Typically anything dealing with infrastructure for a company that considers itself to be a mission critical company. (Only companies I consider mission critical are hospitals and emergency services; everyone else is just making money.)
If you work on networks (routers, switches, firewalls), servers (core, file, application, database, web) or the applications on those servers, then likely you are expected to be on-call in case something fails. If you're in a large enough company, you get to share that responsibility and actually get sleep one or two weeks out of the month. If you're in a small company and you are the IT department, sleeping at your desk during business hours is probably permissible.:-)
You are very fortunate that your company still pays on-call pay.
I used to received such "overtime" pay as well about four-five years ago. Most companies now simply expect that responding to calls after hours and having to come in to repair something for several hours is just part of your salary.
Big difference is typically whether you're hourly or salary.
If you're hourly, I think there are still regulations that enforce on-call and after-hours pay; if you're salary, the company owns you.
If you're hourly, I wouldn't be surprised that they soon move you to salary and then do away with on-call pay.
As for response decreasing when the extra pay disappears... expect anyone not responding to those calls to disappear shortly afterwards. The company will not accept a lack of response. If you won't respond, I'm certain they'll find someone a bit more desperate for a job who will work for less than you do and won't mind taking after hours calls.
Perhaps you can explain some of the points that are bothering me.
In 1999 I had the opportunity to test a "wearable" computer: belt mounted, 4 pounds, wrist mounted controller (operated with other hand, but just like IBM Thinkpad joystick), wrist keyboard (think Predator armband), battery lasted 2 hours (could probably be 6 now at same weight) and a small eyepiece gave you a view equivalent to a 30" monitor w/o obstructing your view (move, change focus distance). The computer was only slightly (6 months) behind current laptop technology as far as speed, RAM and HD size.
How is it this Land Warrior has gone so far backwards?
The viewpiece is the main thing bothering me. The soldier is going to get so absorbed in what's on the screen, he can't see through it, his distance judgment is impeded and it's going to cause a vision issue over the long term. Sure it can be flipped out of the way, but then you've lost your information. There is current technology for see-through screens and older technology for the small eyepiece I mentioned that allows you to see quite well and simply focus on the eyepiece when needed.
I wish I could remember who manufactured that wearable because they could obviously give Land Warrior a big help.
The wires also bother me. I do not suggest wireless (I hate wireless keyboards and mice myself), but I think the wires could be more integrated into the uniform so there aren't cords dangling about waiting to be crimped, be cut or cause a hangup. Wire to the gun should go up the sleeve, with slack/stretch at joints and come out at the wrist to attach to the rifle. To provide freedom of movement, that last piece from wrist to gun could be a pull-out/retractable cable.
I think the intentions are good: (near) immediate information, mapping, video/audio linking and friend identification. I just think this first implementation is way off target.
You're right. All I know about an extension is what I read on the tax forms, so obviously I translated incorrectly.:-)
I've always paid or been refunded well before 4/15. It's the one thing I conquer my procrastination about.
I'm not certain what designates someone an "audit target." To me that's always been taboo, sort of like traffic laws: either follow the laws or pay the price. When I hear "audit" that tells me someone made a mistake or deliberately tried to hide something. I guess there is some gray area, but again I'm ignorant of any such complications or dealings.
I figure most people delay because they have to pay so they postpone it until the last minute. I'd personally rather get it over with, deal with it and adjust my W4 so it doesn't happen again. The ultimate goal is to strike the balance where no money exchanges hands at tax time.
$100K? Holy freaking cow. I hope you have a few thousand BB's in service to justify that.
I'm pretty sure we were on T2. Hold times were tolerable; inexperience, incompetence and general lack of knowing what to do or who to find was not. I think a few times when we had major problems, we eventually talked to one of those T5 guys who fixed it in 15 minutes.
Will Intuit learn their lesson and strengthen their servers and network for next year's last minute rush? Given their track record of quality, I seriously doubt it.
