>> [Last I heard - and I don't have any hard data for this - the guys you
>> named aren't exactly short of cash.]
> 
> They're not, but what does that have to do with hardware support?  Dell, 
> HP, IBM/Lenovo all sell machines with Linux pre-installed on them.  It 
> would see that this would be hard to do if hardware support "wasn't there 
> yet".

Well, if you decide exactly what hardware goes in, you can select only 
supported hardware. Easy. :-D

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:

>> It's still not [yet] as easy to use.
> 
> Wrong.

"Easy to use" is highly subjective.

>> Most hardware companies don't supply drivers for it, and refuse to hand
>> over the information required for anybody else to write those drivers.
> 
> Wrong; this used to be the case, but not any more.

It's improving, certainly. I don't think it's there yet though.

>> If you're into gaming, forget it. Almost no big developers target that
>> platform.
> 
> Hmmm, Unreal Tournament III runs on it natively, and Cedega does a very 
> nice job for non-Linux games.  Again, maybe 5 years ago this was the 
> case, but these days there are plenty of game developers writing to 
> Linux.  It's not on par with Windows, true.  But it's improved greatly.

Sure. It's changing. (Doesn't the latest Quake engine also run there?) 
My point is that it isn't there yet.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
>> Vista's getting a lot of angry comments now and it hasn't got it's
>> footprint out (yet). If MS broke backward compatibility totally now, how
>> would you think Vista would be selling?
> 
>   I don't believe too many people would complain if Vista broke
> compatibility with Windows 3.1 and DOS (which would be approximately
> the same thing MacOS X has done).
> 
>   (OTOH, I don't really know if Vista actually has done that. I assume
> it hasn't.)

I hear that AMD64 [finally] breaks compatibility with certain really 
ancient x86 stuff. But I don't have any technical data on that...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Uh, dude, isn't the whole *point* of a Mac to get *away* from M$ 
> products? :-P

  The problem is that Microsoft is the Borg, and sometimes you just
can't avoid it. At least with MacOS X you can mostly stay away from
their OS, even if you are sometimes forced to use their office suite.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> It's funny - I go into the Apple stores around here and ask to see their 
> 64-bit machines, and the salesmen look at me like I have three heads or 
> something. You'd think someone selling something even as user-friendly 
> as Macs would know what that expression means.

  Well, the whole point of Macs is that you don't have to know how
it works. No wonder salesmen don't either. ;)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Uh, dude, isn't the whole *point* of a Mac to get *away* from M$ 
>> products? :-P
> 
>   The problem is that Microsoft is the Borg, and sometimes you just
> can't avoid it.

That's a familiar problem...

> At least with MacOS X you can mostly stay away from
> their OS, even if you are sometimes forced to use their office suite.

Heh. According to the guy I spoke to in the Apple shop [yes, while 
wondering around Leicester highstreet, I actually *found* an Apple 
shop!], Apple just haven't developed their own office suite yet. (Which 
is a pitty, because from what I've heard, if Apple did an office suite 
it would really 0wn...)

Presumably I can run OpenOffice instead though?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800?

Parallel world again!

From ebuyer, prices in GBP including VAT:

Home Basic 54
Home Premium 60
Business 82
Ultimate 106

That's for the 32 bit versions, the 64 bit versions are almost exactly the 
same price.

Post a reply to this message

> Well I don't live in America, do I? :-P

Didn't they take over Asda in the UK?

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800?
> 
> Parallel world again!
> 
>  From ebuyer, prices in GBP including VAT:
> 
> Home Basic 54
> Home Premium 60
> Business 82
> Ultimate 106

Damn, that's come down a bit...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Well I don't live in America, do I? :-P
> 
> Didn't they take over Asda in the UK?

Er... hmm, that does sound vaguely familiar...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>> Didn't they take over Asda in the UK?
>
> Er... hmm, that does sound vaguely familiar...

Yeh I hadn't heard of them until they did that - and then when I moved to 
Germany there was a Wal-Mart here, but then apparently they pulled out of 
Germany and it's a Real now.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Give you mom Ubuntu and she'll never ever touch a command-line, except 
>> for running "pppoeconf" and providing ADSL login and password on 
>> installation.
> 
> She has a wireless router/modem that I set up for her downstairs - so it 
> would just be a case of configuring the wireless USB stick to pick up an 
> IP address with DHCP .... is that easy?
> 
> 

I don't have a wireless router/modem to be sure, but you can test for 
yourself.  As I said, Ubuntu LiveCD (and most others) lets you try the 
whole distribution by running it from memory before/if you decide to 
install it to disk.  You can test its DHCP features, NTFS reading of 
partitions (no writing in the LiveCD) and whatever.

