The part that sucks is having an OS that is constantly changing, never fixed, only patched, and abandoned when they decide they can't make it work reliably. 

However, I do have one dual boot machine, XP and Linux.  Just for giggles, when I got the win7 box, I installed Povray and some scene files.  One is a 500+ frame animation using the particle system.  Win7 did no better than win98 with that one, it kept rendering frames, but didn't save them after about 245.  No error or anything else,just keep rendering and not saving.  Linux, even in the old Pentium 4, faster than win7 and it saved all frames.  The mother and father of all lost computer work is windows.  I don't expec t win8 to do any better, not even going to bother. 

The real giggle is Linux can go to the windows partition and get the file, windows cannot go into a linux partition at all.  Port a few more programs for Linux and windows would be removed from all my computers.  Wine sometimes works, but sometimes it's a little dodgy. 

I guess a new car with 33 recall notices when you bought it wouldn't bother you.

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Who's OS are you using again? Why not just install Linux? Oh, because the stuff you want to use wont run under Linux. Why not buy Apple instead then if you hate everything MS so much?

My next will be a Mac.  I'm done with windblows now, it's not going to  improve, only get more useless and guided toward the script kiddies and gamers, the social nets and that type of use.  The win8 box is sitting right behind me, locked up, and I'm going to let it sit there until it fixes itself.  If that's all day, then I don't care. 

My next may be as soon as this weekend.  I've had Mac's in the past, different, intuitive.  Which seems to be forbidden in the MS world.  Yeah, I'm probably going to pay twice as much, but I'll also get twice as much or more.

windows 8.1 will allow boot to desktop OS instead of the xbox/fisher price interface is the IT rumor of the moment.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/16/4229900/windows-8-1-boot-to-desktop-option

If the Mac wasn't so prohibitively expensive, I might be inclined to switch, myself, especially since MS seems convinced that Metro is the wave of the future.  But, as it stands, I can build a new desktop PC that's more powerful than their cheapest Mac Pro for a fraction of the cost, so I'm staying with Windows.

Last December, I bought a new Lenovo Ideapad G580.  It came with Windows 8.  I recently spent most of the day replacing it with Windows 7.  Windows 8 fought hard to stick around, but I won in the end.

hehehe

I'm not certain, and I know a 15 inch monitor isn't the 23 I have on this one, or the 27 I have on my others, but it just seems to me that the touch screen interferes with the resolution.  Watching a tut, there were times I couldn't read what was being clicked on, but on this one, I could.  I'd have to see that on a bigger screen before I could really say for sure.

Still going to look at Mac, just that I have to drive a little further than I thought.  About twenty miles into the place I've been using, for a Mac, it's more than forty.  Next week maybe.

Modeling of a different kind tonight.  Parrot rifle about eight inches long, turned from steel.  Non firing, I don't make firing cannon.

Doric.

As Apple sales for portable iOS devices are far greater than OSX devices expect OSX to adapt itself closer to iOS functionality. I've supported systems from Apple back when Ben was still Obi Wan and the past 3 generations of OS's are clearly headed in the iOS intergration direction.

If your going over to Mac on the one hand you can run windows but depending on when you got your Mac and what OS X your running it's going to affect what version of Windows you actually can install. You can NOT downgrade macs without hacking them and voiding your warranty. So if you buy a Mac today with OS 10.8.2 you can't down it to 10.8.1 or ANYTHING lower and your options for windows running native are Windows 7 or Windows 8. That functionality is grandfathered however, if you had a system running 10.6 and installed XP and you install 10.7 you can keep your XP and run it native. You can run older verisons of windows throught virtulization which is going to be slower and by using 3rd party software but macs out of the box running windows, there a catch.

and you guys thought MS was big brother?

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and you guys thought MS was big brother?

That's why I'm staying with the devil I know.  ;)

Quote - I don't know if there's mention of gates and Digital Research on line, but silly willy got his start the easy way.  There was a reason he bought Digital Research, after he lost a copyright infringement to them..  I can respect neither the man nor the company he "founded".

Doric.

Gates didn't buy DR; he bought Seattle Computer, which owned QDOS, which allegedly contained pirated CP/M code. QDOS was renamed MS-DOS.  DR was eventually bought by Novell...

I have lost count of how many machines I have removed Norton from as it is so intrusive.  There was a time when Norton was the best anti-virus around but those days are long gone.  Also, from the number of machines that I see that have viruses that have sneaked under Norton's radar I can't see that it is any better than many of the others out there.

Quote - > Quote -

and you guys thought MS was big brother?

That's why I'm staying with the devil I know.  ;)

Un, well, after looking at the Mac laptops, I went to look at the better ones.  The idea of twelve cores and loaded with memory somehow appeals pretty strongly.  I just don't know how far over $3500 it's going to be.  I could comfortably go $4k, but not much more than that.  64 gig memory limit, it would take me a long time to get there, longer to actually need it.

Quote - I have lost count of how many machines I have removed Norton from as it is so intrusive.  There was a time when Norton was the best anti-virus around but those days are long gone.  Also, from the number of machines that I see that have viruses that have sneaked under Norton's radar I can't see that it is any better than many of the others out there.

I use Internet Security, not just the AV.  It doesn't seem to slow anything, and as far as I'm aware, I haven't had any virus problem.  IT  may not be any better, but it's also no worse than any other.  And I'm comfortable with it, which is the biggie.

Anyhoo, the laptop is maybe running, mostly hobbling.  Probably lack of memory in the graphics department, thirty seconds of tutorial, a minute of waiting, then another thirty seconds of tut.  Can't use the trackball with W8, no middle mouse button, no click on the scroll, and that means no orbit the view in Blender or Wings.  Keyboard workaround doesn't, so now I have to fight with a scroll button mouse, or in Wings, hit the tab and use numeric inputs, far preferable to trying tomove something a smidge with the mouse.  It's an Acer Aspire V5 if anyone wants to look it up, but I won't be buying another one like it.  I think it's got lithium poly batteries, which I might have to think about a little, I've had some of my indoor helicopters start to smoke while charging, and they're all LiPo batteries. 

Crash to desktop is still the only error handling it has.  I didn't expect anything else.  Didn't get it either.