Windows 7 or vista..?

[mikerickin]

Hi to all
I am planning to buy new laptop.But confused little which system to buy.So please share your experience so i can get some ideas.which one is better..?

[Bregalad]

7
SNES9x randomly crashes in it and you'll need DOSBox for some older DOS programms, but aside of that it's the best Windows you can get (both of those problems probably happens in Vista too, with a lot of other additional problems).

[peppers]

This guys a bot you know

[Bregalad]

Oh I lost 2 minutes of my life then

[tepples]

I am planning to buy new laptop.But confused little which system to buy.

Ubuntu. It will free your mind.


...at least from the control of this bot.

[danntor]

I am planning to buy new laptop.But confused little which system to buy.

Ubuntu. It will free your mind.


...at least from the control of this bot.

No love for Debian?

[Zepper]

- Windows XP. It's quite solid for drivers and absolutely compatible.

[tokumaru]

absolutely compatible.

Until they start making things that are NOT compatible. XP is only compatible because a lot of stuff has been made for it, but that will soon stop, sadly...

Let's just hope ReactOS gets real good real soon!

[tepples]

Ubuntu. It will free your mind.

No love for Debian?

Ubuntu is brown Debian, so that too.

tokumaru: When companies stop making drivers for Windows XP, they'll also stop making drivers for ReactOS.

[tokumaru]

When companies stop making drivers for Windows XP, they'll also stop making drivers for ReactOS.

True. Hopefully it will evolve into something better than Vista/7 while still compatible with them? I'm truly lost when it comes to new OSs... I definitely don't want to leave XP for a new Windows, but several programs I absolutely need in order to live don't work on Linux. I would really like to switch to Linux, but besides not being able to use several important programs, I suck at understanding how it works (I can't even install the drivers to get all my hardware working!).

[phazmatis]

Linux developer: "We added in a new file system, and tweaked the kernel's task switching, and improved the boot times by 12 seconds!"

User: "But I still can't play my DVDs without learning how to use the command line."



And this is why linux on the desktop is still a joke.

[Zepper]

Until they start making things that are NOT compatible.

- Evolution, much like what happened with those older Windows. However, I don't see W7 or even Vista largely accepted... for now.

[peppers]

but several programs I absolutely need in order to live don't work on Linux.

for running windows apps if your computer has decent power and you can't get it to run using wine, Vmware Server, or Virtualbox should work assuming you can't just find a Linux equivalent of whatever it is.

I suck at understanding how it works (I can't even install the drivers to get all my hardware working!).

More often than not you don't need to install drivers useing Linux what in particular is the devices?

btw I like Linux mint, its basically Ubuntu made nice.

User: "But I still can't play my DVDs without learning how to use the command line.".

Command lines are not all that often required for normal stuff anymore, at least not much more that I have to use DOS. its true that Ubuntu and others dose not come with "restricted-extras" (for legal reasons because they do sell copy's of there OS they would have to pay the owners license fees (also is bit of nonsense from the developers bc they don't want to include certain things due to there panties being in a bunch) but its not necessary to use any commands to install them. This is a common misconception from people who have not tried out Linux themselves. once more my recommendation is mint.
Linux can run "Live" from the cd without the need to install it try it out yourself b4 you comment on it again.

[phazmatis]

User: "But I still can't play my DVDs without learning how to use the command line.".

Command lines are not all that often required for normal stuff anymore, at least not much more that I have to use DOS. This is a common misconception from people who have not tried out Linux themselves. once more my recommendation is mint.
Linux can run "Live" from the cd without the need to install it try it out yourself b4 you comment on it again.

Actually, I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 right now. I'd also be running linux on my desktop, but linux has this nice habit of installing just fine and then giving me a blank screen once I try to boot it from the actual hard drive. I've tried Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and Slackware, with identical results. Probably my motherboard or graphics card are not supported, but I'm not going to replace hardware to get linux working. Oh, I tried the common linux boot options, and none of them fix the problem. I'll just stick with XP, which installs all of my drivers without any trouble.
I'm using 64-bit linux, and there are problems associated with that. For example, all of the flash player plugins are either 32-bit exclusive or require all sorts of contortions to install them. Someone makes an install script, but the next version of ubuntu breaks them. Ubuntu 9.04 finally got the video working in this laptop, it was a nightmare of restricted drivers that didn't install correctly before.

Windows 7 is still pretty bad. Web browsers freeze up for 30 seconds at a time any time I open too many (4 or more) youtube pages (on a dual-core 3.2ghz desktop this should not be happening). Games run at one half the framerate as in XP. And even when I lower the graphics settings in games, and bring the framerate up to 60+, the games jerk and lag like they did in Vista. XP runs them fine.

I use linux for online banking because windows security is a joke. XP, Vista, 7,.. I don't trust any of them. The only secure windows PC is behind an actual firewall (not a crappy residential router that will happily pass any forged packet marked "192.168.1.4" along to your desktop), running a non-Norton (and non-McAfee) antivirus with COMODO firewall (or some other competent firewall) set on "paranoid mode". And then don't ever use flash, acrobat, javascript, etc.............

[tepples]

several programs I absolutely need in order to live don't work on Linux.

What medical devices that you use run on Windows?

User: "But I still can't play my DVDs without learning how to use the command line."

The stakeholders in DVD Video (MPEG-LA, DVD CCA, and the movie publishers) don't want you playing DVDs on unauthorized devices, and Linux isn't yet popular enough to make Linux PCs in general into authorized devices. Even Mac OS X, which is much more popular on the desktop than Linux, can't play Blu-ray Disc because of the format's digital restrictions management demands. (Get a PS3.) Still, Dell PCs with Ubuntu sold in the United States come with licensed DVD playback software.

for running windows apps if your computer has decent power and you can't get it to run using wine, Vmware Server, or Virtualbox should work assuming you can't just find a Linux equivalent of whatever it is.

Virtual machines are good at running applications, but there are two drawbacks. First, you have to buy a retail copy of the operating system. In the United States, a retail copy of Windows costs about $200, but a Wii-size Acer Aspire Revo PC including a keyboard, a mouse, and a bundled OEM copy of Windows also costs $200. So you might as well buy a KVM switch instead of Parallels Desktop or VMware or whatever. Second, virtual machines often don't perfectly forward an emulated device driver's direct hardware access to the actual hardware, so good luck using USB peripherals such as a label printer or a receipt printer or a webcam.

what in particular is the devices?

Microtek ScanMaker 4850 USB flatbed scanner, listed on sane-project.org as unsupported for years. On another PC back in the Mandrake 9.1 days, it was the Radeon 9000 video card. I bet that's supported by now, but now that's my only Windows machine and I don't feel like taking two minutes to switch between applications. But I bought my current laptop (ASUS Eee PC 900) specifically because it was the cheapest one I could find locally that would run Linux well.