Just be warned that the whole install probably requires a connection so 
that it can download and update security packages from the repositories. 
  It's a good thing too to download a few other things, like proprietary 
media codecs.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> scott wrote:
>>> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800?
>>
>> Parallel world again!
>>
>>  From ebuyer, prices in GBP including VAT:
>>
>> Home Basic 54
>> Home Premium 60
>> Business 82
>> Ultimate 106
> 
> Damn, that's come down a bit...
> 

those prices are thanks to Linux leveling the field. :)

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800?
> 
> Parallel world again!
> 
>  From ebuyer, prices in GBP including VAT:
> 
> Home Basic 54
> Home Premium 60
> Business 82
> Ultimate 106
> 
> That's for the 32 bit versions, the 64 bit versions are almost exactly 
> the same price.
> 
> 

He must have been talking about the entire Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master 
Collection. US$2499

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:49:23 -0000, scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> did  
spake, saying:

>> Well I don't live in America, do I? :-P
>
> Didn't they take over Asda in the UK?

Yes, but kept the name and didn't exactly shout about it on prime-time.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:41:20 -0000, scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> did  
spake, saying:

>> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800?
>
> Parallel world again!
>
> From ebuyer, prices in GBP including VAT:
>
> Home Basic 54
> Home Premium 60
> Business 82
> Ultimate 106
>
> That's for the 32 bit versions, the 64 bit versions are almost exactly  
> the same price.

 From Amazon the non-OEM non-upgrade 32-bit versions

Home Basic £175
Home Premium £214
Business £238
Ultimate £352

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

Invisible escribió:
> Presumably I can run OpenOffice instead though?

AFAIK, OpenOffice requires you to install X on Mac, like on any Unix. 
You could instead try NeoOffice, which runs "natively".

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:06:36 -0000, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> did  
spake, saying:

> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> You're right. It isn't. FF is the number one sucker-up-of-useless-memory
>> -and-cycles on my machines.
>
>   Yes, everything not made by Microsoft is by definition bad, horrid,
> heavy, a memory-hog and a CPU-hog. Everything made by Microsoft is
> just perfect.
>
>   You must have a different version of Firefox, as mine is taking 0%
> of CPU time right now.

Let's put it this way for me I'm looking at a blank minimised Firefox  
(2.0.0.12) taking up 8 threads and a steady 3% of my CPU, I'm typing this  
in Opera (9.25.8887) with five tabs open and 5 threads; it blips between  
0.4% and 2% with the occasional blip up to 20% when it's picking up  
messages or switching tabs. According to AIDA Firefox is using 19316KB and  
Opera 15644KB.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Invisible escribió:
>> Presumably I can run OpenOffice instead though?
> 
> AFAIK, OpenOffice requires you to install X on Mac, like on any Unix.

Ah. Yes, I think I recall hearing this...

> You could instead try NeoOffice, which runs "natively".

Mmm, OK.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

"Phil Cook" <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> a écrit dans le message de 
news: op.t6gv6kh0c3xi7v@news.povray.org...
> Let's put it this way for me I'm looking at a blank minimised Firefox 
> (2.0.0.12) taking up 8 threads and a steady 3% of my CPU, I'm typing this 
> in Opera (9.25.8887) with five tabs open and 5 threads; it blips between 
> 0.4% and 2% with the occasional blip up to 20% when it's picking up 
> messages or switching tabs. According to AIDA Firefox is using 19316KB and 
> Opera 15644KB.

I was just reading a page explaining that some memory leaks in Firefox 1.5 
were actually a feature 
(http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749.html) when Firefox 
crashed. Now THAT's censorship :D

Or perhaps it didn't like my investigation about trends in Indonesia's 
poultry production, who knows.

G.


-- 
*****************************
http://www.oyonale.com
*****************************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray, Cinema 4D and Poser computer images
- Posters

Post a reply to this message

Gilles Tran wrote:

> I was just reading a page explaining that some memory leaks in Firefox 1.5 
> were actually a feature 
> (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749.html) when Firefox 
> crashed. Now THAT's censorship :D

Woah.

