Windows Rant

[TopBot .]

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 8:15 AM, NoOp <glgxg at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> <rant>
> I stopped supporting Windows for my clients six months ago but still
> maintain Win for my relatives et al. Performing what would be simple
> changes in Ubuntu on WinXP brought home why I stopped supporting paying
> clients.
>
> 1. My brother had an old 700Mhz Sony PC with 348Mb of ram & I decided to
> give him one of my faster 1.8Ghz/1Gb recycled machines. Figured it would
> be a simple swap of the hard drive (similar to Ubuntu); forgot that you
> need to do an reinstall in-place of Windows to get the drive to work in
> new hardware. One week later he *finally* has the machine.
>
>  The process involved reinstalling WinXP(Home) over his existing
> install (data was preserved), reinstalling all new security upgrades &
> drivers for SP3, retesting, rebooting about a bazillion times,
> retesting, rebooting, etc. Overall it was a complete PITA.
>
> 2. In the process of upgrading my brother's system, my 2.4Ghz/512Mb test
> machine died. The death of the machine was apparent as it had had
> thermal shutdowns etc. When the machine died I pulled the ram & other
> associated parts as usual. I then realized that the ram would work in my
> son's Sony PCV-RX770(UC) that had previouly been running with only 512Mb
> of ram.
>
>  I pulled the machine, brought it over to my test bed, added another
> 512Mb of ram from the the dead 2.4Ghz recycled machine for a total of
> 1Gb, fired it up and updated Ubuntu 10.04. No issues. I then tried dual
> booting to WinXP(Pro)...
>
>  The machine wouldn't boot to WinXP in normal mode. It would only boot
> to Safe Mode. After several hours of messing about with it, I finally
> put the machine back in his room & reconnected the original keyboard and
> wireless mouse; the machine booted in WinXP just fine. Pulled the
> machine and brought back to my test bed & the machine wouldn't boot in
> WinXP again (just would keep rebooting). Brought the wireless mouse &
> keyboard to the test bed & it booted just fine. Note: he uses the dual
> boot to run his iTunes & a few Win specific games. The issue was that
> WinXP didn't have the necessary drivers to run a simple USB keyboard and
> PS2 mouse... amazing eh?
>
> So, to all those that complain about Ubuntu/linux not working with
> hardware xyz, keep in mind that it's not just Ubuntu/linux that have
> such issues. A simple mouse/keyboard change in WinXP(Pro) prevented
> Windows from booting into normal mode.
>  Further, we become accustomed to having the luxury of pulling a hard
> drive in Ubuntu/linux and swapping into another machine with out issues.
> If you've ever had the displeasure of trying the same on a Windows
> machine you'll know what I am talking about.
>
> Disclaimer; one of my specialties a few years ago was maintaining and
> supporting Windows machines. I reckon that you could classify me as a
> 'Windows Expert'. I could fix nearly any system (including eradicating
> viruses without reinstalling etc). So I'm not unfamiliar with the OS,
> nor bashing it overall. I'm just pointing out that sometimes we forget
> how difficult it is to make simple hardware changes in Windows, and how
> easy it is in Ubuntu/linux.
>
> My apologies to the list for the rant, but it's things like this that
> make me appreciate Ubuntu/linux daily. I deal with bugs/issues in
> Ubuntu/linux daily, but that is primarily because I choose to do so (via
> this list). And yes, followups should probably go to the 'sounder' list...
> </rant>
>
>
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I've had similar problems when swapping my hard drive or even the monitor
(it wouldn't even go into safe mode on any other monitor) with my dual boot
windows xp while my Ubuntu worked just fine.

+1 for linux.

-- 
TopBot.
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