I just prefer to set up and run my own email server from home.
That way, I can handle spam they way I want, set up accounts for friends if need be (or businesses)
I prefer doing this with a hosted Linux VPS which provides me with as much control as I want over the software, but I don't have to worry about managing the hardware and internet connection, and it is affordable. I used to run my own mail server at home, but internet connection outages and power outages made it much less reliable than a hosted solution.
I used to run various servers on my home machines, but have since moved all those to hosted services (both managed and unmanaged) and it saves me time and reduces my electricity bill since I can suspend/hibernate my machines when I am not using them.
If you are going to install your own OS, Windows requires far more babysitting and futzing before you will end up with a fully functional system.
This is true. Installing Windows and getting it functional is quite a bit more work then doing the same with a modern Linux distro.
I just recently installed Windows XP on a system I've had for several years. I had originally installed Linux on it and everything worked out of box. Even with SP2 and the latest drivers slipstreamed in, I didn't even have wired networking working. I had to download the drivers on a separate machine and copy them over via USB drive. I haven't had that happen with Linux since the 90's, wired networking always works out of box.
Well, KDE 3 can be configured to look and act very much like OS X -- right down to the menu bar at the top. (KDE 4 has some of the newer desktop effects toys, but it also has about half the features of GNOME, which has less than half the features of KDE 3.)
Does that include an exact replica of the dock working exactly the same as in OS X? I'm asking seriously as that is the only thing I want from OS X when I am using Linux. I'd use AWN if my hardware could do compositing, but it can't, and can't do it in a VM either.
I also find it ironic that of all the terminal apps I've used, OS X has the best Terminal app out there.
I disagree, unless you've never used gnome-terminal. Terminal.app is nice (especially the Leopard version) and I use it more than any other because OS X is currently my primary OS, but gnome-terminal does everything right. It's the little things like the fact that when you open a new window (CTRL-SHIFT-N) it places it such that it doesn't overlap your current window if it can, whereas Terminal.app places it such that it almost completely covers your original window (basically like a "cascade effect").
Overall, I really like the OS X GUI, especially the way the dock works. I'd like essentially a clone of the dock in Linux. I want to use AWN, but its compositing-only and I can't do compositing on the hardware I run Linux on, nor in VM's.
If you go to thesubversion website, you'd see no less than three integration options with Microsoft Visual studio.
Eclipse has way better version control integration compared to Visual Studio and most other IDE's. Sure, the options are there for Subversion integration in VS, but it's not very good.
nothing comes close to Visual Studio in terms of functionality, quality, and just being solid
Are you using the same Visual Studio I am? Because the one I use may have some decent functionality that you'd expect from an IDE, despite being crippled by a lousy interface (with some exceptions, they do some things very nicely). But when you're used to using Eclipse, Visual Studio feels like a cheap, buggy toy. I use both at my day job. I would never use Visual Studio unless paid to do so. Eclipse I use for fun on my hobby projects.
Yes, there are much worse IDE's than Visual Studio, but that doesn't mean its good.
Huh? Do you have anything to back up your line of crap? I use Trillian, and I have to say, Jabber is the only protocol I couldn't give two shits about. Maybe to you it's a deciding feature, but I doubt it is to most on Windows.
Well I must say that you are using a shitty, bloated piece of crap of a client. And yes, I've tried it recently, Trillian fucking blows.
Maybe you don't care about Jabber, but most people do. You see, there is this little company called Google that based their IM network on Jabber, and then they built a client right into their web interface for e-mail. Which means a lot of people, especially non-technical folk, are using GTalk because its so easy to use because they already use GMail. They don't even have to bother with installing some crappy IM client. I talk to some of these people on IM, hence why Jabber is important.
Pidgin may not be that great, but Trillian is awful. The few people who used Trillian have switched to Pidgin long ago, and these are people who even bought the Pro account. Why the fuck anyone would pay for such a lousy piece of crap in the first place is beyond me.
There's also a lot of people moving towards using web clients, now that there are decent ones like Google's GMail client (which also supports AIM) and Meebo.
WTH is with that "premier multi-protocol instant messaging client" remark? Nobody uses that on Windows and Mac OS X
Pidgin is the most popular multi-protocol client for Windows. Some of the other multi-protocol options just didn't get that popular. And no one uses Trillian anymore because the free version doesn't support Jabber (and thus GTalk), and Trillian was bloated crap to begin with.