That's almost like the time I went to download Firefox at work. I typed 
in "www.mozilla.com", and IE displays this big sign that says

"Internet Explorer 7.0 - WE HAVE HEARD YOU!"

Damn that was scary! It turns out that the default configuration of 
Micro$oft ISA redirects the domain mozilla.com to Micro$oft's IE7 advert 
page. (Oh, that's cute!) I deleted the redirection and after that it 
worked fine. But DAMN... o_O

> Or perhaps it didn't like my investigation about trends in Indonesia's 
> poultry production, who knows.

Yeah, could be...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b1cf6d$2@news.povray.org...

> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800?

A good machine with Vista pre-installed on, maybe. The software along, for
R12000??? Hell, no one would have bought that.
You can get enterprise licences for less than that. My near-top range laptop
with Vista installed cost that.

Are you ever going to learn to look things up before making an ass of
yourself?
As said by someone wise "It is better to remain silent and be assumed to be
an idiot, than to open one's mouth and prove that one is"

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> You could instead try NeoOffice, which runs "natively".
> 
> Mmm, OK.

NeoOffice runs beautifully on my MacBook (800 quid when new, by the way; 
not the most expensive model you can buy but certainly more than 
sufficient for my needs). AFAIK NeoOffice is simply "OpenOffice for MacOSX".

I've also heard that the OSX version of MSOffice is better than the 
windows version (although there are some compatibility problems for 
those poor fools that insist on using the Windows Metafile as a picture 
format).

Post a reply to this message

> From Amazon the non-OEM non-upgrade 32-bit versions
>
> Home Basic £175
> Home Premium £214
> Business £238
> Ultimate £352

You'd be silly not to buy the OEM version though...  The main difference 
with the OEM version is that it is tied to the motherboard you first install 
it on.  Some say you can get around this by saying to the MS activiation 
person your old one died, but at worst it means you need to buy another OEM 
license when you get a new motherboard.  Given that the OEM license is 3-4 
times cheaper than the non-OEM version, it's a no-brainer.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> You'd be silly not to buy the OEM version though...  The main difference 
> with the OEM version is that it is tied to the motherboard you first 
> install it on.

Ah, is *that* what that actually means?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:17:58 -0000, scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> did  
spake, saying:

>> From Amazon the non-OEM non-upgrade 32-bit versions
>>
>> Home Basic £175
>> Home Premium £214
>> Business £238
>> Ultimate £352
>
> You'd be silly not to buy the OEM version though...

I agree, except the point is these are the real prices Microsoft are  
trying to sell their operating system for. You're essentially saying it's  
silly to buy that suit from the actual store when you can get it cheaper  
in their 'factory' store except what is the cheaper price based upon?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:44:06 -0000, Gail Shaw sa dot com>  
<"<initialsurname"@sentech> did spake, saying:

> As said by someone wise "It is better to remain silent and be assumed to  
> be an idiot, than to open one's mouth and prove that one is"

'What the hell does that mean. Oh no it's gone quiet better say something  
quick'
"Takes one to know one"
'Swish"

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> 
> Depends on what you're surfing, I suppose. Sure, sometimes it works
> great. Sometimes it takes a lot of CPU cycles until I figure out what's
> going on. And you can't tell me you haven't heard people complaining it
> over-buffers stuff.
> 

Yes. One drain is Flash, which (at least on Linux) consumes resources on
the Mozilla process. I mean one Flash -animation oslt starts leaking and
it seems that Mozilla drains huuuuge amount of memory (and possibly
CPU), while the actual beast is Flash.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Eero Ahonen wrote:
>>
>> What driver? What kernel does the system have?
> 
> I don't know. That was a while ago. It was apparently a known problem,
> not that it made it any easier to work around.  It sucks when youhave a
> bug in the software update software. :-)

Ah, ok. And yes, it does suck when software installer sucks.

> Actually, I may be confused. The USB problem was the USB kernel thingie
> going compute-bound at high priority.  Fixed after an update.

Ok.

> There was soemthing else about the install.

You remember Murphy? If something fails, also other things fail, even if
they aren't related. Unfortunately it's not uncommon to see that failed
installation has multiple problems.

