HELP WINDOWS XP

[Doug Pollard]

Chris Jeffries wrote:
> I made a suggestion, and I started some work on it. A startup guide for
> people trying out Ubuntu and thinking about moving over to it from
> Windows. It is still a very immature document, but in the spirit of
> community, I have put it on line at
> http://www.candm.org.uk/UbuntuStartup.html#
>
> In response to the interesting and informative comments here - thanks
> everyone, I want to quote Richard Feynmann, a well known physicist who
> worked, on the Manhattan Project. They took delivery of one of the early
> computers to help them do the complex math. They put the computer
> together, they studied it, they explored what it could do, and, he says 
>
>    'after two months, I realised that we were working on the computer 
>        - instead of working on the problem.'
>
> I suspect many of us are like those early pioneers. The computer
> fascinates us. We want to add new bits to it, we want to study how it
> works and we want to work on the computer rather than the problem. 
>
> Most of the population is not like us. They don't work on the computer,
> they work on research, or a letter, or a budget, or listen to music or
> watch a film. The fact they use a computer to do it is incidental. As
> far as possible, the computer should be invisible to them. It is only a
> tool.
>
> And in reply to those who say an approachable system should just be a
> starting point, I would just say --- I drive a car. I don't take it
> apart every weekend and enjoy examining the engine, and however long I
> own and drive it, I am never going to want to. 
>
>
>
>   
Very good Chris,  You obviously have a logical mind. You have kept it 
simple  and straight forward.    There is very little confusing 
clutter.   This is the kind of thing I look for when trying to learn a task.
I find that most who write things like this try to convey too much that 
is not essential to doing the task at hand. We really don't want to get 
a bachelors degree to install Ubuntu.  I would be very careful about 
taking advice on things that might be added as these additions can 
greatly complicate things and make it harder to learn from. You don't 
want the reader to have a bunch of stuff to mentally have to discard in 
order to learn the task at had. He can learn that after there is an 
installation.  One tutorial I got on line I actually downloaded, printed 
and struck out nearly half the material  to simplify it.  For me my 
version was much better to learn by.  
  The only suggestion I have is to edit, and edit again, removing 
anything that is not absolutely needed.    There I don't think is much 
that can be left out.   I write some short stories and when I have 
someone read it with a critical eye they always want me to add something 
when my whole approach is to take things out.                            
                                                                     Doug