It's interesting this week. I have been preparing a group of new gateway computers for installation in a school. I just noticed that IE7 is no longer to be found.

Previous to this week, IE7 was part of the critical updates. It was also apparent that the updates to IE7 took longer to load down than the executable (about 15 megs). That was also when the critical update list went from 32 to 36.

I wonder about the computers that have IE7 on them. Sure looks like MS did a worse job han usual on that app.

 

I've noticed this too, I reinstalled Windows on one of our works machines and when I looked through all the critical updates IE7 was not one of them. When I went to manually download it from MS's website and install it - it failed!!

I couldn't be bothered trying to find out why and went for another browser.

That said I have IE7 on my home machine (rarely use it), but it is a 10 fold improvement on version 6, in terms of features and more importantly security. If you can install it, do so.

Dave

 

Its a conspiracy to make you switch to Vista.... (or Linux)

 

Its a conspiracy to make you switch to Vista.... (or Linux)

Noooo! You mean XP with a pretty face! Lets face it, and I challenge you, as a savy PC user who could quite easily switch to Linux (actually I already use Linux, but thats besides the point), give me one good reason I should switch from using Windows XP (which I find to be MS's best OS) to Vista.

I equally don't rate Macs, but XP does the job just fine, so why Vista?

Dave

 

It's MS's usual answer to a problem. If a product has maintenance difficulties, switch to something else. THe man-hours already invested in plugging holes in XP are beyond astronomical. This represents an enormous sunk cost. Why are the managers so willing to just chuck this overboard?

I would be happy with many fewer bells and whistles, as long as the OS really worked. That probably means having the kernal reside in ROM. Pretty hard to hack a ROM.

I'd do Linux in an instant if it weren't for the learning curve. All I want (you've heard this before) is an appliance.

 

But to be fair, many of the critical holes in XP are under control - it is certainly a more friendly beast since SP2. Kernel in ROM, apart from the obvious security benefit of this approach, is there any benefit over a basic (and correct) permissions instantiation of the kernel implementation?

As for Linux's learning curve, it is long and often painful, and I question the real worth of it, but I find it less stressful and ego-straining than using a Mac. It often comes back to if you tie-down XP it does the job adequately (just about!).

Dave

 

There always seems to be defrees of success with any OS. I've seen many messages about the total instability of Win 98, which leave me confused. I've never had any sorts of problems with it, although prudence has moved me up (or over) to XP.

I'm prepared to be OS neutral - I just want something that works without megapatches that never seem to do the job. That said, I do have to eliminate the Mac. It is hard to put in words, but there is something about any of the Mac OS's that rubs the majority of users the wrong way. It might be interesting for someone to do a study about why that is.

 

I'm prepared to be OS neutral - I just want something that works without megapatches that never seem to do the job. That said, I do have to eliminate the Mac. It is hard to put in words, but there is something about any of the Mac OS's that rubs the majority of users the wrong way. It might be interesting for someone to do a study about why that is.

Some may argue it is the self-righteousness of the users

Agreed about Win 98, I found it to be a suitable OS for my many needs. One thing that differentiates 98 and XP is that XP is the first mass-distributed PC of the new broadband internet age, and this has opened up the possibilities for malicious users opening up problems in the majority-distributed OS.

Dave