XP discoveries and Linux
XP has moved up the scale to "not sucking completely". Yesterday I discovered the integrated CD burning features and was stoked. I erased a CD-RW by right clicking on the drive and erasing it, then just copied a bunch of files back onto the CD and used a short wizard to start the burning process. Pretty neat. It was a bit slow - even considering that CD-RW usually takes longer to burn. But still, the technology it seems is licensed by Roxio, so it seems to be done okay - though it doesn't seem to have much error correction. I ended up going back to Nero on one disc I was burning after the integrated app choked on a folder hierarchy that was too deep. Then when I tried to zip that directory, the internal zip support failed as well, telling me inexplicably that "-" wasn't a valid character, thus I had to go back to WinZip on that one as well. Not much new here, it's Windows so it functions just enough and then doesn't.
But still, having this stuff work most of the time is nice to have. I'm using a Microsoft product so the price I pay for it is to constantly have to deal with that sort of crap. I didn't buy a Mac, so I can't complain too loudly, hey? I probably should take a look out on the internet for an XP faq though, it seems there's a bunch of stuff in the OS that I don't know about.
I saw an article yesterday on Slashdot about the new Lindows 4.0 and it piqued my interest. I hate the name, but it's essentially an easy to use Debian install for newbies. I really liked the quote in the article about installing OpenOffice.org by simply typing "apt get openoffice.org". Neato.
I downloaded RedHat 8.0 back in October (when I erased my HD) so I might decide to play with it again soon. I'd like to use this machine, but then I'd like to have it clean as possibe. I bought VMWare years ago and I have no idea how well it'll play with XP and it's a bit expensive now, so I probably should just reformat my old box and play with it there. But the idea would be to move over to Linux one app at a time until I can live there. XP is neat and all that, but it still sucks. If I'm going to deal with sucky software, I might as well go with Linux. I also might drop the $49 on Lindows just to see how well it works and to see if it takes out the well-known Linux mess with your software time-sink.
Or messing with Linux at all could just be a very huge waste of time and a complete avoidance of the shit I really need to do... :-) Yeah, I vote for B. But still, I'm on the lookout to switch from MS... if not to Mac than to something.
-Russ