UBUNTU, MAC 0SX, XP, VISTA DAMAGE CONTROL, WINDOWS 7

Wow, I can barely believe it’s 2:30 in the afternoon! I have been surfing freestyle, reading people rant about operating systems pretty much all morning and afternoon so far, and just noticed my stomach gurgling.

Check this out – it’s such a crazy website… still, I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it is so interesting to read the ranting posts & comments. It’s a hotbed of Linux vs. Windows vitriol:
http://www.promotinglinux.com/

Here’s a GOOD blog, Bauer Power – lots of useful tips here for Windows & open source:
http://www.bauer-power.net/

I’m not loyal to any brand. Some of my friends say I’m ‘pro-Microsoft’ but it’s not that so much as I am not geeky enough to be ready for the world of Linux, nor am I arty or cool enough to prefer a Mac.

I just want a regular life.

I got a Dell dual core / 2Gigs of RAM with XP on it and everything works fine; no, everything works great; no, everything works great except for multimedia (making music). I even put an Ubuntu partition on there for fun and so I can rant with a touch of authority about Ubuntu

I grew up when Apples were the cool new thing, and I mean… Apple IIe (circa 1983), not the slick notebooks you see nowadays. I used Apples to do my university term papers and remember feeling pleased with myself for figuring out little WordStar hacks. When I started looking for a job, fresh out of university (was stupid enough to get a B.A. Eng. Lit.), I wondered to myself, what is this “WordPerfect” thing. Well I had to learn it pretty quickly because nobody in the real world was using Apples and WordStar.

Well, WordPerfect ran on DOS, as did LotusNotes or whatever people used to use for a spreadsheet in those days.
Eventually I worked for an environmental NGO and used a ‘powerful’ 486 system running DOS and we had a valuable, bought-and-paid-for copy of XEROX Ventura Desktop Publisher.

Wow, I thought I was the sh*t when it came to computers.

When Windows came out, I scoffed. It crashed all the time. It was ridiculous, just embarrassing for Microsoft. I really thought someone over there had lost his mind. OK it had a GUI like Xerox Ventura (which is basically whom it was stolen from by BOTH Apple and Microsoft), but it collapsed and crashed under its own weight about every 7 minutes until you learned the things that would crash it and avoid doing those things.

Then it would crash about every 30 minutes.

That was 1992, as I remember things.

The Pentium processor and some Windows upgrades (O and ‘plug-and play’ otherwise known as ‘plug-and-PRAY’ periperals) made life a lot easier and around that time we got our Mosaic browser and an account for dial-up Internet, and were so shocked that RIGHT FROM OUR LIVING ROOM IN VANCOUVER CANADA, we were able to browse museum websites in the faraway land of New York.

Well, anyway we’ve all come a long way since then. I used to love my 386 back in 1991, and I do love my dualcore Centrino now. I thought DOS was fine and now I think XP is much better that DOS, also better than Vista & Ubuntu. I don’t use Macs at all anymore, so can’t really comment.

I am meaning to use Ubuntu more, and get used to it, just in case life for MS Windows users becomes intolerable (that is, if Windows 7 doesn’t address the Vista problems).

Here is a little Ubuntu tip in case you’re using it and are having problems watching youtube.com videos.

I had nothing but problems installing the Adobe Flash Player on FireFox in Ubuntu, so in exasperation I went here:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-watch-youtube-movie-bbc-content.html
Click on the little box where the video should be and install Totem!
It was just as easy as a Windows app!