>> distribution", but I still don't think it should be generalized to be a
>> *Linux* -feature.
> 
> I'm amused how whenever there's something good, it's a Linux thing, and
> whenever there's a problem, it's not Linux's fault but someone else's. ;-)

Yes and no. Yes, it IS a pretty common way handle things, but not
always. Noticed my words of Afterstep usability (Afterstep, not Linux
particular)? I can run Afterstep on *BSD, Irix, Solaris... But not on
Windows (well, actually I can, but I can't replace Explorer with it).
Nor this "install every driver" -thingie - it's generally a good thing,
but it depends on the distribution. If SuSE or Ubuntu does it (AFAIK
they both do), it doesn't apply on every Linux out there.

>> Nope, you install NIC drivers and download the rest from the Internet ;).
> 
> And from one place!

IF you have hardware that has working* drivers at Windows Update.

*) with your hardware combination


-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> 
>   I don't believe too many people would complain if Vista broke
> compatibility with Windows 3.1 and DOS (which would be approximately
> the same thing MacOS X has done).
> 
>   (OTOH, I don't really know if Vista actually has done that. I assume
> it hasn't.)
> 

AFAIK 64-bit Windowses actually do that - drop all 16-bit (and under)
-support off.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:01:02 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Some of the agreements also included verbiage that forbade the
>> installation of another OS even as a dual-boot option.
> 
> I must have missed that part of the evidence. :-) Yeah, that's pretty
> nasty.

Yeah, I followed the antitrust trial relatively closely - for some very 
interesting reading, read the deposition given by Eric Schmidt (then CEO 
of Novell) - particularly the bits about "bad playing" with mup.sys and 
the client redirector technologies.  I know people who worked on that 
stuff.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> 
> Most LOL-inducing moments: Standing in PC World and looking at the "Why
> Mac?" sticker on the shelf.
> 
> "#7: It runs Micro$oft Office."

Yep. Linux, *BSD, Irix, AIX and Solaris doesn't.

To be fair, I haven't tried MSO-over-Wine, but...

> Uh, dude, isn't the whole *point* of a Mac to get *away* from M$
> products? :-P

It's one point - and works here too (Win+MSO is more MS than OSX+MSO).

> Anyway, whatever. I doubt running highly compute-intensive applications
> in Parallels is a good idea...

Possibly, I haven't tested Parallels actually. Over Xen
compute-intensive applications work nicely.

>> No, you'll first need to find out what's it like and then decide if it's
>> what you'll want.
> 
> Heh. Well. No obvious way to do that...

You find that Apple store again and start clicking. ;)

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

Post a reply to this message

>>> From Amazon the non-OEM non-upgrade 32-bit versions
>>>
>>> Home Basic £175
>>> Home Premium £214
>>> Business £238
>>> Ultimate £352
>>
>> You'd be silly not to buy the OEM version though...
>
> I agree, except the point is these are the real prices Microsoft are 
> trying to sell their operating system for. You're essentially saying it's 
> silly to buy that suit from the actual store when you can get it cheaper 
> in their 'factory' store except what is the cheaper price based upon?

Actually I read an interesting article the other day about things like this, 
where you get certain groups of people to pay more for essentially the same 
product.  Like when cinemas charge kids and OAPs half-price, what they're 
actually doing is charging people who have a job and can afford it double. 
Seems the same with MS here, they're just charging people who aren't geeks a 
lot more.  Which kind of makes sense, as the geeks are the ones most likely 
to switch to another OS...

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:50:04 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>>> [Last I heard - and I don't have any hard data for this - the guys you
>>> named aren't exactly short of cash.]
>> 
>> They're not, but what does that have to do with hardware support? 
>> Dell, HP, IBM/Lenovo all sell machines with Linux pre-installed on
>> them.  It would see that this would be hard to do if hardware support
>> "wasn't there yet".
> 
> Well, if you decide exactly what hardware goes in, you can select only
> supported hardware. Easy. :-D

As a consumer, I don't, though.  The vendor builds the machine with 
functioning hardware.

