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From: "Gordon R. Keehn" <grkeehn AT us DOT ibm DOT com>
Newsgroups: gmane.os.cygwin
Subject: Re: rebase and ME
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 12:29:58 -0400
Organization: IBM Corporation
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Message-ID: <3D481085.BB50DE36@us.ibm.com>
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 	Michael A Chase <mchase AT ix DOT netcom DOT com>


Nicholas Wourms wrote:

> --- Michael A Chase <mchase AT ix DOT netcom DOT com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 31 Jul 2002 09:59:00 -0400 "Gordon R. Keehn"
> > <grkeehn AT us DOT ibm DOT com> wrote:
> >
> > >     If Bill Gates is laughing, it's because people actually paid
> > money,
> > > directly or through an hardware vendor,
>
> Like IBM?  IIRC, they were shipping NetVistas [possibly Thinkpads,
> too] with WinME.  *Tsk* *Tsk* Isn't that like the pot calling the
> kettle black?

>
> Seriously, though, I didn't pay a dime for this notebook.  I got it
> for free for winning an employee contest at the place I work.

Good for you.  Yes, IBM did offer NetVista's with ME.  I bought one
myself.  The second time I booted it, it was to do a cold install of
Win2K Pro, which I immediately upgraded to SP1.  (It's now at SP2, and in
a few months, I'll bring it up to SP3.)  When it's the only game in town,
there's no shame in playing.

>
> > > for an abomination like ME.  Now that SP1 is expected
> > momentarily, you
> > > owe it to yourself, not to Billy G, to
> > > upgrade to XP Pro at the earliest opportunity.
>
> As a general rule of thumb, I usually don't upgrade until SP2 comes
> out.  Windows2000 has its own issues, which I won't elaborate on.  As
> for XP, I don't know about anyone else, but I find the XP window
> manager to be abyssmal.  I hate all that damned color and the menus
> are all wrong.  I don't need any of that crap, as it looks like it
> would frankly be fairly resource intensive.

No software product is perfect, including Service Packs.  If they were,
people like me would be out of work.  Still, Service Pack 1 *should*
cover most of the serious issues that made it through beta.  That's a
matter of personal choice.  I could live without the changes XP made to
the UI, as well.  My wife's Thinkpad and my NetVista systems are running
Win2K -- the third is RedHat 7.2;  I see no reason to upgrade until
forced by my next hardware purchase.  If (God forbid!) I were still
running ME, though, I'm not sure I'd wait for the upcoming service pack
before upgrading.

User interface changes are inconvenient, and I rarely (never?) see a
valid reason why they're necessary.  (And Microsoft isn't the only, nor
even necessarily the worst, offender.)  If I upgrade an operating system
or a product, I do it because the new version has features that I want
(or need).  User interface is not a factor in the decision.

>
> > Or at least to Win 95.
>
> *Sigh*, if only it were possible to go back to Win98SE, which [IMHO]
> was the most stable version of Windows to date.  Unfortunately,
> Compaq has not backported its proprietary drivers [the WinME drivers
> don't work on Win98SE].

I originally went from Win98SE to Win2K because I was tired of reloading
Windows and reinstalling all my products twice a year.  (Usually when the
time spent rebooting after blue-screen lockups exceeded my productive
time.)  I now have responsibility for two systems running Win2K Pro.  One
has been stable since I built it, the other I reloaded (after 18 months)
because I originally upgraded rather than doing a cold install, and
wanted to get rid of some excess baggage.  In that time I can't honestly
say I've never had a blue screen, but I can't say I have, either, which
means that it's been so long and they're so rare that I don't remember.

>
> Cheers,
> Nicholas
>
> --
>

This is not (or at least, is not intended to be) a flame-fest.  Personal
computers imply a large degree of personal choice, and I don't expect you
to agree with me (except in those cases where I'm obviously right ;-{)>
).  I've been managing systems for a lot of years on a lot of platforms,
and suppose I've become a bit philosophical about the whole thing.  The
only two absolutes are, software ALWAYS has bugs, and the best user
interface is ALWAYS the one I'm using now.
--

----
  Gordon R. Keehn, CPSM Change Team
  CICS/390 Service, USA
  Gordon Keehn/Raleigh/IBM AT IBMUS, 1-919-254-1690


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