your operating system?

[ibanezjunkie]

what operating system do you use for your browsing/computing? i just upgraded from XP Pro to Vista Ultimate and its a hell of a leap, the sidebar is a really cool idea too.

i still know some folks who use '98 and '95.

[ragnarpk]

xp ftw, man. i decided to skip vista completely, as it happens to suck, and wait for the final version of windows 7.

[ibanezjunkie]

i had to upgrade my hard drive, the amount of RAM and my DVD drive in order to get vista to work, but it does seem alot more futuristic than XP, and alot of stuff is much easier and alot more customisable.

the solitaire is good too.

[WackyT]

Been running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Release Candidate since May.

[Robert]

Mac OS 10.5.8 but I will soon upgrade to Snow Leopard.

[markb]

OSX 10.4.11 Tiger. Never got round to Leopard but I might make the jump to Snow Leopard.

[ibanezjunkie]

i always hated Apple stuff, i know theyre fast and reliable but i could never get past the £1-2k price tag. i could get a Mesa/Boogie for that!

plus, the weird layouts and stuff, im a Windows kid, its alien to me :rotflmao:

[sunvalleylaw]

OS 10.5.8, soon to be 10.6 Snow Leopard. I also run XP on my macs when I have to, but I hate it. I had Vista running on my Mac for about 5 minutes once, and trashed it right away to go back to XP. But I only use it for two legal programs, other than that, I am in the Mac world.

[street music]

XP PRO here, I don't want VISTA as there too many limitations with it. Never had any experience with MAC and it would be hard for me to use anything different my office.

[R_of_G]

mac osx 10.4.11

considering moving up to snow leopard but i am still quite satisfied with tiger.

[vroomery]

Mac osx leopard. Hopefully upgrading to snow shortly. I used to be all about windows and then spent a few years running different releases of ubuntu up through hardy herron, but then I got my macbook and haven't looked back.

[Kodiak3D]

I have XP for now. Tried Vista, hated it. Windows 7, on the other hand, is a very nice operating system and I'll probably upgrade soon.

[peachhead]

I reckon I will be the odd man out- I'm running Vista, have been for the last couple of years. Personally, I like it. I'm even running it at work, with very few problems.

[deeaa]

I'd say don't go Vista, it's a terrible system, too big, slow and needs a LOT of patches and tweaking to make it work well, and win7 is just about here. I have installed and used Vista on 4-5 machines and while some work acceptably, some are terribly slow and clumsy, and all are annoying to use in real life.

Instead, get Win7 freely downloadable evaluation version, it's good for 120 days and then change to a full one when it's available. It's way better.

I myself run Xp Pro on my main machine (sometimes boot to Linux side but very very rarely) as well as on my main laptop; we have another laptop w/Xp home as well, a Linux (Ubuntu) desktop box and I also just had a Vista laptop for a year, onto which I also put Win7 beta on and used that for a good while. Still, good riddance in favour of the Xp one again.

I'm changing to Win7 on my main desktop around Xmas I think, this time probably taking the 64bit version too, so I can use more than 2 or 3 gigs of mem.

At work they have had macs for years, also in the studio, but they're being phased out as nobody likes them, they're hard to use if you're used to windows boxes with all the options etc, and they are expensive to maintain plus there's not enough software support. (To me too they seem like crippled and limited OS's and they're damned slow and inefficient for the price - sorry maccies, but it's how I feel.) If you want a basic, safe system for surfing and writing etc. Ubuntulinux is great. Works really really smoothly even on the old desktop which is (I think a 2.6GHz P4 with very baseline specs, and old office computer not any gaming platform). I'd love Ubuntu if only it could offer me at least most of what I need to do, but so far only Windows offers all I need.

At work we run most of the stuff over the network from a mainframe, using Xp Pro terminals or win2003 server terminals within Xp; I logon to it from home too using Cisco remote terminal etc.

[pes_laul]

I have windows 98 on my computer at home.

[bedroom rocker]

i use vista, i havent had any real problems with it, . easy to use, etc

[deeaa]

btw, round here you can get Vista for free basically...nobody wants 'em. If you buy a new machine they come with Vista but people usually pay a little extra to 'upgrade' back to Xp upon purchase. My machine came with Vista but it's been swapped to Xp Pro.

Another option with Vista machines is you get a voucher with it to upgrade to Win7 when it is released.

I had Vista Business on my laptop and when I sold it the buyer made me test Xp on it first, wouldn't accept a Vista only machine.

Vista is a nice enough system when it works, though. If you tend to do same kind of things all the time it's really quick too, and very nice to use; great FTP built-in etc...once I got it up and running/patched I was quite happy with it. Only a few times it went into some kind of infinite loop and crashed, once it took about two hours when it 'recuperated' from some sort of systems failure.

The only major problem with Vista is simply that it is so unnecessarily resource hoggin' behemoth.