However, here at home, I have:

1 IBM Thinkpad t42p, running OpenSUSE 10.3 (work-provided)
1 Compaq EVO desktop, running OpenSUSE 10.1 (mine, not upgraded yet)
1 Dell C640 laptop, running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (work-provided)
1 HP Pavilion s7727c, running openSUSE 10.3 (mine)
1 custom-built AMD system, complete with external 1TB storage device, 
internal IDE drives, off-brand video card and USB 2.0 controller, running 
Open Enterprise Server 1 (which is SLES9 + additional software)
1 Compaq Armada M700 with an off-brand PCMCIA wireless adapter, running 
OpenSUSE 10.1 (my wife's, not yet upgraded)
1 custom-built gaming machine running Windows XP (my kid's machine, he's 
just upgraded it again)

Additionally, I have an Epson P1660 scanner that's connected to one of 
these machines (the OES box, I think, but I'd have to chase the cables 
down) and a Deskjet 882C (connected to the Evo via USB), both of which 
are accessible from any machine on the network.  That's right, network 
scanning, baby (thank you saned!).

Now of all of these machines, which one has the most problems, do you 
think?

Yep, it's the WINDOWS machine.  Ken's had to reinstall the OS at least 3 
times now because of BSODs, driver issues, and other problems.  If it 
weren't for gaming (as the games he plays don't run on Linux), he'd be 
running openSUSE as well.

My wife has run Linux on her laptop since the day we got it, and hasn't 
had any serious problems with it.  "Ah, but she has you to fix anything 
she has trouble with", I hear you say.  Yes, but I can't remember the 
last time I did anything on her machine other than shut it off at night.  
She's pretty non-technical, but she's managed to figure out how to use 
it, and she's shown some of our neighbors who were curious about Linux.

"Linux is difficult to use" is simply a myth.  5 years ago I would've 
agreed with you.  I see real differences in usability between GNOME 2.4 
(which runs on the OES box) and GNOME 2.20 (which is on my 10.3 boxes).

"Linux lacks hardware support" is also a myth.  Sure, you need to do some 
research before buying your hardware to make sure there are drivers 
available.  Consumers do research on all sorts of things they buy (cars, 
houses, stereos, etc.) but expect to not have to find out what the best 
hardware is when buying a computer?  Sorry, I don't buy that.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:51:56 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
>>> It's still not [yet] as easy to use.
>> 
>> Wrong.
> 
> "Easy to use" is highly subjective.

Yes, but at first you do need to make an effort.  Also note that there is 
a difference between "easy to use" and "works exactly the same way 
Windows does".  Most people confuse the two, and say it's not easy to use 
because it isn't Windows.

>>> Most hardware companies don't supply drivers for it, and refuse to
>>> hand over the information required for anybody else to write those
>>> drivers.
>> 
>> Wrong; this used to be the case, but not any more.
> 
> It's improving, certainly. I don't think it's there yet though.

See my other post.  Also have a look at Greg Kroah-Hartmann's Linux 
Driver Project.

>>> If you're into gaming, forget it. Almost no big developers target that
>>> platform.
>> 
>> Hmmm, Unreal Tournament III runs on it natively, and Cedega does a very
>> nice job for non-Linux games.  Again, maybe 5 years ago this was the
>> case, but these days there are plenty of game developers writing to
>> Linux.  It's not on par with Windows, true.  But it's improved greatly.
> 
> Sure. It's changing. (Doesn't the latest Quake engine also run there?)
> My point is that it isn't there yet.

Just depends on what you want from a gaming standpoint.

I use Linux every day for work.  I'm using it right now.  I've used it 
for 10 years (from when it was actively user-hostile).  I also have used 
Windows extensively, and while I dislike Windows, if it were the optimum 
choice for me, I'd use it.  Given the choice, I'd use Linux any day of 
the week and twice on Sunday.

My HP Pavilion workstation came with Vista.  What a load of horse crap 
that is.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:17:15 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> is a pitty, because from what I've heard, if Apple did an office suite
> it would really 0wn...)
> 
> Presumably I can run OpenOffice instead though?

Yes.  In fact, there's a version of OpenOffice (I forget the name, but 
it's listed on freshmeat.net) designed specifically for the Mac that 
integrates better than standard OpenOffice does on that platform.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson escribió:
> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:17:15 +0000, Invisible wrote:
> 
>> is a pitty, because from what I've heard, if Apple did an office suite
>> it would really 0wn...)
>>
>> Presumably I can run OpenOffice instead though?
> 
> Yes.  In fact, there's a version of OpenOffice (I forget the name, but 
> it's listed on freshmeat.net) designed specifically for the Mac that 
> integrates better than standard OpenOffice does on that platform.
> 

Heh, have a look at other posts on the thread!

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:49:23 +0100, scott wrote:

>> Well I don't live in America, do I? :-P
> 
> Didn't they take over Asda in the UK?

