despite having a legit copy of 2k... i refuse to go past SP2, i don't like the EULA and i don't want to give microsoft any right to change *anything* in *my* pc. I also don't want to bother with XP, and don't want to buy it. next stop is linux/freebsd though, because soon i'll be on a janet connection and i can get rid of this sill isdncard that prevents me from accessing the net when in linux i don't have any problems with software authors expecting money for their goods, but i don't like them granting themselves rights to do whatever the hell they please on my computer, thats just intrusive and i think microsoft should be stopped.
i run a dual boot of XP Pro (on the 40Gb system drive - it's partitioned to 2x20Gb one of them is a standard install with all my software for graphics, some basic music stuff for quickly recording ideas, all the office stuff et cetera et cetera the other (for my music) has all the crappy 'power saving' bits and bobs, which really screw up any music creation, not installed and the only software on it is the music stuff (cubase SX, reason2 et cetera et cetera) i just choose which one at startup ...why should i get SP1? *n
JAnet stands for Joint Academic (i think) network, which is a nice big UK internet backbone shared by all the UK universities and colleges.
what are you all talking about? is $150 really too much to pay for an OS? being that the OS is what holds your PC together? I think not, however with the sheer amount of 'new versions' of Windows and the inability of MS to realise that the customer is king (IE. releasing updates slower than game-developers, and fixing less than the patches game-developers release) I cant blame anyone who steals a copy of winXP (dont even try to say it any other way).
i think your forgetting that a lot of the people on the board are quite young or have families and the money for an os is quite a lot of money to them. i certainly do not think that i should have to pay £150 for an os. im 16 and cant afford that and my parents cant be buying all the software i need for my music tech coursework either (logic platimun, cubase sx and so forth)
heh, took the words outta my mouth. to be honest, XP and 2K are fine without the updates, what will the updates do? Hardly much I'm guessing. If you ARE running an illegal copy of the OS, good for you!. It annoys me that microsoft have the right to charge you £150+ for their OS, then £49 to sort problems if there are any. (Thats what I got quoted in the days of Win98) When I get my new machine going, I'll be having SuSE Linux, 98 and 2K on it (I'll be getting a 120GB drive... lots of moolah tho )
True, although they DO charge you that for the OS, and that's what you should be paying for it. OEM has sorted this out somewhat, because it gives you the licence bundled with the PC. Microsoft's licencing and charging policy is hideously wrong and completely unfair, but it's no excuse for piracy. The thing to remember is everyone is moaning that XP is too expensive, when they could get a cheap copy of 98 and do everything they need.. but nooooo they have to have the latest version AND they don't want to pay for it. Everything is expensive, fair or not, that's life.. My mobile is expensive, Cable TV is expensive, petrol is expensive.. but you don't see me jumping petrol stations.
98? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA! I had that installed recently and I had to restart at least every 30 minutes due to it crashing or being plain unstable. The thing with Cable TV and Petrol companies, they will take the price down; NTL recently reduced the price of cable TV and made it easier to get broadband (see my post about it) and petrol companies remain competitive so you'll never really be charged over the odds, unless the government have something to do with it. The government don't control Microsoft, and they don't have any competition, but the key phrase here is 'peace of mind'. Lots of people can't afford their OS's and it'd be nice if M$ realised that and priced it like every other CD-ROM - I'd happily buy XP Pro if it was priced at £60 or less. But it isn't. So tough luck for microsoft. Hmm, So, you'd pay £150-250 for a piece of plastic and a book? That's all it is. Before you go on about the workmanship and effort that went into it - WHAT EFFORT? It's more unstable than a 3 legged ass!. Ok, XP and 2K are a little better, but look at XP's driver problem. 2K is becoming harder to get hold of, Only OcUK are selling the OEM version for £90. That's the closest you'll get to cheap.