Yes, for OS X, even the Pidgin developers tell you to use Adium, which actually uses the same libraries on the back-end. So you're right about OS X.
I know it's nice to have access to your entire music collection - anytime, anywhere. I just want to point out that I have an 8 gig iPod touch and go an entire week without hearing the same song twice.
I have a 16GB iPhone and was using a 4GB Nano before that, yet, I can appreciate the desire to have one's entire music collection in a device. I have probably close to 160 GB of music, of which only about 80GB is in iTunes right now (only the properly organized and tagged music has made it in). Yes, I get by on my smaller sized music players, but I actually have to make decisions about what music goes on it.
You see, when you have amassed a music collection that is quite large, you don't even know what's in it after a while. So you need to be able to rediscover the music you have. I don't actually spend too much time at home listening to music (mostly listen when I'm on the go). The best way for me to rediscover my music is to through the whole collection on shuffle and skip tracks until I find something I like. Then I rate it so that it shows up in a smart playlist of rated music. This would work quite nicely if I had an iPod that had all my music on it.
Though the iPhone works quite well in my car, I'm planning on getting a 160GB iPod classic + a car stereo that properly supports it (Alpine IDA-X100 is what I'm thinking). That way, I can have my entire music collection with me, and I can rediscover music the way I described using shuffle and ratings. But the iPod will be confined to my car (except when I need to sync new music), as I just don't want another device to have to carry with me.
But I'd rather have my iPhone hold all my music than this arrangement.
Interesting point: apple updates their products so fast and brings out new products so fast that a lot of people wait to buy something. When I was considering getting an iphone, everyone that already had one was advising that I wait another 6 months to get one since they're bound to come out with something better.
Are we talking about the same Apple here? Don't wait for Apple to update something, cause you'll be waiting forever and it might not even be worth it.
I learned my lesson with the Mac Pro. I wait like half a year because I thought they were going to update it. I finally bought it and it was still ages before they update it, and all they did was add a 8-core option at the high-end which I wasn't interested in anyway. Then the new Mac Pros they more recently updated are more expensive and don't offer anything new that I care about. I could've had my Mac Pro a half year earlier rather than waiting around for nothing.
With the iPhone, I could've waited around for 3G. But I bought a 16GB iPhone right after the SDK announcement. Maybe they'll release 3G in June, maybe they'll release it next year. Maybe they'll never release 3G. You never fucking know with Apple.
Did you not read what he wrote? He's burning them on non-rewritable CD-Rs to give away to people. CD-RWs are rather more expensive than basic blank CD-Rs. I agree with Calumi: The way to get Linux on non-geek-owned computers is to do it the AOL way.
Yes, I understand that when I read it, I just don't think its that great of an idea. How many people are actually going to bother to install from those CD's? How many are just going to toss them out like they do with AOL CD's?
If someone is technically inclined enough to use Ubuntu, just copy the ISO onto their USB key, let them borrow a CD-RW, or give them the torrent URL. You can also have them download and run Wubi in some cases. Handing out CD's like you're AOL isn't going to make a difference.
Re:You can also get it shipped
on
Ubuntu 8.04 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
Instead of doing the bittorrent dance, I started having the disc shipped to me.
Physical media that isn't rewritable is a waste. For installing new VM's with Ubuntu, I don't even need to burn a disc, I just need an ISO file. For existing Ubuntu installations I just upgrade. For installing when I absolutely need physical media, burn a CD-RW (probably erasing an old version I had on the disk).
I haven't been able to get this to work. The big problem is that VMware provides a somewhat different set of hardware than your system really has.
Maybe I am wrong about it being possible in Linux, I can't seem to find any reports of it now, though I thought I read somewhere it is possible.
But they've managed to do it with VMWare Fusion. With VMWare Fusion, if you have Windows installed via Boot Camp you can run it under VMWare. I don't know how they managed to pull that off. Maybe its easier because there are less hardware configurations to worry about on the Mac, and they managed to fool Windows into thinking its running same hardware as the host machine it runs on. I don't know if Apple did anything special in the drivers included in Boot Camp.
