result in a resurgence of OpenGL adoption in the gaming industry? One can only hope.
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DirectX 10 on non-Vista (Score:3, Interesting)
From that site...
"As a fitting start to this blog, I'm proud to release a preview of our Alky compatibility libraries for Microsoft DirectX 10 enabled games. These libraries allow the use of DirectX 10 games on platforms other than Windows Vista, and increase hardware compatibility even on Vista, by compiling Geometry Shaders down to native machine code for execution where hardware isn't capable of running it. No longer will you have to upgrade your OS and video card(s)
Obligatory (Score:2)
Very simple (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Burn image on CD
3. Insert CD, follow instructions
4. ???
5. Profit!
Why Emulate Vista? (Score:5, Funny)
The story has a happy ending, though. After Ubuntu's installer crashed and Gentoo proved to be a pain in the ass, I traded it in for a Mac.
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Or do you run *every* program that comes loaded with Ubuntu and never change its default settings, too?
Actually... (Score:2)
Stardock wins (Score:3, Informative)
Windowblinds makes Windows XP SOOOO much nicer in my opinion. I wouldn't run XP without it. I love being able to customize my interface, change whatever I want, when I want.
The community at www.wincustomize.com is fantastic, and people are always designing new skins, new backgrounds, etc.
Stardock is fantastic. I love their products a ton.
Sudown (Score:2)
This does it for me... (Score:4, Informative)
Beryl-style cube desktop on Windows. Makes using the inferior OS a little better.
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There's also WinExposé, but it's buggy and slow if you have more than a few windows open.
Mac ad in screenshot (Score:2)
Pimp my XP? (Score:4, Funny)
I learned absolutely nothing about earning money by putting my XP to work performing sex acts with others.
Cheaper Breadcrumbs (Score:5, Informative)
Priceless (Score:4, Insightful)
Directory Opus £35
Stardock £25
Total cost of Pimping your copy of XP to look like Vista £80, the look on your friends face as you tell them you bought Vista Home Basic for £56 Here [overclockers.co.uk]
Priceless
In all seriousness why bother? The feature's discussed are all availiable in Home Basic and even if you compare this 'pimping' to the Home Premimum edition you can still get Vista cheaper (£70 at This site ) The only reason not to upgrade to Vista and doing this would be hardware incompatibility or your machine isn't capable of running it well (say you've only got 512mb of ram.)
Re:Priceless ?????? (Score:2)
Explorer Breadcrumbs is also free.
Stardock is unnecesary eye-candy (I used it before but the only thing it really does is impress friends, and that only once).
It seems you have drank the MS Vista Koolaid.
What about software incompatibilities in Vista?
Slower games performance in Vista?
That XP is adecuate enough and much better supported by all vendors?
That if I want to buy brand new hardware with a brand new OS I would prefer
Oh dear... (Score:2, Funny)
XP? Y'all from the future? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a fully licensed copy of Win2K Pro that I have faithfully moved from machine to machine for the past 7 years. It doesn't require registration, is rock solid, and does everything that I need it to do as well as XP or better, including software development and gaming.
I'll update from 2K when my disk and all the backups rot (must remember to take another), or I absolutely need hardware that absolutely won't support 2K. Until then, as far as I'm concerned, Microsoft peaked 7 years ago, and it's been all downhill from there.
Agree 100% (Score:3, Insightful)
I dunno, maybe it's just gamers?
Windows 2000 still has lots of life left (Score:3, Interesting)
Because of virtualization.
Windows 2k runs MUCH better in Parallels or VMware than XP does- there is not the hint of sluggishness. Plus it does not require activation (great for having many different virtual machines on the same system) and it works with almost every application that XP does (cept for some things you don't want to virtualize like games).
Every since I got my Macbook, my Windo
The one little issue (Score:2)
Vista Transformation Pack (Score:3, Insightful)
The VTP makes XP look like Vista, doesn't slow down your computer, and is free. It includes several freeware apps such as a Sidebar, a Start Orb, etc. It is really polished the new version is supposed to be released Monday.
You can also get Vista games [wordpress.com] on XP.
And with KDE being ported to Windows with KDE 4, you'll also be able to get both Konqueror and Dolphin on XP if you want to try another file manager without shelling out $70.
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Why bother with fake Vista, go fake OS X instead. (Score:2)
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Enhancements
It's funny... (Score:2)
The real list (Score:5, Informative)
the subject is interesting, as there is a bunch of cool freeware software to make XP be like (or even better than) Vista. You
don't need to spend a single dollar. So this is my real list of programs to Pimp your XP:
1. Lauchy: www.launchy.com
Some may say that this is the poor man's QuickSilver. Maybe it is, but in the Windows world there are few programs as useful as
Launchy. Install it and you won't need to access your start menu anymore.
2. Quizo's Explorer toolbars: http://quizo.at.infoseek.co.jp/freeware/indexEn.ht ml [infoseek.co.jp]
These are 2 free toolbars that make Windows Explorer as good as Directory Opus (IMHO) for free:
* QTTabBar: Adds firefox-style tabs to windows explorer. It also adds a cool incremental search feature, and a customizable
toolbar where you can add folder shortcuts, etc
* QTAddressBar: Explorer breadcrumbs!
3. FileBox eXtender: http://www.hyperionics.com/files/index.asp [hyperionics.com]
This is one of the most useful little pieces of software that I've used. I adds 2 buttons to the title bar of every windows dialog
and of every windows explorer window. One button gives you access to your "favorite folders" (which you can easily change) and the
other one gives you access to your "folder history". With these, going back and forth between folders to open or save files
becomes a snap. The only problem is that the default button icons a kind of ugly, but they can be easily changed.