Will the procrastinators learn their lesson and file at least a day early? Heck no. They even had two extra days this year. If paying the taxes is the issue, that's what an extension is for.
I am a horrible procrastinator myself, but I guess my greed overpowers that. My taxes were done, returned and spent in February. Woot! New PC!
I also learned a few years back that Turbo Tax is no better than most of the other products out there, free or otherwise. I've been using http://www.taxact.com/ for the past three years. I usually do the download, but I tried the web version for my mother-in-law's taxes. Very smooth, quick, painless and best of all, completely free. I did my mother-in-law's taxes Sunday, 4/15. That's the latest I've ever filed a return. Guess I'm getting sloppy like the unwashed masses.
Still reading TFA, but I thought I'd throw this thought out.
So many games have made major steps forward or backward in the genre of CRPGs. The Ultima series stands out on both of those counts (F U EA!). What I find truly interesting is that some games are so good or at least make such an impression on someone that it gets resurrected in some form or fashion.
At some point Ultima IV was re-written for Windows and released on a PC Gamer (?) CD.
My point is that if these games were so great there is hope we may see them again. Unless of course the corporate idiots and lawyers make it impossible. Oh Master of Magic 2, where art thou?
Definitely find some studies, but until you demonstrate it to someone who thinks two monitors is extravagant or foolish, they'll never see the light.
Find several tasks that you do every day and open all the windows on a single screen. Now tile them or cascade them or alt-tab through them either while the "auditor" is watching or with someone timing you with a stopwatch.
Now open all those windows and spread them out across both screens logically "paired up" to work more efficiently. Again have the "auditor" watch or have someone time you.
Examples from my work.
I have to keep server inventory up. I have a spreadsheet that I fill in while I'm on the datacenter floor and the data has to be transferred or verified with an online database (I cannot edit the database directly nor can I access it while on the floor.). Spreadsheet on one screen is where I'm typing and the other screen has the database opened so I can read it. If I had to switch back and forth, copying and pasting, I'd not only waste a huge amount of time, but I'd go crazy in the process.
Other tasks include reading a PDF or online reference page while I remote desktop into a server, reading a document while I work in a command line window or stretching Excel our across both windows, tiling the spreadsheets and jumping back and forth between them.
Most of the tasks I do break down to a "reader" and a "writer." Having these two functions on separate screens changes an alt-tab (or worse, taskbar mouse click) into an eye shift or a head turn at the most.
I would definitely hope that a brief demonstration to the auditor would be enough, but timing, studies and the minuscule cost of a 2nd monitor should give you enough ammo.
In Ultima VII (first part) you could build a staircase of crates to a chimney on a house in Trinsic when you first started. By moving correctly, you entered a hidden cave. Within this cave were several of every item in the game, tons of gold and moongates that would take you to various parts of the world.
This wasn't so much of an EE as it was the developer's testing and QA tool. I don't think I learned about it until it was made public, but it was fun to play around.
Also in U7, you'll find my character's name on one of the gravestones in Skara Brae.:-) I made a friend at Origin right after U6 and she was able to get it in there for me. I think it says "Here Lies Phaltran Pogammon who is [my real name]." I guess that's my 15 minutes of fame./sigh What a shame.
In Ultima IV you could meet a few celebrities: Paul & Linda McCartney sang to the children in Britain, Short Round was looking for Indy near Yew (maybe Jhelom) and other characters from previous games or history would make cameo appearances.
Several other games have continued this cameo appearance trait. Most familiar to me now is WoW's various characters. Un'Goro crater is populated by characters from "Land of the Lost" and Nintendo games. Searing Gorge has a character based on Homestar Runner animations.
Always fun when the developers drop these little tidbits into the games.
This would cause as many difficulties as the current clock changing system does just different issues. I think it would mainly boil down to businesses having "summer hours" and "winter hours," just two timesets that would shift in April & October (or March & November). After a year or two, people would adjust and would become accustomed to the shift.