Yep.  And I hope Asda treats their employees better than they (Wallmart)
do over here.

Jim

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On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 13:58:58 -0500, Warp wrote:

>> Same way you do for Linux errors. You google the text of the error
>> message, or search for it on MSDN.
> 
>   Yes, like once I tried to install some modem drivers into a WinXP
> system, and at the end of the installation it said "failed to install
> driver", nothing more, nothing less. Not a single hint about why it
> failed.
> 
>   Now, try to google without an internet connection because you just
> failed to install the driver necessary for the internet connection.

Really frustrating experience here - my stepson's machine (during one of 
it's recent rebuilds) needed to be re-activated.  Problem is, the 
wireless card driver wasn't yet installed.  Do you think you could 
*possibly* install a wireless driver prior to activation?  Hah, he had to 
pack the whole thing into a different part of the house in order to plug 
it into an ethernet jack (older house, we don't have a wired network 
setup other than here at my desk).  I was *really* surprised that he 
didn't get the grace period after reinstalling the OS (reinstalled over 
the prior installation, apparently that means you have to activate again 
- which also means finding the damned license key again).

Jim

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On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:27:18 -0200, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Jim Henderson escribió:
>> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:17:15 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>> 
>>> is a pitty, because from what I've heard, if Apple did an office suite
>>> it would really 0wn...)
>>>
>>> Presumably I can run OpenOffice instead though?
>> 
>> Yes.  In fact, there's a version of OpenOffice (I forget the name, but
>> it's listed on freshmeat.net) designed specifically for the Mac that
>> integrates better than standard OpenOffice does on that platform.
>> 
>> 
> Heh, have a look at other posts on the thread!

Yeah, saw that after my post.  That figures. :-)

Jim

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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Heh. Reminds me of my first attempt to use Perl for CGI. I tried to run 
>> it, and it didn't work. After a while I gave up waiting and closed IE. I 
>> did some more poking and prodding of the code before the lead tech came 
>> over and said "hey, you've using up 100% CPU on the webserver".
> 
>   Web servers which are configured properly will automatically kill
> any CGI process which is taking too long to terminate. Apparently
> that one wasn't.

Well, you know, small university web server, 4 technical staff 
supporting the entire IT infrastructure... Scary thing is, it's web 
accessible. [Or was back then anyway.]

One would also expect it to not allow a single session to comsume 100% 
CPU...

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http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 wrote:
>> Darren New wrote:
>>
>>>> Only hyper-nerds are going to be able to get anything remotely 
>>>> useful out of a dump file. To everybody else, it's just wasted disk 
>>>> space.
>>>
>>> Generally, the source code is sufficient.
>>
>> Cool. Let me just contact the makers of every device driver I'm 
>> running and we can see where th... no, wait, that won't work. ;-)
> 
> Or send them the core file.

I'm pretty sure my employer would freak out about all the potentially 
confidential data I'd be leaking...

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Darren New wrote:

> The original UNIX *design* was clean too, but the accumulation of 
> historical file names is nasty. The other ugliness, IMO, is the number 
> of places where an API is not provided but instead it's a file format, 
> or a library, or something like that. Stuff like opening a directory as 
> a file to read the directory (cured when BSD 4 forced a directory format 
> changed), reading /etc/passwd and parsing it to get information (cured 
> when shadow password files became common), etc.

The amount of backwards compatibility in Unix is scary. (E.g., do you 
know how many signals "init" responds to? Lots.)

OTOH, have you looked at the IA-32 manuals? There's a huge wedge of the 
stuff in there too... :-S

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> It's funny - I go into the Apple stores around here and ask to see their 
>> 64-bit machines, and the salesmen look at me like I have three heads or 
>> something. You'd think someone selling something even as user-friendly 
>> as Macs would know what that expression means.
> 
>   Well, the whole point of Macs is that you don't have to know how
> it works. No wonder salesmen don't either. ;)

LOL! That's really cute...

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Eero Ahonen wrote:

>> Anyway, whatever. I doubt running highly compute-intensive applications
>> in Parallels is a good idea...
> 
> Possibly, I haven't tested Parallels actually. Over Xen
> compute-intensive applications work nicely.

Well, we'll see. :-P

>>> No, you'll first need to find out what's it like and then decide if it's
>>> what you'll want.
>> Heh. Well. No obvious way to do that...
> 
> You find that Apple store again and start clicking. ;)

Yeah, but, in a shop you can't really get the same feel for it as 
sitting at home and using it every single day.