You'll have to create that 60GB FAT32 partition with Linux, because Windows XP SP2 refuses to create a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB, but I believe it can access one with no problem?
In any case, I'd just use NTFS for all my Windows partitions, because support for reading/writing NTFS partitions is mature enough in Linux.
Instead of having a whole partition for your Windows XP backup, you can just give that space to one of your Linux partitions. Then while you're in Linux, use one of the many available tools to do a backup. For example, you can use dd. You can even pipe it through gzip to compress it and save space. You can even write a script to automate the process on a schedule if you wanted to.
Instead of installing GRUB on the MBR, I would install it on the Linux partition and then use the Windows bootloader to boot grub using a method like this.
I haven't tried this in Linux (worked flawlessly with VMWare Fusion), so I don't know how difficult it is, but you should be able to boot your Windows partition in VMWare. That way you only need to natively boot Windows for things like games, but everything else should run fine in a VM.
WTF is fundamentally missing that it can't be a "desktop"?
Working power management. Just when I have power management somewhat working, the next kernel upgrade breaks it. Power management is especially important on a laptop, but also important on a desktop when you want to be energy efficient.
Godaddy is just $10 a year -- not a lot of money, even by poverty standards. What is it with all this namby-pamby BS when you'll spend more in a day's lunch than it's worth mulling over saving a buck a year with a different registar.
I guess some people need something to complain about!
I don't care to give money to assholes, personally, whether its $10 or $1000. Also, some people own multiple domains (I own about 10 personally), so it could potentially be more than $10.
GoDaddy's been making stupid asshole moves ever since I heard about them, so they've never received my money. It's your bad decision if you chose GoDaddy. But in any case, it's important that people be made aware of the kind of practices GoDaddy has. When you have Kevin and Alex (Diggnation) telling you to buy a domain from GoDaddy, you need another voice saying "Hey! GoDaddy is a fucking shitty registrar!"
There's no point in your meta-complaining. If you like to let companies ass-rape you, that's fine, but that doesn't mean everyone else likes it.
Dreamhost is also $9.95/year (I use them). There's no good reason to use GoDaddy when there are plenty of better registrars that aren't any more expensive.
If your job includes computers and technology and you don't understand the value of only adopting new interfaces (or technology) on the basis of need or tangible benefit, I'd rather not have you as a coworker. Even in that particular realm, I'd venture to say there are more interesting (and more beneficial) things to do with your time than aclimating to the quirks of a particular desktop or tracking down where they hid a particular configuration option.
Well I wouldn't want a coworker who is so afraid of change that they are still using Windows 98 (like the OP was), one that gets stuck in his/her ways and isn't able to adapt to new things.
I have a coworker who will blindly upgrade to the latest and greatest just to get something new, and yes I agree, this isn't a good thing, and he does end up shooting himself (and sometimes some of us) in the foot. I prefer a more practical approach of being smart about upgrades. Upgrade things that are going to give you a benefit. So I think we agree on that point.
But my point is that its unhealthy to avoid changing interfaces, especially to the extreme that the OP mentioned -- still using an unsupported OS like Windows 98, which I personally think was terrible for its time and absolute garbage now.
I think I'd rather find more meaningful ways of excercising my brain than adopting change for change's sake. It isn't as if the world is so bereft of things to learn that make-work is a necessity.
Yes, but if your job heavily involves computers and technology, and you're not learning new interfaces, you will lose your edge. But I guess you can just go into management at that point:P
I count myself as one of the schizophrenics who mix new and old.
I take it on a case-by-case basis. I look at the potential of new tech to screw me up, costs, benefits, etc. Some things just don't need to be updated. My car is 12 years old, I can afford a new one, but it runs fine. I use a 30 year old bass guitar amp. I keep up with computer tech, but stay a few steps behind when there is too much risk involved. Using Windows 98SE is unthinkable to me (it was/is an awful OS, and I was so glad to see how much better Win2k was). But I'm not using Leopard and Vista yet, I'm on Tiger at home and XP at work. I'm also a few releases behind on my Ubuntu box, because it works, and I don't want to deal with the possibility of new issues.
Interface. My main problem with any upgrade is new interface I need to get used to. Not only different button layout, but also the way the new technology behaves, reacts to my inputs.