You're on the right track, but I think you could look farther into the future and pull a few ideas from older innovations.
Anyone remember the "wearable" computer? They never went mass production to my knowledge, but I remember getting to test drive one while I worked at Nortel Networks. The computer and battery were worn on your belt. The display was a headset that projected a screen into your eye effectively providing a 32" screen view. The controller consisted of a wrist-worn keyboard with a small joystick tracking device on it's side. Specs were comparable to an executive laptop.
Now take these newer PC's (flipstart, OQO, Sony) and apply their tiny architecture and power to the "wearable" concept.
In my vision the PC fits in your pocket, you put on a pair of glasses and two wristbands. The PC, glasses and bands are all bluetooth (or something better) connected. The glasses give you a semi-transparent large screen view in one lens (configurable which lens and how transparent for different situations). The wristbands detect hand, finger and tendon movement. I can put my hand on any surface and move and tap as if moving a mouse. I can tap my fingers as if I am typing and it's all detected by the bands and translated to keystrokes.
Futuristic, sure, but that's where I see small PC's going.
I've had my failed experiment with Vista. I'll wait until SP1 and until something I play or work on requires me to look at Vista again. I'm thinking around the time XP goes end of life.
Exactly what products are you comparing and where are you shopping?
From my experience, HP is more expensive than Canon, Epson or even Lexmark. In consumer products, Epson is typically the longer lasting, better quality and least expensive. This is ironic considering that Canon invented the inkjet technology that they all use.
What disgusts me about inkjet printers is that they are designed to be throw-aways. They are never worth repairing; you just toss them and buy a new one. My last company went through 12 inkjets and a year's worth of ink before we were able to show them the invoices and projected costs of how a color laser is more cost effective.
I think this technology will eliminate current inkjet technology. I just hope it goes to all printer companies and HP doesn't somehow grab it exclusively for themselves. We'd see those projected cost savings disappear immediately.
While I doubt this will occur, there is one twist that I think would allow the show to extend indefinitely and would be another creative twist similar to replacing Hartnell.
Tennant is now the tenth Doctor, correct? (Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee, T. Baker, Davison, C. Baker, McCoy, McGann [I count this movie since McCoy was in it], Eccleston and Tennant). source: http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=dr.+who (There was an extra Doctor in there [Craig], but only for two episodes which I have not seen, so I suspect it was a alter ego/mirror/doppleganger kind of thing.)
According to lore and one of the episodes I vaguely recall involving the Master trying to steal the Doctor's body, time lords can only regenerate twelve times. That means the Doctor is nearing his end. Obviously, to continue the series the writers will come up with something clever to perform a transfer or get around the twelfth regeneration. Here's where this rumor might have some credibility.
Doctor regenerates into a woman (#11) which may or may not be Billie Piper. Since the doctor gets younger each regeneration, Billie might fit the bill nicely. Dr. Rose picks up a male assistant, falls in love and gets pregnant. Eventually she gives birth to a half time lord, half human. At some point (maybe birth, maybe puberty, maybe 18 yrs old) all the memories and experiences from the past Doctor transfer into this offspring continuing the line.
Alternatively, Dr. Rose could tryst about the universe getting knocked up by every compatible species and slowly give birth to a new generation of time lords.:-) In more spectacular, sci-fi fashion, Dr. Rose might get pregnant once, travel back to 0,0,0 and in some chaotic, meta-physical, multi-dimensional manner give birth to a new line of time lords and bring Gallifrey back into being.
If anything like this comes true, I think someone owes me a few pints of Guinness.;-)
"Windows is secure" coming from the company that did the following:
- created an anti-virus signature that filled up your hard drive with DIR000?? folders
- has such tenacious application installs it usually takes a reformat to get them removed
- recognizes other anti-virus applications as virus activity
- purchased Ghost a few years ago and has yet to move it forward AT ALL.
