For those of you who are concerned about my wife’s apostasy, we shall overcome. We have booked flights to Seattle for mid-August! We’re going to take an actual vacation!
So we’ll spend a few days with friends and family in the Seattle area, and then we’re going to vanish into the Olympic Peninsula. Mountains! Oceans!
A few sea stacks and tide pools might be just the thing to allow me to forgive the abomination of a Windows 8 computer.
I’m a Windows user, and I’m with you on the abomination which is Win8.
Gee, I trust those mountains, &c. will still be there when you arrive….
An 8 or so on the Richter scale will tend to rearrange things.
Oh, Windows 8 was hardly an abomination. Abominations have more tentacles. Everyone here should know that.
I’m not sure how much reconciliation should be expected on a trip to Microsoft’s back yard, though.
Call it a honeymoon reprise. Remember, every marriage has arguments, if only for an excuse to make up.
Windows 8? We’re still running XP Enterprise at work….
Microsoft is begging me to install Windows 10.
PZ, The road to fulfillment takes many turns. There is no one right path. I’m sure you and your wife can find a shaman or a transpersonal therapist in Washington to help you get in touch with your inner feelings about this issue to come to terms with this conflict and be at peace with each others path.
PZ:
I don’t know much about computers, so I’m curious-are there functions or programs or something that your wife prefers on Windows that she can’t get by coming to the dark side and joining you?
The Microsoft Office products are a bit different between the Mac Version, and the PC version, with the PC version always being better functioned, and totally compatible with Microsoft Office. Which is why I take my laptop from work home when I need to work at home.
*cover your ears* I Hate Laptops!
I too suffer from a non believer amongst us, who rails against the true way to enlightenment! Stay above the tsunami level if the big one comes!
Vacation to Seattle… or pilgrimage to Redmond?
I love Windows 8 on my tablet PC. It works really nicely with a touch screen. Doesn’t add much otherwise, though.
Re: Nerd of Redhead @ #9…
When I had to carry a work laptop, I solved that problem. It takes (1) a port replicator (some people call it docking station, but all you need is the minimal version), and (2) a KVM switch. Hook up the port replicator and your normal PC/Mac/Linux system to the KVM switch and your keyboard, mouse/trackball and monitor to the common side of the KVM. Bring your laptop home, stick it in the port replicator, and presto! You get to use your normal keyboard, monitor and pointing device with both devices.
Now as regards MS Office…after getting to the point that Word for Windows 2.0 wouldn’t work on a new machine, I convinced my wife to switch to LibreOffice, which is free, runs on anything, and does not play screwy games with file formats.
For mountains with trees on them, I suggest: http://satwcomic.com/great-nature
(I highly recommend the strip “Scandinavia and the World” in general, but the latest one fits here.)
I’m sorry, the debate whether Windows or Linux or whatever other system is one that can legitimately be had. But Mac? After my first (and only) iPod’s battery gave up the ghost and it became clear how tied I was to Apple, how expensive everything from replacements to peripherals was, I realized how masochistic I must’ve been to buy anything from a company that imposes a monopoly on its customers. If you don’t like Windows, sure. But at least get a PC of some description. Cheaper, faster, more customizable. I dunno. Apple products are sleek and whatnot, but that’s all in my mind.
PZ gets no sympathy from me. I’m the only Windows user in the family, my wife and 2 kids being iOS fans. I’ve been forced to become an iOS support person. “Dad, how do I do …” Or ” Dear what did I do to my laptop?”
Everything was so easy to set up when I bought my new windows phone and windows 8 tablet.
I have 8 on my home computer. That weird tile thing they went for is just not a good system for a mouse-user (apparently it’s designed to work with touch screens).
I was told by a friend last week that when 10 comes out, all windows 8 users get a free copy. Sure enough, earlier this week, I got a message asking me to reserve my copy, which will automatically download on the 29th of this month.
I reserved one. Why the fuck not?
Have you heard the good news about Linus Torvalds?
@15 Thumper
Yeah, the app-like interface of Windows 8 is pretty awful, it’s clearly designed for smartphones and tablets and the like. But I did find some extensions (like Classic Shell) that can mostly remedy that, if you’re curious. It restores most of Windows 7 or XP functionality. I, too, reserved the Windows 10 thing. I hope it’ll be more like the normal desktop OS systems used to be or, if not, clever folks will be able to create a new version of the aforementioned extensions. Still, kind of sad that you have to basically mod your PC’s OS to restore functions many years older systems had by default…
Deception Pass is a great place to….ummmm….drop an object into the water if you want it to disappear permanently. I mean…the scenery there is magnificent! It wouldn’t be at all unusual to be admiring the water and suddenly have a computer leap from your hands into the water as if Poseidon himself grabbed it in a fit of jealousy. Could happen. Just saying.
Re: Saganite @ #13…
That’s referred to as a “walled garden”, and–yes–it is intended to work exactly as you have described: keep people in the walled garden and not let them out. Just another reason I refuse to use Apple products.
Well, my experience of Windows is that XP was pretty good, Vista was a bloated abomination, inferior to XP in every way, 7 was basically Vista as it should have been from the start, and a slight improvement over XP, 8 was Microsoft seeming to more or less forget that some people don’t use tablets, 8.1 was a slight improvement on that, but not much, and 10, which is what I’m using just now, is a much better attempt at what Microsoft were trying to do with 8, which is build an operating system which works pretty well on both tablets and desktops/laptops. However, there’s some reports of some rather intrusive things the Technical Preview can do, in terms of monitoring what you’re doing on your PC and sending this data to Microsoft, according to it’s terms of use, and Microsoft don’t seem to be saying whether this is only because it’s a preview version, or whether this will also be the case for the final version.
I’ve never actually used a Mac, but I really don’t like how restrictive my Ipod is in what I can or can’t do with it, so I don’t think I’d like to use an actual computer from the same company.
My son, it is now time that you begin your journey to enlightenment. OSX, Windows, Linux, Z/OS, RTOS, CPM, and all the others are merely avatars of the One True Operating System. When you learn to set aside your dependence on these two-dimensional images of the infinite OTOS, you will achieve true enlightenment. Nirvana awaits you. Light a candle and begin to meditate on the mantra “br14.”
In other words, they’re all the same and they all suck. Get over it. My bona fides: I’ve worked with every Apple OS from the Apple ][ through OSX 10.7 plus iOS, BSD Unix, AIX, MP/RAS Unix, Apollo Domain OS (yet another Unix.), umpteen Linux distros, IBM operating systems from S/360 DOS/PCP through Z/OS. CPM for crissakes. Windows from 3.1 to Win 8. CDC, Unisys. One-offs. I’ve written my own. They all suck in one way or another.
Take a Linux live CD with you and liberate the soul of both machines.
ArtK @21:
Ok, but which sucks the least?
@Tony
The one that you’re not using, of course!
Tony! The Queer Shoop wrote:
The one that runs the applications or workloads you want to run.
Mountains! Oceans! Catastrophic forest fire!