4. Findexer: http://tomseffect.com/ [tomseffect.com]
Substitutes the windows explorer sidebar for a place where you can put links to your preferred folders. If you use FileBox
eXtender (see above) this might not be as useful, but I still like to use it.
5. TaskBar Shuffle: http://www.freewebs.com/nerdcave/taskbarshuffle.ht m [freewebs.com]
Another really useful program. With it you can reorder the window buttons in the windows taskbar. It can even automatically group
windows from the same program without collapsing them. You can also reorder the tray icons in the system tray.
6. Free Launch Bar: http://www.freelaunchbar.com/ [freelaunchbar.com]
Make the windows Quick Launch bar much more useful with this free replacement. It adds the ability to have folders inside the
quick launch bar, and have shortcuts within those folders.
7. LClock: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Enhancements/ Clocks-Time-Management/LClock.shtml [softpedia.com]
A nice replacement to the windows clock in the system tray. It looks much better and is more useful as it shows a calendar when
you click on it. But the reason I recommend it is that it can also hide or reduce the size of the start menu button! Once you
start using Launchy (see above) you will not use the start menu very often, so I like to recover the taskbar real state that it
uses unnecessarily. To do so, with LClock you can reduce it by substituting the start menu image with a much smaller one.
8. MenuApp: http://www.freewaregenius.com/2006/11/02/menuapp/ [freewaregenius.com]
Customize the explorer context menu with this tool. It comes with a lot of built-in actions, such as Command Prompt here, Create a
Folder, copy filename to path, etc.
There are other tools that you can use, but which I personally don't (although I've tried or used them in the past):
1. RocketDock: http://www.punksoftware.com/rocketdoc [punksoftware.com]
Vista is the Bizarro XP (Score:5, Insightful)
"....the new security measures, specifically User Account Controls."
UAC is useless and annoying. It might be fine for my Aunt Mildred, who only turns her computer on a couple of times a week to surf the web for a few minutes and send one or two e-mails, but for anyone who actually want to get things done, Vista is virtually unusable unless you turn off UAC. In the long run, UAC will make things worse because clueless users, who have absolutely no idea whether foobar.exe is a legit program or malware, will simply start clicking 'Yes' to everything.
Windows Explorer
"Windows explorer featured several significant upgrades in Vista."
WTF? Numerous features in the XP version of Windows Explorer have been removed or changed in ways that make them less useful. Customize the toolbar? Gone. In fact the whole Toolbar is gone. Status bar shows total size of all the files in a directory? XP yes. Vista no. The list goes on.
Search
"Windows Vista's integrated desktop search is one of my favourite new features"
Purely a personal preference, Desktop search is meaningless to me. I have thousands of files in dozens of directories and rarely need to use search to find them. In all fairness, XP's search is so horrible and less than useless, that anything will seem better.
Look and feel
Look - don't care.
Feel - Vista feels slow and clunky on a 2.2ghz Athlon XP with 2 gig of RAM. It only feels slightly better on my new dual-core 2.8ghz machine with 4 gig RAM.
Media Center and Games
Vista doesn't really do anything that's better than XP. And that's the real problem with Vista. People have long knocked XP as nothing more than a fancied up Windows 2000. And there's some truth to that. But, everyone forgets that when XP first came out, most people were running Windows 95/98 -- quite possibly the two worst pieces of crap software ever created. XP represented a major improvement. Vista, in many ways, is a giant step backwards.
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Actually, you seem to have forgotten about Windows Me, which really was the, "worst piece of crap software ever created." Sadly, I think Windows 98 could technically qualify as an, "upgrade," from Windows Me, so anyone going from Me to 2000/XP would definitely be getting a huge increase in performance.
if you really want to surpass Vista... (Score:2)
pimps are lame (Score:2)
Getting XP to look like Vista is easy (Score:3, Funny)
2. Remove half your ram.
3. Clock the CPU down by about 20%.
Where's the big deal?
Improve? (Score:2)
I think you have that backwards. You don't have to do anything to get XP to "surpass" Vista. It retroactively surpassed it when Vista was released.
Article is bogus . . . (Score:2)
"Just lately?!" Seriously?! WTF?! Just about every real geek knows that we've been comparing and criticizing each other's operating systems pretty much since the dawn of the computer age! And anyone that denies it should turn in their geek card immediately!
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Because pop culture slang gets worse and worse. Believe it or not, there was a time when people didn't curse like sailors in their casual talking. You can thank MTV and rappers for putting pimp in your slang dictionary. I like to use the words 'decking out' instead of pimp because it's old school, and I don't attribute anything positive to pimps.
That being said, decking out your XP machine is like decking out a Geo metro.
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They take a cut of the profit, and let strangers poke at their windows boxes... And they always end up diseased.
How many times has this been re-posted? (Score:2)
Does msft pay for message board shills?
Re:XP is _still_ better then linux and it's 7 year (Score:2)
The other distributions are known to have sizable numbers also. Worldwide there's estimated to be over 100 million installs. That is a significant number of installations and users. Of course this covers desktop an servers. This does not count the number of devices with the OS embedded.
So, when you state how low a percentage Linux has you really
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The windows 98 interface was terrible, that said, xp and vista are actually worse. No multiple workspaces, klunky window list at the bottom of the screen (completely breaks down when you have loads of apps open), inconsistent keyboard shortcuts (in a dos window or other terminal based app ctrl+c is interrupt, in a gui app it's cut). It's designed for people who want to run one app at once, shut it down and then select another.
The