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Netbooks and the End of Windows Vista
Business Technology ^ | October 29, 2008, 5:00 pm | Ben Worthen

Posted on 10/30/2008 10:32:45 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach

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To: TomGuy
I read too that Windows 7 is just a sneaky lame upgrade of VISTA, and it has the same inherent problems VISTA has.

Where did you read that? I was reading the about the Windows 7 pre-beta release this morning, and it was demo'd on a netbook. It's admittedly limited function (it's pre-beta) but was apparently fast and stable.

If the "minwin" core is as described and Windows 7 is indeed based on that core then it's a quite different animal than Vista.

21 posted on 10/30/2008 11:15:11 AM PDT by tacticalogic ("Oh bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
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To: wideawake

I wouldn’t say Vista is absolute garbage, but it doesn’t knock me out. For 6 months now I’ve been running both XP and Vista on my two year old HP with 2GB of ram. Dumped all the slick, RAM-eating eye candy from Vista and it runs about as well as XP. But I just don’t experience any major advantages to using it when compared to XP, which is simple, light and reliable as hell. 90% of the time, I just boot into XP and get on with things. I won’t even bother with the next Windows release. Maybe when I get the time, I’ll play around with Linux and see if it’s worth easing into that, and away from Windows before XP becomes obsolete.


22 posted on 10/30/2008 11:22:08 AM PDT by Rocco DiPippo
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To: dfwgator

The most incredible use of 64k RAM known to man.
I can fly flight simulators on the silly little “toy”.

Commodore techs could teach Microsoft and Apple a thing or 2 about RAM usage.


23 posted on 10/30/2008 11:34:01 AM PDT by QDaddy
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To: wideawake
The fact that Microsoft ran an ad campaign that rested on the premise that Vista is not as horrible as most people have been led to believe is proof.

I have a slightly different view.
I see Microsoft as betting the farm on DRM, and perpetual income from the entertainment industry as the reward.

Is everybody on board with the concept of "scalability?"
MS planned to make billions from the "entertainment" industry, by focusing the OS on pretecting them rather than providing efficient and safe solutions to the users of their products.

With VISTA, their grand scheme crashed. The buyers refused to cooperate, and to finance their grand design by using mediocre, power-robbing software.

The users simply refused to play the game.

And Microsoft still hasn't seen the handwriting on the wall!

24 posted on 10/30/2008 11:49:28 AM PDT by Publius6961 (Change is not a plan; Hope is not a strategy.)
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To: Moose4
When I boot up my machine (Intel Core 2 Duo E8400, 4 GB RAM) under Vista Home Premium 64-bit, and check my memory usage, the OS and the few utilities I load are taking up almost 1.4 GB of memory. Before I do ANYTHING with the machine. That’s just insane.

See my post #24...

25 posted on 10/30/2008 11:51:56 AM PDT by Publius6961 (Change is not a plan; Hope is not a strategy.)
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To: dfwgator; TomGuy; Publius6961; martin_fierro
Here is another possibility for DYI:

J&W MINIX, Athlon 64 X2 3400e impresses

26 posted on 10/30/2008 12:03:39 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my Grandaughters!)
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To: Swordmaker

Tech Ping....


27 posted on 10/30/2008 12:06:47 PM PDT by tubebender (Retirement...The art and science of Killing time before it Kills you...)
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To: All
NY Times article on the HP netbook which uses the Intel Atom:

Netbook market heats up as HP jumps into the fray

********************************EXCERPT*******************

HP Wednesday introduced three new ultra-portable systems, including two that carry price tags of less than US$400. All three new Minis run Intel Corp.'s Atom processor.

And HP is trying a trendy look, teaming up with fashion house Vivienne Tam to design the HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition. Dubbed the first "digital clutch," the netbook was first shown on the runway of Tam's Fall 2009 Fashion Week show in Battery Park, N.Y. The model comes in vibrant red with a peony-flower inspired design.

All three new HP netbooks are less than 1-inch thick, have a starting weight of a little more than 2 pounds and a keyboard that is 92% the size of a standard laptop keyboard.

Article also discusses other offerings.

28 posted on 10/30/2008 12:09:09 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my Grandaughters!)
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To: All
This is going to turn into an Arms race :

Dell skates line between netbook and laptop with Mini 12

************************EXCERPT***********************

"Dell, here, is skirting the line between netbook and laptop, and it continues a trend for Dell of getting away from plain vanilla notebooks and desktops," said Olds. "It's interesting in that the Mini 9 is essentially only good as a device to connect to the Net. The Mini 12, though, is a full-fledged system, capable of handling a wide range of tasks. It won't be a speed demon, but it'll be fine for standard office applications, as well as downloading and listening to music."

Olds said that the Mini 12 is a good first notebook for kids but also would be useful for business travelers who are concerned about battery life and weight and want a variety of connectivity options.

************************

Says the Mini 12 will run Vista.

29 posted on 10/30/2008 12:13:28 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my Grandaughters!)
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To: dfwgator

Not to forget the IBM PC Luggable

30 posted on 10/30/2008 1:40:51 PM PDT by NCjim (The more I use Windows, the more I love UNIX)
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To: Professional Engineer
I’m typing this on an Asus EEE PC 4G with Xandros Linux.