Oh, BTW, have Apple added the ability to right-click yet?

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Orchid XP v7 escribió:
> Oh, BTW, have Apple added the ability to right-click yet?
> 

You can Ctrl-click to get a popup menu. And many mouses for Mac have two 
buttons.

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>> Well, if you decide exactly what hardware goes in, you can select only
>> supported hardware. Easy. :-D
> 
> As a consumer, I don't, though.  The vendor builds the machine with 
> functioning hardware.

...which is what I meant. If HP gets to pick what hardware goes in, they 
can pick exactly the hardware that works with whichever OS they're 
preloading.

> Now of all of these machines, which one has the most problems, do you 
> think?
> 
> Yep, it's the WINDOWS machine.

:-|   <== not shocked face.

> My wife has run Linux on her laptop since the day we got it, and hasn't 
> had any serious problems with it.  "Ah, but she has you to fix anything 
> she has trouble with", I hear you say.  Yes, but I can't remember the 
> last time I did anything on her machine other than shut it off at night.  
> She's pretty non-technical, but she's managed to figure out how to use 
> it, and she's shown some of our neighbors who were curious about Linux.

Like I said, Linux has now become pretty easy to use once it's set up 
right. I find it's still tricky to set it up correctly sometimes, but 
once it works it's really not much different to Windoze. [Except no 
random OS crashes.]

-- 
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> Yes, but at first you do need to make an effort.  Also note that there is 
> a difference between "easy to use" and "works exactly the same way 
> Windows does".  Most people confuse the two, and say it's not easy to use 
> because it isn't Windows.

I'd rather say "most current Windows users". People who aren't used to 
computers at all aren't going to care either way.

> I use Linux every day for work.  I'm using it right now.  I've used it 
> for 10 years (from when it was actively user-hostile).  I also have used 
> Windows extensively, and while I dislike Windows, if it were the optimum 
> choice for me, I'd use it.  Given the choice, I'd use Linux any day of 
> the week and twice on Sunday.

I tried to go down that road. I found too many things I couldn't do 
without Windoze. Sadly...

> My HP Pavilion workstation came with Vista.  What a load of horse crap 
> that is.

It's becoming seriously difficult to find a machine that comes with 
something that isn't Vista... This does not amuse me.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 escribió:
>> Oh, BTW, have Apple added the ability to right-click yet?
>>
> 
> You can Ctrl-click to get a popup menu. And many mouses for Mac have two 
> buttons.

...so basically that's "yes" then. :-)

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On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:54:29 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

>>> Well, if you decide exactly what hardware goes in, you can select only
>>> supported hardware. Easy. :-D
>> 
>> As a consumer, I don't, though.  The vendor builds the machine with
>> functioning hardware.
> 
> ...which is what I meant. If HP gets to pick what hardware goes in, they
> can pick exactly the hardware that works with whichever OS they're
> preloading.

Sure.  Now, how surprised are you going to be when I tell you that my HP 
didn't come with openSUSE installed, but with Vista installed, and I 
installed openSUSE with no problems?  (Only thing not working is 
wireless, and I don't care about that - but I understand there are 
drivers for Linux for it, just can't be bothered).  This thing's got an 
Nvidia chipset ethernet card in it, not exactly a common type of ethernet 
card, at least not in my experience.

>> Now of all of these machines, which one has the most problems, do you
>> think?
>> 
>> Yep, it's the WINDOWS machine.
> 
> :-|   <== not shocked face.

Given that you're on v7, I'm not surprised. :-)

>> My wife has run Linux on her laptop since the day we got it, and hasn't
>> had any serious problems with it.  "Ah, but she has you to fix anything
>> she has trouble with", I hear you say.  Yes, but I can't remember the
>> last time I did anything on her machine other than shut it off at
>> night. She's pretty non-technical, but she's managed to figure out how
>> to use it, and she's shown some of our neighbors who were curious about
>> Linux.
> 
> Like I said, Linux has now become pretty easy to use once it's set up
> right. I find it's still tricky to set it up correctly sometimes, but
> once it works it's really not much different to Windoze. [Except no
> random OS crashes.]

It can be, particularly with laptops.  As I said, 5 years ago, it was 
fairly painful on laptops (in particular), but today the support is very 
good.

Jim

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