Have you ever wondered who Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are supporting for President of the United States? Bill Gates just celebrated his birthday on the 28th of October. Happy early Halloween Bill! Bill just turned 53 and reigns as the 2nd richest American. Bill and Melinda have a Foundation that helps kids and Bill even does commercials with Jerry Seinfeld. This is a guy that will rank along with Thomas Alva Edison as people that “rocked our world” forever! Steve Jobs aside…..in the year 4000….will they still be talking about the Mac or Bill Gates?
OK, we are all prisoners of technology. Sometimes the frustrations are just little inconvenient nit-nits…while other times there are major crash and burn experiences that can really ruin a perfectly good day. We felt we might do a quick review of what has happened since 1995, so we all have better look at what has happened all along the way to the election of November 2008!
In 1995, we were all introduced to Windows 95…..an computer Operating System that virtually changed the world as we knew it. It opened our minds and our eyes to the power of the Internet. We didn’t know that Al Gore had invented the Grey Mouse or how to do e-mail. After buying a Windows 95 Compaq 4884 266 Mhz speed burning computer however….we learned all about CD readers, floppy discs and the dreaded 64 Megabite Exception for RAM that crashed our beautiful Microsoft Windows 95! That we were able to save by having a friend whose nieces boyfriend was a “Computer Geek” download a copy of Windows 98…….to save the day!
Then came the Microsoft Detroit Plan….”Planned Obsolescence”! Windows 98SE, Windows 2000….Windows ME……and then finally Windows XP! Every step of the way….we fought progress. After Windows 98SE…we waited until they refused to support our old machine, wound up buying three more XP computers and a lap top! Since we never did Windows Updates with our old 98SE machine much until the end times…we stayed determined to keep our XP machines up to date…at all costs. Of course we found that we couldn’t just say: “Automatically update our machine!” … No, sometimes Microsoft added little stuff that went bogus….went off the rails…caused other faults to occur….which caused us to “delete” some of the “Windows Updates” that weren’t so good to our machines!
In any event, then came Vista! Since we were lucky enough NEVER to have had Windows 2000 or Windows ME….it was quite a shock to get into the new Windows Vista World! We thought we might be cautious. We would buy a low cost DEMO model machine from the local Circuit City. How bad could we be hurt for $179 bucks? It was a Windows Vista Machine….just in case Gates and Ballmer would throw XP under the bus…..or use one of their cyber RPG’s to take our wonderful XP machines out when they felt like it.
Well, things had changed. These new “low cost machines” offered up “shared memory”. That means when you add RAM…that all the Graphics that the machine uses…..has to “Share the RAM” will both the Graphics demands and the operational demands of the computer. Result: It slows your machine down to a snails pace. The only fix is to add a Stand Alone Graphics Card…..$85 bucks. Also, since this machine was so slow….we decided to upgrade the processor to 3.4 Mhz vs. 2.2 Mhz. $198 bucks! That resulted in getting ready for Vista Service Pack 1. When we downloaded that…it blew up the original Vista Operating System. Had to take it to the local Computer Geek to fix. $109 bucks.
With the new Service Pack 1 in place…our new processor got so hot that it melted the motherboard. Needed to take it back to replace the motherboard and add a high volume cooling fan. Of course, we also had to trade out the new Graphics card we add for one compatible with our new motherboard. So, $209 bucks out the door! Well, now we are getting ready for Vista Service Pack 2….which is supposed to come out soon! Luckily for us, we only use this machine for our local surveillance cameras! How long will this baby work Mr. Gates? When are you coming out with Windows 7…which is supposed to be a new improved Vista? Let us just say, we will never buy another DEMO machine again. We will never buy an AMD Chip Computer. We will never buy another Vista machine…..EVER!
Meanwhile, we have the most contenscious election in American History! We also have the biggest Economic Meltdown in World History! We also have to concede that perhaps if this all keeps up…..we will have to finally bite the bullet and go to a MAC machine! So, our question is: Is Windows 7 …which is scheduled to come out next year….another XP or is it mearly Windows ME?
Ummm, McCain?
Once you’ve used a Mac, you will never go back.
OK, a few corrections about technology, a topic near and dear to my heart:
Windows 95 didn’t ‘introduce us’ to the internet and Al Gore didn’t invent it. It’s been around since WWII, starting out as an academic network (which, aside from all the pornography – including this perverse blog, in many ways it still is) meant to protect the nation’s collective knowledge in the event of a nuclear holocaust. The term e-mail became popular circa 1992 – 3 years before Bill Gates and Al Gore ‘invented’ the World Wide Web (a term that has since fallen out of favor). Many of us were already using dial-up services such as local Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) or AOL to connect to the ‘Net. Then came high speed and that my friends, is what really made the Internet take off.