- purchased Veritas last year (maybe 2) and has nearly halted all progress on that product.
Am I the only one who immediately thinks of Civilization games as good simulations of this type of situation?
What happens when you stop trickling funds into your scientific research? You wind up moving your gunpowder wielding infantry across the continent on a railroad while your opponent drops a nuke on your capital city, flies a helicopter out to drop paratroopers on your cannon and launches a colonization ship to Alpha Centauri.
Don't these scientists, politicians and business people play games to learn these simple lessons?
Switching video cards to stay with Vista is not a feasible solution especially after purchasing these high end cards. Besides my experiences with ATI have been negative, so a complete changeout as you suggested wouldn't happen.
It wasn't just the dual monitor/card issue either. It was the combination of the three issues I listed that made me realize I was wasting my time when I could be up and running on XP within two hours which is exactly what happened.
Bios_hakr posted another viable solution, but again, that's extra work that shouldn't have to be done to "fix" the OS.
Definitely not ready for Vista yet, or Vista isn't ready enough for me.:-)
Having worked with PC's for years and building my own systems over the past 6-7 years, I'm growing very tired of building, repairing, tinkering and tweaking my own system after having to do likewise at work. I just want my PC to work and let me do what I want to do when I want to do it. (I just described a Mac, but I couldn't justify the cost of one and I still need a PC for my work.)
This is a gaming system that also does remote server work, desktop publishing, speech and technical writing and some graphics editing. Having no computer for a day or two makes me edgy. I had alloted a certain amount of time to get this transition from the old system to the new one done. I had planned my steps to minimize my downtime. When Vista started giving me issues and exceeding that window of time, the choice was obvious: go back to what works.
I finished loading applications and restoring data last night. My acid test and comparison to the old system had me smiling. I loaded World of Warcraft (windowed) in record time, logged in and went to a highly populated area. 60 frames per second, smooth as glass. On my right screen I had Firefox up and surfed to some notoriously advertisement-laden, FPS draining pages. 58 FPS in WoW. I then opened Excel in under two seconds, as I'd normally do to pull up an enchanting spreadsheet or a raid strategy list. I even watched a YouTube video. 58 FPS.
Overall I'm extremely pleased with the machine, using XP and the combined performance of both.
Slashdot Mirror
If you work on networks (routers, switches, firewalls), servers (core, file, application, database, web) or the applications on those servers, then likely you are expected to be on-call in case something fails. If you're in a large enough company, you get to share that responsibility and actually get sleep one or two weeks out of the month. If you're in a small company and you are the IT department, sleeping at your desk during business hours is probably permissible.
I used to received such "overtime" pay as well about four-five years ago. Most companies now simply expect that responding to calls after hours and having to come in to repair something for several hours is just part of your salary.
Big difference is typically whether you're hourly or salary.
If you're hourly, I think there are still regulations that enforce on-call and after-hours pay; if you're salary, the company owns you.
If you're hourly, I wouldn't be surprised that they soon move you to salary and then do away with on-call pay.
As for response decreasing when the extra pay disappears... expect anyone not responding to those calls to disappear shortly afterwards. The company will not accept a lack of response. If you won't respond, I'm certain they'll find someone a bit more desperate for a job who will work for less than you do and won't mind taking after hours calls.
Welcome to IT.
In 1999 I had the opportunity to test a "wearable" computer: belt mounted, 4 pounds, wrist mounted controller (operated with other hand, but just like IBM Thinkpad joystick), wrist keyboard (think Predator armband), battery lasted 2 hours (could probably be 6 now at same weight) and a small eyepiece gave you a view equivalent to a 30" monitor w/o obstructing your view (move, change focus distance). The computer was only slightly (6 months) behind current laptop technology as far as speed, RAM and HD size.
How is it this Land Warrior has gone so far backwards?
