Temptations Said It Best, "Ball of Confusion"

Windows PCs are favored at the beach house. After 5 or 6 years Microsoft has Windows XP running at optimum levels. Of course they killed mainstream support a few weeks ago, which still has me baffled. Apparently it makes marketing sense to the bozos driving that crazy train. Heck what do you expect from a company that still has head goofball Steve Ballmer on the active payroll? Vista had its share of problems at first. Microsoft responded promptly and has made Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate good operating systems. Vista Home Basic is pure trash and I won't allow a copy of Vista Business on any of my machines. Just too buggy and won't play nice with many other applications. And then there's the 64bit versus 32bit argument. If you want to run 64bit XP or Vista that's your privilege. I personally think there's enough headaches in keeping a 32bit machine healthy. Which do you have on your PC? There's a 99.99% chance your are working in the 32bit arena.

Now we come to Windows 7. You can download the Release Candidate version from a few different Microsoft sites now. How much? Have no idea. Why? Don't care. The final version won't be out until late fall so I certainly will not spend money on something that is being rumored as a necessary format and reload when the final version arrives on the scene. Rumors abound. I've heard that it will only run 3 applications at a time. There's a bruhaha all over the net about Windows 7 coming equipped with an XP emulation in case your programs won't run resident under Windows 7. Seems like a lot of trouble and front end patching to me. Why doesn't Microsoft just wait until they have all this worked out? When people have to format their hard drives and see if their saved data from Window 7RC will work on the final version there will be tempers rising.

So far everyone that has run Windows 7 free beta release seems to like it. My fellow tech and great friend Hoppa has positive input about it over at TechandLife. Several more friends have also said it is a step in the right direction. So why come out with a flim flam version now? Why not wait until it is COMPLETE? One word. Greed. Like Microsoft really needs the money! Ha! There are articles all over the internet about these issues. You can start with PCWorld or ZDNet. Before all is said and done (with the preliminary bitching and whining behind us) Windows 7 will probably turn out to be a good OS. An afterthought, why are they including an XP emulation instead of a Vista emulation? Oh yeah, many applications won't run in Vista. I forgot.

In the meantime, what few spare minutes that rarely show up at the beach house will be spent learning more about Linux Server flavors. Also, FreeBSD (another free, opensource, very stable OS) just released a new model. You can read about it at their super slick site FreeBSD.org. FreeBSD is the operating system that is the basic code for Apple's OSX and later versions. All that Jaguar, Panther, house cat, smelly cat stuff they now run. It's actually a good platform, but still burns me that Apple took free software, doctored it with orchard voodoo and act like they were given this on clay tablets from above. Not so. Let's see, FreeBSD = free. Apple = silly, ridiculous, absurd cost. Just go check their prices. BTW, Apple is now wanting to make their own CPUs. Check out MaximumPC. What a joke. Think they'll ever learn to leave well enough alone? I am giving 100 to 1 odds they won't.

Going to try out driving today to see if the ear infection is still jacking with my balance. The shoulder blade still hurts if I raise my arm chest high. But, I must get to work. This is the 4th day without any field work. Patience is a learned virtue...I've learned. Somewhat. Y'all have a nice Tuesday.

“An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.”
~D. Neal Jennings