I think its good for the brain to learn new interfaces. If you just stick with what you're used to you don't react to change as quickly. You get kinda stuck-in-your-ways. Yeah, its good not to screw yourself up changing things frequently, especially things you depend on, but it is good to make yourself learn new interfaces and have to adjust to new processes. Otherwise you get rusty.
I switched from Windows as my main OS (at home) to Linux around 2003 (but I was always into UNIX/Linux). Then last year, I switched to OS X as my main OS at home. Yes, there was an adjustment period where I was not as effective, but now I can seamlessly switch between all three environments without even noticing (and I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts in all OS's).
All this doesn't mean I don't like new technology. However, all the years of work in IT and high-tech startups have taught me that the best innovation one can achieve is a more simplified interface. Technology with more features and thus more complex interface is thus not truly innovative in my book.
If you really like simplified interfaces I would think you would be using a Mac at home and be into Apple products, not using Windows 98SE.
BTW, I also hung on to Eudora 3.0 for quite a while as well. Eudora 4.x sucked ass, and there wasn't any other clients that were as good and as fast.
If Microsoft wanted to charge you $100 to run Firefox on Windows, you would burn them at the stake. The only thing that makes Apple different is that they aren't a monopoly... yet.
We see this Apple compared to Microsoft comparison all the time. The difference is that Microsoft produces mediocre software. That has always been my complaint with them. The fact that they are a bully of company that owns the desktop market, muscles their way into other markets, produces mostly closed-source software, and attempts to lock you in to their platform just adds insult to injury.
Yeah, I'd rather have open source software and open platforms, and I'm a bigger fan of Linux and other open source software than I am of Apple's products, but at least Apple doesn't produce garbage.
There's certainly room for it on the iPhone as well. Safari is all nice, but I would like adblock on it, especially on the edge network when every byte counts.
Slashdot Mirror
I just prefer to set up and run my own email server from home.
That way, I can handle spam they way I want, set up accounts for friends if need be (or businesses)
I prefer doing this with a hosted Linux VPS which provides me with as much control as I want over the software, but I don't have to worry about managing the hardware and internet connection, and it is affordable. I used to run my own mail server at home, but internet connection outages and power outages made it much less reliable than a hosted solution.
I used to run various servers on my home machines, but have since moved all those to hosted services (both managed and unmanaged) and it saves me time and reduces my electricity bill since I can suspend/hibernate my machines when I am not using them.
No it doesn't.
If you are going to install your own OS, Windows requires far
more babysitting and futzing before you will end up with a fully
functional system.
This is true. Installing Windows and getting it functional is quite a bit more work then doing the same with a modern Linux distro.
I just recently installed Windows XP on a system I've had for several years. I had originally installed Linux on it and everything worked out of box. Even with SP2 and the latest drivers slipstreamed in, I didn't even have wired networking working. I had to download the drivers on a separate machine and copy them over via USB drive. I haven't had that happen with Linux since the 90's, wired networking always works out of box.
Well, KDE 3 can be configured to look and act very much like OS X -- right down to the menu bar at the top. (KDE 4 has some of the newer desktop effects toys, but it also has about half the features of GNOME, which has less than half the features of KDE 3.)
Does that include an exact replica of the dock working exactly the same as in OS X? I'm asking seriously as that is the only thing I want from OS X when I am using Linux. I'd use AWN if my hardware could do compositing, but it can't, and can't do it in a VM either.
I also find it ironic that of all the terminal apps I've used, OS X has the best Terminal app out there.
I disagree, unless you've never used gnome-terminal. Terminal.app is nice (especially the Leopard version) and I use it more than any other because OS X is currently my primary OS, but gnome-terminal does everything right. It's the little things like the fact that when you open a new window (CTRL-SHIFT-N) it places it such that it doesn't overlap your current window if it can, whereas Terminal.app places it such that it almost completely covers your original window (basically like a "cascade effect").
Overall, I really like the OS X GUI, especially the way the dock works. I'd like essentially a clone of the dock in Linux. I want to use AWN, but its compositing-only and I can't do compositing on the hardware I run Linux on, nor in VM's.
If you go to thesubversion website, you'd see no less than three integration options with Microsoft Visual studio.