You didn’t have a 266. You had a 2-EIGHTY-6. ‘CD Reader’ is the updated term for what you actually had in your computer, a CD-ROM (Read Only Memory, as in ‘un-writable”).
You mention the XP/Vista divide but you neglected to mention that Vista was so buggy at first that it actually pushed new PC sales down noticeably. It was at this point that Microsoft started to once again offer XP to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and sales rebounded. When the bugs were all worked out (and as a Vista user, I can vouch), they again discontinued XP and started the Vista Project, a sort-of ‘Coke and Pepsi’ taste test intended to prove once and for all that users really liked the product when its reputation was removed from the equation.
The only fix to shared memory is not to install a graphics adapter. You could also, umm, ohh, I dunno, add some more memory? It’s available for approximately $20/GB on e-Bay. Besides, what are you guys running over there that requires high end graphics? I mean you buy a cheap computer and then complain about the OS (operating system)? If you needed a new fan for your processor, then blame the manufacturer. If anything, you had the meltdown because Vista improved performance! AMD isn’t the problem here, but I will admit that Intel chips are generally more reliable.
Since you clearly know nothing about PCs, PLEASE buy a Mac and spare us these uninformed lectures about your computer issues.
SMS
PS: ‘conseed’ = concede
*SMS…is always full of sweet assistance for all.
First of all…it is you that if FOS! Did you ever have an 8088 Compaq? Did
you ever know what DOS means? Did you ever figure out that MHZ is the
speed of the machine? Did you pull up the Compaq 4884 to see what it was
and find out the speed of the processor?
Did you ever figure out….that people around the globe hate MAC for a variety of reasons…including being so afraid to run MS Software that they put their
own cause back 10 years? Final Draft and Graphics programs for video are
obviously the Industry Standard with MAC. Right now, because they finally
figured out that their mouthwash wasn’t making it…have decided to finally
make MAC…user friendly. Just one simple example: MS Word. Did you ever
try to make that work on MAC prior to 2005? How about Word Perfect? Oh,
you had to buy the MAC Version….how convenient?
Ever heard of Inter-active ordering systems for the Restaurant business? NO,
because WE invented that. It was called the REON Corporation in 1983! At any rate….launch your IPOD off a bridge for us…will you…it will make our day!
Whoa! I know you don’t seriously want to debate old-school technology with me. Nice to see some things never change; you’re still ageists.
Yes, in fact I did have an 8088. It wasn’t a crappy early-model Compaq, it was an IBM, the international standard of that time. I also used Apple II’s. These were the computers that sold so well to schools and provided the capital to develop the MacIntosh.
DOS is Disk Operating System, and I use the command prompt on my Vista machine all the time. In fact, I always avoided Macs because I preferred a command-line OS over a GUI (graphical user interface). Got any more trivia questions for me?
And you should read my last comment again. I’m not defending Macs as I don’t like them either. What I’m saying is that if you want something that is easier to use than you may need to give up some functionality, and in your case, you should if you’re going to bemoan the ‘complexities’ of Vista.
REON Corporation? Wow. You developed a small closed-source operating system. Congratulations Einsteins!
Oh, and I don’t own an Ipod. Do I strike you as being that trendy? I use a T-Mobile Sidekick for MP3 playback instead so that I can keep an eye on OJ from the road. 😉
SMS
Geez, I was using MS Word on a Mac back in the mid-90s. I’m with SMS on this one…you guys are kinda, well, you know.
And your suggestion that MS invented the user-friendly operating system is one helluva funny piece of revisionist history. Thanks for the laugh!
Oh my, lay people discussing the Internet…
As a software developer for umteen years, I think I know a little bit about that.
Here is a link that describes the Internet timeline accurately:
http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/
Oh, and Win95 was only a “breakthrough” for people who only knew DOS. Us Unix oldtimers only laughed about Windows. And we still do. Google, for example, would not where it is today without Linux.
The GUI, btw, was invented in the 70ies at the Xerox PARC research center in Palo Alto, as were a lot of other things. Xerox management back East were just too entrenched in the copier industry to see that they had the future in their hands.
That illustrates nicely that it is important to always have an open mind.
Oh, and btw, my first computer was a Rockwell AIM-65: http://oldcomputers.net/AIM-65.html
I admit, I was a nerd in highschool, and I am still an old-time hacker (in the original meaning of the word, of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)
I just want to know if the Winships ended up voting for Obama.
“Obamanos Muchachos” “Obamanos”!!!