The viewpiece is the main thing bothering me. The soldier is going to get so absorbed in what's on the screen, he can't see through it, his distance judgment is impeded and it's going to cause a vision issue over the long term. Sure it can be flipped out of the way, but then you've lost your information. There is current technology for see-through screens and older technology for the small eyepiece I mentioned that allows you to see quite well and simply focus on the eyepiece when needed.
I wish I could remember who manufactured that wearable because they could obviously give Land Warrior a big help.
The wires also bother me. I do not suggest wireless (I hate wireless keyboards and mice myself), but I think the wires could be more integrated into the uniform so there aren't cords dangling about waiting to be crimped, be cut or cause a hangup. Wire to the gun should go up the sleeve, with slack/stretch at joints and come out at the wrist to attach to the rifle. To provide freedom of movement, that last piece from wrist to gun could be a pull-out/retractable cable.
I think the intentions are good: (near) immediate information, mapping, video/audio linking and friend identification. I just think this first implementation is way off target.
I've always paid or been refunded well before 4/15. It's the one thing I conquer my procrastination about.
I'm not certain what designates someone an "audit target." To me that's always been taboo, sort of like traffic laws: either follow the laws or pay the price. When I hear "audit" that tells me someone made a mistake or deliberately tried to hide something. I guess there is some gray area, but again I'm ignorant of any such complications or dealings.
I figure most people delay because they have to pay so they postpone it until the last minute. I'd personally rather get it over with, deal with it and adjust my W4 so it doesn't happen again. The ultimate goal is to strike the balance where no money exchanges hands at tax time.
I'm pretty sure we were on T2. Hold times were tolerable; inexperience, incompetence and general lack of knowing what to do or who to find was not. I think a few times when we had major problems, we eventually talked to one of those T5 guys who fixed it in 15 minutes.
Will the procrastinators learn their lesson and file at least a day early? Heck no. They even had two extra days this year. If paying the taxes is the issue, that's what an extension is for.
I am a horrible procrastinator myself, but I guess my greed overpowers that. My taxes were done, returned and spent in February. Woot! New PC!
I also learned a few years back that Turbo Tax is no better than most of the other products out there, free or otherwise. I've been using http://www.taxact.com/ for the past three years. I usually do the download, but I tried the web version for my mother-in-law's taxes. Very smooth, quick, painless and best of all, completely free. I did my mother-in-law's taxes Sunday, 4/15. That's the latest I've ever filed a return. Guess I'm getting sloppy like the unwashed masses.
I just see this as a major backlash of karma that has built up over the past 10 years.
"Bernard, float over here so I can punch you."
So many games have made major steps forward or backward in the genre of CRPGs. The Ultima series stands out on both of those counts (F U EA!). What I find truly interesting is that some games are so good or at least make such an impression on someone that it gets resurrected in some form or fashion.
At some point Ultima IV was re-written for Windows and released on a PC Gamer (?) CD.
Dedicated fans of Ultima V have released an excellent Dungeon Siege mod where you can replay Ultima V (for the most part) in a 3D world. http://lazarus.planetdungeonsiege.gamespy.com/
My point is that if these games were so great there is hope we may see them again. Unless of course the corporate idiots and lawyers make it impossible. Oh Master of Magic 2, where art thou?
Find several tasks that you do every day and open all the windows on a single screen. Now tile them or cascade them or alt-tab through them either while the "auditor" is watching or with someone timing you with a stopwatch.
Now open all those windows and spread them out across both screens logically "paired up" to work more efficiently. Again have the "auditor" watch or have someone time you.
Examples from my work.
I have to keep server inventory up. I have a spreadsheet that I fill in while I'm on the datacenter floor and the data has to be transferred or verified with an online database (I cannot edit the database directly nor can I access it while on the floor.). Spreadsheet on one screen is where I'm typing and the other screen has the database opened so I can read it. If I had to switch back and forth, copying and pasting, I'd not only waste a huge amount of time, but I'd go crazy in the process.