Eclipse has way better version control integration compared to Visual Studio and most other IDE's. Sure, the options are there for Subversion integration in VS, but it's not very good.
nothing comes close to Visual Studio in terms of functionality, quality, and just being solid
Are you using the same Visual Studio I am? Because the one I use may have some decent functionality that you'd expect from an IDE, despite being crippled by a lousy interface (with some exceptions, they do some things very nicely). But when you're used to using Eclipse, Visual Studio feels like a cheap, buggy toy. I use both at my day job. I would never use Visual Studio unless paid to do so. Eclipse I use for fun on my hobby projects.
Yes, there are much worse IDE's than Visual Studio, but that doesn't mean its good.
Maybe it's just me, but am I the only one who's sitting here thinking that using this hack is tantamount to stealing service?
I own an iPhone and have AT&T service. Lets say I use this hack to get my laptop working on wifi using my own number; is it still stealing service?
You use both Windows and Trillian . You lose. If you are on Vista, I pity you even more.
GTalk = Jabber. It's also the network of choice for GMail-using non-techies.
Huh? Do you have anything to back up your line of crap? I use Trillian, and I have to say, Jabber is the only protocol I couldn't give two shits about. Maybe to you it's a deciding feature, but I doubt it is to most on Windows.
Well I must say that you are using a shitty, bloated piece of crap of a client. And yes, I've tried it recently, Trillian fucking blows.
Maybe you don't care about Jabber, but most people do. You see, there is this little company called Google that based their IM network on Jabber, and then they built a client right into their web interface for e-mail. Which means a lot of people, especially non-technical folk, are using GTalk because its so easy to use because they already use GMail. They don't even have to bother with installing some crappy IM client. I talk to some of these people on IM, hence why Jabber is important.
Pidgin may not be that great, but Trillian is awful. The few people who used Trillian have switched to Pidgin long ago, and these are people who even bought the Pro account. Why the fuck anyone would pay for such a lousy piece of crap in the first place is beyond me.
There's also a lot of people moving towards using web clients, now that there are decent ones like Google's GMail client (which also supports AIM) and Meebo.
WTH is with that "premier multi-protocol instant messaging client" remark? Nobody uses that on Windows and Mac OS X
Pidgin is the most popular multi-protocol client for Windows. Some of the other multi-protocol options just didn't get that popular. And no one uses Trillian anymore because the free version doesn't support Jabber (and thus GTalk), and Trillian was bloated crap to begin with.
Yes, for OS X, even the Pidgin developers tell you to use Adium, which actually uses the same libraries on the back-end. So you're right about OS X.
I know it's nice to have access to your entire music collection - anytime, anywhere. I just want to point out that I have an 8 gig iPod touch and go an entire week without hearing the same song twice.
I have a 16GB iPhone and was using a 4GB Nano before that, yet, I can appreciate the desire to have one's entire music collection in a device. I have probably close to 160 GB of music, of which only about 80GB is in iTunes right now (only the properly organized and tagged music has made it in). Yes, I get by on my smaller sized music players, but I actually have to make decisions about what music goes on it.
You see, when you have amassed a music collection that is quite large, you don't even know what's in it after a while. So you need to be able to rediscover the music you have. I don't actually spend too much time at home listening to music (mostly listen when I'm on the go). The best way for me to rediscover my music is to through the whole collection on shuffle and skip tracks until I find something I like. Then I rate it so that it shows up in a smart playlist of rated music. This would work quite nicely if I had an iPod that had all my music on it.
Though the iPhone works quite well in my car, I'm planning on getting a 160GB iPod classic + a car stereo that properly supports it (Alpine IDA-X100 is what I'm thinking). That way, I can have my entire music collection with me, and I can rediscover music the way I described using shuffle and ratings. But the iPod will be confined to my car (except when I need to sync new music), as I just don't want another device to have to carry with me.
But I'd rather have my iPhone hold all my music than this arrangement.
Interesting point: apple updates their products so fast and brings out new products so fast that a lot of people wait to buy something. When I was considering getting an iphone, everyone that already had one was advising that I wait another 6 months to get one since they're bound to come out with something better.
Are we talking about the same Apple here? Don't wait for Apple to update something, cause you'll be waiting forever and it might not even be worth it.