To sell an OEM version of any Microsoft OS is, under their licensing agreement, WITHOUT it being preinstalled on hardware is actually illegal. Also once an OEM copy of Windows has been installed on a computer it is tied to that computer, and cannot ever be installed on another computer - even if you remove all traces of it from your computer. So all those that buy PCs (like a Dell, HP etc), delete Windows, install GNU/Linux and sell their copy of Windows are breaking the "Law According to Microsoft". Stupid really.
can i run cubase SX, reason 2, logic platinum, all my soft synths, sampler inputs, assorted VST plugins et cetera under linux? ...didn't think so nedsbeds - email me regarding software availability in the uk... *n
...thing is - i know it isn't compatible with my soundcard (no drivers anywhere) £180 on a soundcard... thing is - XP has never crashed on me even when i left the thing on for 3 days whilst mixing down a 5 track EP for a friends band *n
i would not really trust something which is basicly an emulator with my software. i doubt that timing would be very tight and im sure latency would be increased (i could not find any reference to asio on there supported software se3ction
mmmmm...ASIO i'm down to 1.8ms latency \m/ *n (graphics geeks boast about points per second...music geeks boast about latency)
I have yet to hear reasoning behind stealing XP as opposed to purchasing 2K for cheap. (Besides that it's harder to find a legal version of 2k.) As for 98 "crashing or being plain unstable," if you don't try to crash it, it won't. I used 98 from its release, till last year. The only time it crashed was during heavy gaming with other apps working in the background, when installing too many things at once, or when leaving it on far too long with many apps working on different things. It may not be as flexible as 2K, but it does work. If you can't afford an OS, you should be running linux... and a goodwill pc. If you're saying you can spend $180 on a sound card then $0 on an OS... well, I probably shouldn't say what I'm thinking.
i feel that with software sthe prices can be justified, think how many man (& women) hours went into producing that copy of windows whatever, it seems that as its on a small cd people put less value on the amount of work that went into it, think of all the testing, re programming everything that went into it, i feel that microsoft has been a bit oTT with therre licensing but then agian they probably got sick of people coying what they spent ages making linux is good for some things, for servers or computer clusters in research labs it is fantastic but i cant see it becoming big on the destop as people want the windows ease of use & linux does not have that, heck i dont even boot into my linux setup anymore. people alwasy spout wine as the be all & end al of getting windows wmulation but it wont run everything & as penski said there is nearly no chance that any of that heavyweight software will run, ok windows has its flaws but if you look at how many millions of installs there are & how many of them are in use by people who cant use computers of course there will e crashes & problems (the same if you put a newbie in front of linux or Be or MacOS) the reason so many exploits are written for windows is because that is where the numbers are, they write the exploits to run on the vast majority of machines, ok so it is not perfect to begin with but what software is (yes i know windows is unsecure but that is why you get a linux server / firewall to go inbetwwen your home network & the internet) i know a lad who went by this, when im in education i will spend my money on books etc that will help my course but i will use copied software. when i finish i will buy the softtware as i have the qualifications to get a job that pays enough to do it, i think that should be adopted myself, if your in education, you get it free on the proviso you pay it back when you get a job (doesent even have to be all @ once) sorry for going on but i jsut get sick of people going on about how bad windows is & why should they pay for there copy of windows, its nto that bad if you dont do stupid thngs liek ahving 25 icons in the task bar (i actually came across a 95 install like this but it kept on going) my windows machine is on continually, under full laod with the UD client, never complains no crashes, i give it a bit of software it knows what to do it does it quickly, gmae run perfect, windows 98 is good enough for me
You can get round this by purchasing hardware with it. I bought an OEM copy of XP from SCAM when it was on there 'today only' offer page. To qulaify I bought the cheapest bit of hardware I could find - an el cheapo 10/100 NIC for £4.... I've seen some sites (usually based in the US) sell OEM copys to you if you just buy a $0.02 bolt from them....
Well that's one way of getting around it. I've seen lots of OEM copies of Windows on eBay, wonder if they give you any hardware with those.