It's like using a Humvee to drive your garbage from the kitchen door to the thrashcan 15 feet away...you need a hugely powerful machine to run even the basics and still it can take ages to boot or if you make system changes like new HDs and stuff it can be reallllly sloooow too. And then you get to run Word almost as fast as you did on a 486-based machine ten years ago.

Win7 is basically exactly the same except they've made it way smaller and lighter - it's what Vista was supposed to be and internally the same.

It has a lot of things about it I miss on my Xp box also...but nevertheless, it's the Win ME of these days, a fall-between system MS is dropping like a hot stone and moving to win7 as fast as they can.

Even the Win7 and Xp are too slow in my book, although I guess quite OK. On Xp I strip out all the pictures, taskbars and animations, system sounds and such, keep it to a bare minimum and disable most of the system tasks that aren't needed like indexing etc. and adjust swap files and use RAID arrays etc...and on a 3,6GHz dualcore it's barely acceptably fast. Hell still takes a minute to boot up with all my drivers loaded.

At work we have a couple Win95 machines which run a few laboratory programs that won't work on newer systems, and every time I use one I'm simply blown away. It's some real old Pentium one 120MHz machine or something, and it takes like 15 seconds from a push of a button till you get to write stuff and surf the net already. And especially powering down - you just hit 'shutdown' and it just blinks and shuts off in mere 2 seconds or so. Opening software works like magic, it feels like it anticipates when you've clicked on an icon, they launch so fast.

Amazing. We tend to forget how fast and efficient the old OS's were when these newer slouchers are so overgrown in size.

Imagine, a modern PC has like umpteen times the power the whole NASA had when sending people to the moon...and still it can be such a time consuming task just to start a machine and write a simple message for instance - it requires all the power available...its just the OS's have never been completely rewritten or specifically built for the hardware, they're all just built upon the previous ones, layering systems atop each other, dependencies and whatnot every which way, backwards compatibility and all that jazz...all built with so lax standards and inefficient non-direct coding that it will work with any CPU and system out there.

I guess there is no way out of it...at least until they really came up with a working mini-kernel system that has a truly efficient interface for adding subroutine systems, like Direct-X for graphics but better, and better standards for CPU/display buses and such.

[Kazz]

I had been using Vista for about a year....heavily patched but I loved it....This weekend we stepped over to Win7 on both our desktops....resisting the urge to move to Win7 on the laptops....but it will probably win out in the long run. Win7 is slick as can be.....and if you load the install files to a USB drive....you can be up and running to the desktop in 22 minutes for a fresh install....amazing.

[deeaa]

Yes I was quite amazed how quick and simple Win7 install was, already on the beta version before RC1. VERY quick and handled dualboot etc. seamlessly. Almost zero user interaction required altogether.

For WinXP I always create my own setup DVD with NLite for each new PC I build, including all the XP patches and most of the needed mobo drivers plus is set to setup with no serial queried etc; in-built instead, and that is a breeze to install but win7 still takes the cake in install speed and ease.

[MichaelE]

All three of my network systems are running XP Pro. Couldn't be smoother. A fourth utility machine in the shop is running '98.

After reading about all of the troubles with Vista, I never even considered it.

[marnold]

Slackware Linux 12.2--possibly updating soon to the recently-released 13.0.

ph34r the penguin!

[Perfect Stranger]

At work I use Dual screen system running Windows 7.
At home I went back to Windows SP just cos I like it.

[sunvalleylaw]

Here is a Snow Leopard review by PC Mag. There is an initial Windows 7 comparison at the end. Not surprisingly, each system has some strengths. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2352065,00.asp

I do not want to get into the "which OS is best" conversation because I think that answer is different depending upon your needs. For me, I have worked in both Windows and Mac enviros over the years and have been much more productive, with less problems, and greater enjoyment in the Mac world. I like things to just work, and I don't like to twiddle with or tweak things. Plug and play baby!

I would rather pay DVM to build me a great pedal that works than mess with it myself. That way, my time is spent on using the tool, rather than building or tweaking it. That has not been MY experience in the Windows world. But that is just me. My brother works for Microsoft, and we have learned to agree to disagree. Live and let live. :D

[deeaa]

Yeah, I like the 'mac approach' in certain things like iPod etc...on computers, though, I want to be easily able to for instance open a file in 5 different ways and make my own ways of dealing with them etc. On macs it just feels like there is only one way to do something and no options or room for customization, and that really bugs me. Starting from when you plug in something, it appears on the desktop. Yikes! I hate that! And all that dragging and extensive mouse use :-)

It's not about which is better, it's just a matter of preference.

[djmcconnell]

I'm a Mac OS X (Leopard) user. I need to replace my 6-yr-old eMac soon, and waiting to see what Apple has to say at their big media event next week (i.e., speed bumped iMac, MacBook or rumored tablet).

Then I'll get Snow Leopard for free!

