Windows XP!!!!!

Win’Vista is going the way of Win’Me (ie: no one will use this OS once the NEXT one comes out in 2009)…

It’s a classic case of fixing something that ain’t broken–Win’XP is a perfectly good OS…

Some would say well just rewrite the old applications…well my quandary is that we push the OS out of the way and write directly to the frame buffer…but Vista won’t let us do that. In the same way, Vista hoses games.

Which games? Not COD4, Not Battle for Middle Earth II, Not C&C Tiberium Wars, Not any game I’ve plated in the last year. Sounds more like a lackluster video card.

Vista works fine for some folks, but for high powered work like I do in rendering computer weather graphics on the fly, it’s as useful as a TRS-80.

I have a working Commy 64 here at the house. Feel free to borrow it when you need it :-)

REPLY: We use a minimalist Slackware for this http://www.viziframe.com We use Ubuntu for some other things, very successfully I might add. In fact I have a new Ubuntu server on the bench I’m configuring today. There’s no question we’ll continue to be able to use Ubuntu.

But when my other applications (some of which I have no control over -3rd party) are heavily tied to a Windows OS like 2000/XP and the new VistaOS breaks the applications, and you can’t get the old OS anymore, the quandary appears.

Some would say well just rewrite the old applications…well my quandary is that we push the OS out of the way and write directly to the frame buffer…but Vista won’t let us do that. In the same way, Vista hoses games.

If Ubuntu could support DirectX9 and all I need in the way of compatibility, I’d toss Windows out the door in a heartbeat.

I was playing DOD Source online last night and got the blue screen of death. Lucky a restart fixed it. First time on my system after 4.5 years. MS stuff stinks but not much else out there. MAC and Linux do not have enough software written that I can use much less play DOD and COD4. LOL

I know this would mean extra work for you, but in threads like the recent ones on Roy Spencer’s work and a couple others that generated over 100 comments, many of the comments delved into science, physics and math that were way over my head. I imagine others felt the same way. It would be nice to have someone (and it doesn’t necessarily have to be you) summarize the scientific arguments into a layman’s perspective. I think you probably have several readers that are capable of doing this. Not only would it make it more enjoyable for me (and help me learn), I suspect, as word got around, it would attract more traffic to your blog, thus bring more attention to the SurfaceStations project. Just a thought.

I did so three years ago and I can’t believe I waited so long and badmouthed Apple so much before doing so!

I’ve never been happier with a computer in my life, and have since purchased 9 of them, some as gifts for friends.

REPLY: I knew this comment would eventually come. The switch is not practical due to the custom hardware and software we use for weather forecasting, graphics generation, and presentation. A Mac can’t support those things (in the same way) without a complete re-engineering and rewrite. As an analogy, it would be like suggesting NASA take the computers out of the space shuttle and replace them with Macs because they are better by the opinion of many who use them. Maybe they are, but that isn’t justification enough for infrastucture upheaval.

But if all you want to do is email, websurfing, writing, art design, some MP3 listening/editing and maybe some video editing, a Mac is perfect for that. My needs (and the needs of many other system integrators) are much greater and much more specific.

Microsoft will abandon 2K and XP and eventually any support or updates (security or otherwise) will completely dry up. No, I am not a fan of Apple either.

There are useful, practical OS and application products in the open source community that have demonstrated long term survivability. I think it likely that a significant number of open source projects will not suffer from abandonment, and certainly not from planned obsolescence.

Re Anon (08:11:38) “This is beyond ridiculous on so many levels. Why don’t you stick with the climate? You are seriously damaging your credibility with this nonsense.”

I do not see anyone forcing you to read this blog and as for credibility damage, that is just plain silly. Nevertheless I would like to see you attempt to enumerate those many levels of “beyond ridiculous” if you can find the time.

Re: Anthony’s “I have considered [separate blogs]. Lets hear from other readers to hear what they say.”

I prefer your blog the way it is, touching on other things of interest outside of the climate and weather. But if you decided to have separate blogs I would not have a problem with that.

The Devil will be wearing long underwear before I put Vista on one of my machines.

Especially after my last encounter with Vista: an update in October knocked out the sound and Aero on a customer’s new Dell laptop. She was also getting frequent “Unauthorized Change” notices and verification failures. She brought it to me last month, and after much digging and swearing, I found ONE file mismatch that was causing all of her troubles.

Then there was the matter of getting her Autochk to function…

I’m also taking a Java programming course, so I’m running the JDK and Eclipse as my programming environment, no problems at all.

So I’m definitely doing more than just “email and web surfing”, and have no problems I can attribute to Vista.

As I’ve mentioned before, however, when APPLE QUICKTIME is in the systray, Vista will lose its mind over a 24 hour period. Seems like sabotage to me….

REPLY: No disputing that. Vista works fine for some folks, but for high powered work like I do in rendering computer weather graphics on the fly, it’s as useful as a TRS-80.