I learned my lesson with the Mac Pro. I wait like half a year because I thought they were going to update it. I finally bought it and it was still ages before they update it, and all they did was add a 8-core option at the high-end which I wasn't interested in anyway. Then the new Mac Pros they more recently updated are more expensive and don't offer anything new that I care about. I could've had my Mac Pro a half year earlier rather than waiting around for nothing.
With the iPhone, I could've waited around for 3G. But I bought a 16GB iPhone right after the SDK announcement. Maybe they'll release 3G in June, maybe they'll release it next year. Maybe they'll never release 3G. You never fucking know with Apple.
Did you not read what he wrote? He's burning them on non-rewritable CD-Rs to give away to people. CD-RWs are rather more expensive than basic blank CD-Rs. I agree with Calumi: The way to get Linux on non-geek-owned computers is to do it the AOL way.
Yes, I understand that when I read it, I just don't think its that great of an idea. How many people are actually going to bother to install from those CD's? How many are just going to toss them out like they do with AOL CD's?
If someone is technically inclined enough to use Ubuntu, just copy the ISO onto their USB key, let them borrow a CD-RW, or give them the torrent URL. You can also have them download and run Wubi in some cases. Handing out CD's like you're AOL isn't going to make a difference.
Instead of doing the bittorrent dance, I started having the disc shipped to me.
Physical media that isn't rewritable is a waste. For installing new VM's with Ubuntu, I don't even need to burn a disc, I just need an ISO file. For existing Ubuntu installations I just upgrade. For installing when I absolutely need physical media, burn a CD-RW (probably erasing an old version I had on the disk).
I haven't been able to get this to work. The big problem is that VMware provides a somewhat different set of hardware than your system really has.
Maybe I am wrong about it being possible in Linux, I can't seem to find any reports of it now, though I thought I read somewhere it is possible.
But they've managed to do it with VMWare Fusion. With VMWare Fusion, if you have Windows installed via Boot Camp you can run it under VMWare. I don't know how they managed to pull that off. Maybe its easier because there are less hardware configurations to worry about on the Mac, and they managed to fool Windows into thinking its running same hardware as the host machine it runs on. I don't know if Apple did anything special in the drivers included in Boot Camp.
3. 60G - for windows data (fat32)
You'll have to create that 60GB FAT32 partition with Linux, because Windows XP SP2 refuses to create a FAT32 partition larger than 32GB, but I believe it can access one with no problem?
In any case, I'd just use NTFS for all my Windows partitions, because support for reading/writing NTFS partitions is mature enough in Linux.
Instead of having a whole partition for your Windows XP backup, you can just give that space to one of your Linux partitions. Then while you're in Linux, use one of the many available tools to do a backup. For example, you can use dd. You can even pipe it through gzip to compress it and save space. You can even write a script to automate the process on a schedule if you wanted to.
Instead of installing GRUB on the MBR, I would install it on the Linux partition and then use the Windows bootloader to boot grub using a method like this.
I haven't tried this in Linux (worked flawlessly with VMWare Fusion), so I don't know how difficult it is, but you should be able to boot your Windows partition in VMWare. That way you only need to natively boot Windows for things like games, but everything else should run fine in a VM.
WTF is fundamentally missing that it can't be a "desktop"?
Working power management. Just when I have power management somewhat working, the next kernel upgrade breaks it. Power management is especially important on a laptop, but also important on a desktop when you want to be energy efficient.
Godaddy is just $10 a year -- not a lot of money, even by poverty standards. What is it with all this namby-pamby BS when you'll spend more in a day's lunch than it's worth mulling over saving a buck a year with a different registar.
I guess some people need something to complain about!
I don't care to give money to assholes, personally, whether its $10 or $1000. Also, some people own multiple domains (I own about 10 personally), so it could potentially be more than $10.
GoDaddy's been making stupid asshole moves ever since I heard about them, so they've never received my money. It's your bad decision if you chose GoDaddy. But in any case, it's important that people be made aware of the kind of practices GoDaddy has. When you have Kevin and Alex (Diggnation) telling you to buy a domain from GoDaddy, you need another voice saying "Hey! GoDaddy is a fucking shitty registrar!"
There's no point in your meta-complaining. If you like to let companies ass-rape you, that's fine, but that doesn't mean everyone else likes it.