[ibanezjunkie]

now that ive upgraded my RAM, my hard-drive, most of my hardware and go through a bunch of patches ot get it working, my Vista seems to work great, for the time being anyway, eventually it will probably get annoying. hopefully by that time ill be able to obtain a full copy of windows 7.

my dads a computer tech, he should have no problem obtaining it from one of the many almost-illegal places we visit.

[SuperSwede]

I have a iMac with OS 10.6 Snow Leopard.. its a fast cat and my setup is worth every penny :)

[guitartango]

Slackware Linux 12.2--possibly updating soon to the recently-released 13.0.

ph34r the penguin!

Damm those penguins ! Currently running Mint linux (unb-deb) and Windows 7. I actually like Windows 7 compared to Hista la Vista as i can run Windows Media Center without any problems.

[stingx]

People who dis Vista just quote what drivel they hear or have pretty old hardware to run it to begin with. The same nonsense was said about XP prior to SP 3. Vista is a very solid, reliable platform especially after the last SP. Windows 7 is even better in that there has been much optimization under the hood and the transition to it won't be as cumbersome as Vista was since it is based on it. XP is several years old now and unless you plan to run with antiquated hardware Vista or 7 is the way to go to take advantage of multi-core and mass amounts of RAM that modern hardware can handle.

I use a combo of Vista 64, Linux, and 7 64-bit throughout the home.

[stingx]

After reading about all of the troubles with Vista, I never even considered it.


Don't believe everything you read...

[sumitomo]

I just like it when my computer works!I really do not know that much about PC stuff and have had to learn everything on the fly.I use XP or should I say it uses me.Sumi:D

[Trailer Park Casanova]

We have Windows Vista 64 bit.
Just as many people love it as hate it.

We hate it. It's gawd awefull
We'll dump it and go to Windows 7 ASAP.

We also have an Apple Mac laptop.

It's the way to roll.

[MichaelE]

Don't believe everything you read...

For my application(s) Vista is worthless. The particular software I use is incompatible with Vista with no upgrade in sight. What I read are from users running, or having attempted to run I should say, the very software I have.

There is no option for different software, patches for either the software or Vista, or a different version. End of story.

These are not old computers and are quite capable of running Vista with the correct drivers.

This software and its capability is incompatible with Vista:

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h146/boeing722/727Wideview0001.jpg

[deeaa]

People who dis Vista just quote what drivel they hear or have pretty old hardware to run it to begin with. The same nonsense was said about XP prior to SP 3. Vista is a very solid, reliable platform especially after the last SP. Windows 7 is even better in that there has been much optimization under the hood and the transition to it won't be as cumbersome as Vista was since it is based on it. XP is several years old now and unless you plan to run with antiquated hardware Vista or 7 is the way to go to take advantage of multi-core and mass amounts of RAM that modern hardware can handle.

I use a combo of Vista 64, Linux, and 7 64-bit throughout the home.

There is a lot of truth to this, as well..

My main machines are both Core 2, one running at 2,6GHz and one at 3,6Ghz with a 1066Mhz bus too, and both too weak to run a 32bit Vista as quick and smooth as Xp. 32bit Win7 RC1 runs well on them, though.

I suppose, however, that the 64bit version would run better, and I'm moving to 64bit and Win7 as soon as possible; I only fear a lot of my sofware won't work in 64 bit systems but well, then I just have to deal with it.

[deeaa]

Although I often bash Vista, I've also said it works very well in basic use once you get it set up properly. I used it for over a year on my main machine, and while it was horrible at first, nigh impossible to set up on my RAID array - I had to set it up three times to find a combination that worked, as it simply crashed completely at first, then f**d up the whole disk format system...but after finding working drivers (the Vista drivers that came with the mobo did NOT work in Vista), umpteen tweaks and removals of annoyances / stripping it down AND downloading all the SP's as they became available, the system was very pleasant to use indeed, and very fast, when using same stuff over and over again.

I also used a 32gb ssd drive for speedboost.

The only problems left were the huge size, very long boot times and very long times starting any activities you use very seldomly. The Speedboost technology was great in everyday use, but it also made doing anything but the usual stuff slower than when not using the boost. Go figure.

But, I used W7 rc1 for a while and it was MUCH better, so I figure a 64-bit Win7 should work well.

[Trailer Park Casanova]

I was at the local Computer repair for $75 shop last week.
The had the Windows 7 on display demo.
Very good from my humble test drive.

But ya really never know until ya drive it around your own block.

It had a few fussy snags on the lap top like shutting itself off,,, but the desktop ran good they said.

Evidently it frees up a lot of disc space too compared to Vista.

[Jipes]

Like Robert
Mac OS 10.5.8 but will soon upgrade to Snow Leopard

[SuperSwede]

Like Robert
Mac OS 10.5.8 but will soon upgrade to Snow Leopard

Your in for a nice surprise! Everything runs smoother in Snow Leopard!