Other tasks include reading a PDF or online reference page while I remote desktop into a server, reading a document while I work in a command line window or stretching Excel our across both windows, tiling the spreadsheets and jumping back and forth between them.
Most of the tasks I do break down to a "reader" and a "writer." Having these two functions on separate screens changes an alt-tab (or worse, taskbar mouse click) into an eye shift or a head turn at the most.
I would definitely hope that a brief demonstration to the auditor would be enough, but timing, studies and the minuscule cost of a 2nd monitor should give you enough ammo.
This wasn't so much of an EE as it was the developer's testing and QA tool. I don't think I learned about it until it was made public, but it was fun to play around.
Also in U7, you'll find my character's name on one of the gravestones in Skara Brae. :-) I made a friend at Origin right after U6 and she was able to get it in there for me. I think it says "Here Lies Phaltran Pogammon who is [my real name]." I guess that's my 15 minutes of fame. /sigh What a shame.
In Ultima IV you could meet a few celebrities: Paul & Linda McCartney sang to the children in Britain, Short Round was looking for Indy near Yew (maybe Jhelom) and other characters from previous games or history would make cameo appearances.
Several other games have continued this cameo appearance trait. Most familiar to me now is WoW's various characters. Un'Goro crater is populated by characters from "Land of the Lost" and Nintendo games. Searing Gorge has a character based on Homestar Runner animations.
Always fun when the developers drop these little tidbits into the games.
I hope Warren Robinett received the recognition he deserved from the developer community. He set a great precedent.
I always look for the (expected) easter egg at the end of Strong Bad's e-mails.
This would cause as many difficulties as the current clock changing system does just different issues. I think it would mainly boil down to businesses having "summer hours" and "winter hours," just two timesets that would shift in April & October (or March & November). After a year or two, people would adjust and would become accustomed to the shift.
I'm quite certain they ALL agree on giving themselves a pay raise EVERY year.
Anyone remember the "wearable" computer? They never went mass production to my knowledge, but I remember getting to test drive one while I worked at Nortel Networks. The computer and battery were worn on your belt. The display was a headset that projected a screen into your eye effectively providing a 32" screen view. The controller consisted of a wrist-worn keyboard with a small joystick tracking device on it's side. Specs were comparable to an executive laptop.
Now take these newer PC's (flipstart, OQO, Sony) and apply their tiny architecture and power to the "wearable" concept.
In my vision the PC fits in your pocket, you put on a pair of glasses and two wristbands. The PC, glasses and bands are all bluetooth (or something better) connected. The glasses give you a semi-transparent large screen view in one lens (configurable which lens and how transparent for different situations). The wristbands detect hand, finger and tendon movement. I can put my hand on any surface and move and tap as if moving a mouse. I can tap my fingers as if I am typing and it's all detected by the bands and translated to keystrokes.
Futuristic, sure, but that's where I see small PC's going.
Free excrement is still excrement.
I've had my failed experiment with Vista. I'll wait until SP1 and until something I play or work on requires me to look at Vista again. I'm thinking around the time XP goes end of life.
From my experience, HP is more expensive than Canon, Epson or even Lexmark. In consumer products, Epson is typically the longer lasting, better quality and least expensive. This is ironic considering that Canon invented the inkjet technology that they all use.
What disgusts me about inkjet printers is that they are designed to be throw-aways. They are never worth repairing; you just toss them and buy a new one. My last company went through 12 inkjets and a year's worth of ink before we were able to show them the invoices and projected costs of how a color laser is more cost effective.
I think this technology will eliminate current inkjet technology. I just hope it goes to all printer companies and HP doesn't somehow grab it exclusively for themselves. We'd see those projected cost savings disappear immediately.
Original Doctor Who series was from 1963 to 1989, rather contiguously.
Stargate SG1 just started it's tenth year and it's being shut down next year I heard (or hope).
