XP and a New Puter ... It's a Whole New World ...WOW

vanity | 01-01-02 | mercy

[mercy]

It sorta just snuck up on me. My old nanao monitor started winking at me, the ole gal felt like dropping by Comp USA and the next thing I know I'm rolling out the door with a new VAIO tower, a Samsung syncMaster flat screen LCD and a Canon bubble jet (there goes my buy American bluster).

I wasn't going to do it. Really. The thought of venturing past my garden path was too scary. The ole Dell XPS 200 and windows 95 was so .... well, familliar. I was afraid taking the leap would be just too painful. Boy was I wrong. Mama was in the mood to spend money and ya just can't go against that flow. Might not happen again in a coon's age.

Been hearing not so good things about Dell and the prices have been plunging so that one has to wonder about what they're putting in those things these days. Besides I wanted the security of just being able to walk the box into the service dept. if I had a prob and actually getting the thing back in days rather than weeks. The Sony seemed like a solid machine and not a conglomeration of god knows whose parts. The flat screen just knocked my eyes out. XP made my old OS look like a cheep 40's cartoon. So I jumped.

Despite my desire to get in a dig at Bill Gates whenever possible I'm going with 'internet exploder' for now. doesn't seem so bad and I'm not really missing Netscape ... yet. (I may pinch him a bit by dropping Office and going with Corel) I haven't had any trouble with XP whatsoever. I've deleted some junk they had in the box and I've added several programs. I'm all over the net and not a glitch. ON THE FIRST DAY. I can't believe I waited so long. I love the whole package. AND for some unknowable (for me) reason my internet connection is chunking along at twice the speed of before though my dialup connection is the same lame ole 28k and I already had a new top line modem in the ole box. Go figure.

So if any of y'all out there are like me and afraid of the change .... don't be. It's wonderful.

[Bush2000]

I would recommend something like Linksys Cable/DSL Routers & Modems. They're easy to set up and provide some hardware firewall functionality...

The best things about getting a hardware firewall are that you don't need to worry about the vast majority of security updates and you don't need to worry about software firewall compatibility issues as you upgrade your OS. I've closed all incoming ports on my firewall so, to the outside world, it appears as if I don't even exist. Universal Plug N' Play issue? Who cares. Nobody can even get to my network so it just doesn't matter. And since the hardware firewall is separate from my PC, I don't need to buy a new software firewall like BlackICE Defender every time that I upgrade my OS. I'm very pleased with the LinkSYS Cable/DSL Firewall/Router. Plus, the price is right. Recommend it highly.

[SamAdams76]

This is a very pathetic request, but I simply cannot get to "www.freerepublic.com". I am forced to use "http://209.157.64.200", which makes it extremely difficult to post.

Not pathetic at all. Free Republic recently changed their IP address. You have the old address hardwired in your hosts file.

Open your hosts file (usually in the Windows directory but sometimes in root) with Notepad. Remove the www.freerepublic.com reference. Save hosts file (remember, no extension, if you save as hosts.txt, it will not work). Restart your browser or better yet, reboot your computer.

[CarryaBigStick]

You can turn the links option on the toolbar on or off from within 'View' then 'Toolbars' Got to admit, XP is pretty cool once you get used to the differences. It still needs a good deal of patching though.

[Bogey78O]

Seatle?

[Bush2000]

Seatle?

It's spelled: Seattle.

[Bogey78O]

Typo...it happens...

[dogbyte12]

Weird question. I don't know if you actually work for Microsoft or are just their biggest fan. Question is as follows:

Will Microsoft add the ability anytime soon, perhaps in a XP patch for us to scale up the size of toolbars when we increase the display size? I have the setting at 1280x960 now and can't go any higher because my wife can't read the scroll bar when I go to 1600x1200 which I would love to do for super sharp wallpapers and the like.

Is this such a difficult fix for Microsoft to accomplish, are they aware of this problem for some folks?

[Bush2000]

my wife can't read the scroll bar when I go to 1600x1200...

The toolbars don't scale automatically -- and I'm not aware of any intention to do so. However, you can alter the appearance of the toolbars by doing the following. Go to Control Panel. Choose Display. Pick the Appearance tab. You can pick any of the visual elements in the list and alter the font, font size, and color. That would theoretically allow you to use 1600x1200 but still use larger fonts for your wife's eyes. Hope that helps.

[mercy]

Thanks for the tip. I suppose we shouldn't expect too much from a company that expects the fed to help them make up for their lack of creativity and competitiveness.

[Bush2000]

Thanks for the tip. I suppose we shouldn't expect too much from a company that expects the fed to help them make up for their lack of creativity and competitiveness.

Please do enlighten us on how the company "expects the fed to help them make up for their lack of creativity and competitiveness."

[VinnyTex]

For less than half the price I paid for my old computer (which was top-of-the-line at the time), I got a 1.7GHz processer with 512MB of RAM and a 80Gig hard drive. Furthermore, it has a CD-RW drive, a DVD drive, six USB ports including two on the space-age keyboard, firewire ports all over the place and a network card built in. Oh yeah, and it has this optical mouse as well that doesn't need a mousepad. It took me maybe five minutes to learn how to burn a CD and I have no idea how I lived without the ability to burn my own CDs!

I've had this PC running for about a week now and it hasn't crashed once. Hasn't even shown a hint of crashing. This Windows XP is rock solid. In fact, I'm probably going to run out and get a copy of XP for my old computer as well.

I bought myself a new puter for Christmas. Dell wtih 2.0 GHz 512MB of RAM and a 80Gig hard drive and XP is the best windows operation system to date. I've been running this thing for 2 weeks and it still hasn't crashed. Even with 50 web sites open at once. Gotta love that 512 ram... Question? When do ya think the DVD writers are going to come down in price. COMP USA has em, but they're 600 bills a pop... DVD disk will hold 5.5 gigs of space and 5yrs ago that was considered a huge hard drive.

[Bush2000]

That's a sweet machine. I know the one you bought. I almost got one myself. ;-)

[SamAdams76]

CD/DVD-R/W drives will be standard in all new computers by this time next year. In the meantime, I'm happy just to be able to burn my own CDs! I imagine the price of a DVD-RW will drop under $200 by summertime. When you decide to buy, you can always replace your CD-RW as DVD-RW also writes to CDs.

[US_MilitaryRules]

When explorer browser is open, push the F 11 (F eleven) key.

[billva]

Compared to Windows 98 of course. I just don't get any crashes with XP.

[SurferDoc]

I have had XP on two home built puters for two months now. No crashes. None.

[billva]

I've had XP for about three weeks and no crashes either. I love it.

[mercy]

By gutting Microsoft for them.

[mercy]

COOL!

Thanks.

[timestax]

bttt