Dreamhost is also $9.95/year (I use them). There's no good reason to use GoDaddy when there are plenty of better registrars that aren't any more expensive.
If your job includes computers and technology and you don't understand the value of only adopting new interfaces (or technology) on the basis of need or tangible benefit, I'd rather not have you as a coworker. Even in that particular realm, I'd venture to say there are more interesting (and more beneficial) things to do with your time than aclimating to the quirks of a particular desktop or tracking down where they hid a particular configuration option.
Well I wouldn't want a coworker who is so afraid of change that they are still using Windows 98 (like the OP was), one that gets stuck in his/her ways and isn't able to adapt to new things.
I have a coworker who will blindly upgrade to the latest and greatest just to get something new, and yes I agree, this isn't a good thing, and he does end up shooting himself (and sometimes some of us) in the foot. I prefer a more practical approach of being smart about upgrades. Upgrade things that are going to give you a benefit. So I think we agree on that point.
But my point is that its unhealthy to avoid changing interfaces, especially to the extreme that the OP mentioned -- still using an unsupported OS like Windows 98, which I personally think was terrible for its time and absolute garbage now.
I think I'd rather find more meaningful ways of excercising my brain than adopting change for change's sake. It isn't as if the world is so bereft of things to learn that make-work is a necessity.
:P
Yes, but if your job heavily involves computers and technology, and you're not learning new interfaces, you will lose your edge. But I guess you can just go into management at that point
I count myself as one of the schizophrenics who mix new and old.
I take it on a case-by-case basis. I look at the potential of new tech to screw me up, costs, benefits, etc. Some things just don't need to be updated. My car is 12 years old, I can afford a new one, but it runs fine. I use a 30 year old bass guitar amp. I keep up with computer tech, but stay a few steps behind when there is too much risk involved. Using Windows 98SE is unthinkable to me (it was/is an awful OS, and I was so glad to see how much better Win2k was). But I'm not using Leopard and Vista yet, I'm on Tiger at home and XP at work. I'm also a few releases behind on my Ubuntu box, because it works, and I don't want to deal with the possibility of new issues.
Interface. My main problem with any upgrade is new interface I need to get used to. Not only different button layout, but also the way the new technology behaves, reacts to my inputs.
I think its good for the brain to learn new interfaces. If you just stick with what you're used to you don't react to change as quickly. You get kinda stuck-in-your-ways. Yeah, its good not to screw yourself up changing things frequently, especially things you depend on, but it is good to make yourself learn new interfaces and have to adjust to new processes. Otherwise you get rusty.
I switched from Windows as my main OS (at home) to Linux around 2003 (but I was always into UNIX/Linux). Then last year, I switched to OS X as my main OS at home. Yes, there was an adjustment period where I was not as effective, but now I can seamlessly switch between all three environments without even noticing (and I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts in all OS's).
All this doesn't mean I don't like new technology. However, all the years of work in IT and high-tech startups have taught me that the best innovation one can achieve is a more simplified interface. Technology with more features and thus more complex interface is thus not truly innovative in my book.
If you really like simplified interfaces I would think you would be using a Mac at home and be into Apple products, not using Windows 98SE.
BTW, I also hung on to Eudora 3.0 for quite a while as well. Eudora 4.x sucked ass, and there wasn't any other clients that were as good and as fast.
If Microsoft wanted to charge you $100 to run Firefox on Windows, you would burn them at the stake. The only thing that makes Apple different is that they aren't a monopoly... yet.
We see this Apple compared to Microsoft comparison all the time. The difference is that Microsoft produces mediocre software. That has always been my complaint with them. The fact that they are a bully of company that owns the desktop market, muscles their way into other markets, produces mostly closed-source software, and attempts to lock you in to their platform just adds insult to injury.
Yeah, I'd rather have open source software and open platforms, and I'm a bigger fan of Linux and other open source software than I am of Apple's products, but at least Apple doesn't produce garbage.
LOL, Have you ever used Vista?
The X300 comes with XP.
What do you need Vista for? Use Linux (hey, this is Slashdot) or use XP if you have to, but what mobile user needs Vista?
There's certainly room for it on the iPhone as well. Safari is all nice, but I would like adblock on it, especially on the edge network when every byte counts.
NoScript would also help in that respect.