Tennant is now the tenth Doctor, correct? (Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee, T. Baker, Davison, C. Baker, McCoy, McGann [I count this movie since McCoy was in it], Eccleston and Tennant). source: http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=dr.+who (There was an extra Doctor in there [Craig], but only for two episodes which I have not seen, so I suspect it was a alter ego/mirror/doppleganger kind of thing.)
According to lore and one of the episodes I vaguely recall involving the Master trying to steal the Doctor's body, time lords can only regenerate twelve times. That means the Doctor is nearing his end. Obviously, to continue the series the writers will come up with something clever to perform a transfer or get around the twelfth regeneration. Here's where this rumor might have some credibility.
Doctor regenerates into a woman (#11) which may or may not be Billie Piper. Since the doctor gets younger each regeneration, Billie might fit the bill nicely. Dr. Rose picks up a male assistant, falls in love and gets pregnant. Eventually she gives birth to a half time lord, half human. At some point (maybe birth, maybe puberty, maybe 18 yrs old) all the memories and experiences from the past Doctor transfer into this offspring continuing the line.
Alternatively, Dr. Rose could tryst about the universe getting knocked up by every compatible species and slowly give birth to a new generation of time lords. :-) In more spectacular, sci-fi fashion, Dr. Rose might get pregnant once, travel back to 0,0,0 and in some chaotic, meta-physical, multi-dimensional manner give birth to a new line of time lords and bring Gallifrey back into being.
If anything like this comes true, I think someone owes me a few pints of Guinness. ;-)
- created an anti-virus signature that filled up your hard drive with DIR000?? folders
- has such tenacious application installs it usually takes a reformat to get them removed
- recognizes other anti-virus applications as virus activity
- purchased Ghost a few years ago and has yet to move it forward AT ALL.
- purchased Veritas last year (maybe 2) and has nearly halted all progress on that product.
Yeah, Symantec knows what it's doing.
What happens when you stop trickling funds into your scientific research? You wind up moving your gunpowder wielding infantry across the continent on a railroad while your opponent drops a nuke on your capital city, flies a helicopter out to drop paratroopers on your cannon and launches a colonization ship to Alpha Centauri.
Don't these scientists, politicians and business people play games to learn these simple lessons?
Switching video cards to stay with Vista is not a feasible solution especially after purchasing these high end cards. Besides my experiences with ATI have been negative, so a complete changeout as you suggested wouldn't happen.
It wasn't just the dual monitor/card issue either. It was the combination of the three issues I listed that made me realize I was wasting my time when I could be up and running on XP within two hours which is exactly what happened.
Bios_hakr posted another viable solution, but again, that's extra work that shouldn't have to be done to "fix" the OS.
Definitely not ready for Vista yet, or Vista isn't ready enough for me. :-)
Having worked with PC's for years and building my own systems over the past 6-7 years, I'm growing very tired of building, repairing, tinkering and tweaking my own system after having to do likewise at work. I just want my PC to work and let me do what I want to do when I want to do it. (I just described a Mac, but I couldn't justify the cost of one and I still need a PC for my work.)
This is a gaming system that also does remote server work, desktop publishing, speech and technical writing and some graphics editing. Having no computer for a day or two makes me edgy. I had alloted a certain amount of time to get this transition from the old system to the new one done. I had planned my steps to minimize my downtime. When Vista started giving me issues and exceeding that window of time, the choice was obvious: go back to what works.
I finished loading applications and restoring data last night. My acid test and comparison to the old system had me smiling. I loaded World of Warcraft (windowed) in record time, logged in and went to a highly populated area. 60 frames per second, smooth as glass. On my right screen I had Firefox up and surfed to some notoriously advertisement-laden, FPS draining pages. 58 FPS in WoW. I then opened Excel in under two seconds, as I'd normally do to pull up an enchanting spreadsheet or a raid strategy list. I even watched a YouTube video. 58 FPS.
Overall I'm extremely pleased with the machine, using XP and the combined performance of both.