Truly a neat little machine (I have two of 'em). The Xandros OS boots in about 20 seconds, and shuts down in under 10. I have one of mine set up to shut down when I close the lid, so if I'm somewhere browsing the web, I can just slam the lid down, throw it in my backpack (don't have to worry about the solid state drive crashing!), and be on my way in no time. When I boot it up again, the Firefox web browser opens to where it was when I slammed the lid! A great portable device!

31 posted on 10/30/2008 2:00:55 PM PDT by shorty_harris
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To: Rocco DiPippo
But I just don’t experience any major advantages to using it when compared to XP, which is simple, light and reliable as hell. 90% of the time, I just boot into XP and get on with things. I won’t even bother with the next Windows release. Maybe when I get the time, I’ll play around with Linux and see if it’s worth easing into that, and away from Windows before XP becomes obsolete.

That was pretty much my predicament, only it was exactly three years ago and the two Windows were Win2k and XP.   I installed Ubuntu Linux 5.10 and pretty much stopped finding reasons to keep the Windows installation around. 

Now I'm happily using 8.04 and looking forward to my upgrade to 8.10 that came out today.  My sixtyish mother will be staying at 8.04 as that is an LTS (Long Term Release) that has support for three years.  

32 posted on 10/30/2008 2:02:17 PM PDT by MichiganMan (So you bought that big vehicle and now want to whine about how much it costs to fill it? Seriously?)
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To: MichiganMan

I just finished downlaoding the 64 bit version of 8.10...Will put it on my AMD Quad Phenom...and see if I like it..


33 posted on 10/30/2008 2:05:15 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my Grandaughters!)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; Rocco DiPippo

Good on you guys for getting into Linux. I’m running Vista on my phenom quad and it’s... okay, I guess. No crashes or anything. It’s been solid, but I’m not a heavy user except for flight sim.

But to compare, my Vista backups took 3 DVDs, and my laptop that I use for Linux, well, I don’t have a linux that is bigger than a single CD. I reloaded the OS four times in the last two days on the Lappy, and it really doesn’t take long. I find Linux FAR easier to do some things, like setting up the printer and wireless. Boots much faster too, although the P4m 2gig processor is competing with my quad-core machine.

I tried Dream Linux, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS the new Beta, Tiny Me, and finally put PCLinuxOS 2007 back on the laptop. Okay, that’s five. Ubuntu and I don’t get along. It crashes some stuff, and I get annoyed very quickly. I quit trying the Ubuntu releases.


34 posted on 10/30/2008 2:44:02 PM PDT by Big Giant Head (I should change my tagline to "Big Giant penguin on my Head")
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To: Big Giant Head

The one I have been running is a Gentoo based...Sabayon...pretty slick...but I know nothing about Portage....


35 posted on 10/30/2008 3:17:34 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my Grandaughters!)
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To: Big Giant Head
I tried Dream Linux, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS the new Beta, Tiny Me, and finally put PCLinuxOS 2007 back on the laptop. Okay, that’s five. Ubuntu and I don’t get along. It crashes some stuff, and I get annoyed very quickly. I quit trying the Ubuntu releases.

You should try Linux Mint. To me it's Ubuntu done right.

36 posted on 10/30/2008 4:46:15 PM PDT by dan1123 (If you want to find a person's true religion, ask them what makes them a "good person".)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Says the Mini 12 will run Vista.

On the other end is a $125 "netbook" that runs WinCE from Jointech.

37 posted on 10/30/2008 4:59:14 PM PDT by dan1123 (If you want to find a person's true religion, ask them what makes them a "good person".)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
I just finished downlaoding the 64 bit version of 8.10...Will put it on my AMD Quad Phenom...and see if I like it..

I'd be curious to see how 64 bit works for you.  Certain things, like flash, had poor support in previous versions of 64 bit Ubuntu.  I haven't kept track of how its coming along as I've always run the 32 bit version. 

38 posted on 10/30/2008 5:52:03 PM PDT by MichiganMan (So you bought that big vehicle and now want to whine about how much it costs to fill it? Seriously?)
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To: dan1123

I didn’t like the Linux Mint version I have, but I have heard very good comments about the latest version. Even from Texstar, the guy that builds PCLinuxOS. I might have to go back and try it. It’s hard to beat PCL, though.


39 posted on 10/30/2008 7:32:36 PM PDT by Big Giant Head (I should change my tagline to "Big Giant penguin on my Head")
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To: MichiganMan
I'd be curious to see how 64 bit works for you.

I'm running 64 bit Ubuntu 8.04 on a new Shuttle bare-bone system I just built, with an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU. There is a trick to getting flash to work, but it's well documented, and with a little searching on the Ubuntu forums I found the fix. Everything else seems to work ok, including 64 bit VirtualBox, which I use mainly to run 32 bit windows 2000!

I know I've posted before that I haven't had much luck with Ubuntu, but 8.04 seems to finally be polished enough for me to use everyday, and it's replaced PCLinuxOS on two of my computers.

40 posted on 10/30/2008 9:50:09 PM PDT by shorty_harris
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