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Sunday, January 28, 2007

To Vista or not to Vista

My sister wants to buy me a new laptop computer. This would be nice.
Probably not a NEW new computer, but something newer from eBay, say.

I keep hearing about alla this DRM stuff built into Vista, and for a long
while I simply won't touch Vista. I have a feeling Vista will go the way
of Windows ME, and for that matter, that hardware structure IBM used in
the PS/2. It won't work properly, ever, and they'll have to come up with
"Vista SE" in relatively short order.

True, I like the sound of the security stuff they've added. But the best
parts are in hardware, and only need to be enabled in the software. And
the second best had already been done in other OSes before they were done
in Windows.

I suppose I'll have to give up on my three existing Win98SE machines. I
can't put a more powerful OS on them, because the hardware is too limited.
I still use Win98SE on my laptop, my primary day-to-day use machine,
because that's about all that will work. I could (probably) find some
Linux version that'd work. But having tried the latest Ubuntu LiveCD,
that wouldn't start up after an hour of grinding away.

This laptop just doesn't have the memory (128 Meg) or the speed (330 MHz
or so) for recent Linux. And the older I use, the more vulnerable I'd be
to exploits, and the less user-friendliness I could expect. And one of
the best features of Linux is ongoing development -- which I'd lose
because I'd be stuck with an older version. I'm also worried I'd try to
install Linux and then find it didn't have drivers for my Netgear wireless
network card, and without the network, I'd not be able to put back what
I'd taken off. Still, I might decide to go that route, if I can find a
viable option.

Anyway, I'm rambling. And it's just as well my blog isn't about anything
in particular, because neither is this. Wasn't it Theodore Sturgeon who said
"Ninety percent of everything is crap?"

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