I hate to have to do this but.....

[G1ZmO]

Oh woe is me!

I cannot believe I'm going to have to do this!

It goes against the grain!

It's against my principles!

BUT!!!

Here it comes....

I'm going to HAVE to go back to Windows! Ahhhhhhh!

In order to force myself to learn CS5 and Lightroom I'm going to have to ditch my beloved Ubuntu in favour of Windows 7. The Win7 virtual machine just doesn’t hack it and I can't be bothered with dual boot again.

It's going to be a pain in the arse as my data drives are all EXT filesystems which I'll need to back up and format NTFS

I'll miss a few of my Ubuntu apps but there's nothing that can't be covered with hooky windows apps. Nee to check that I can migrate my Thunderbird mail to Windows first though

So 64bit Win7 here we go.

Lotta work to do.....

[boabsta]

Thank god you never said win8. Everyone I know who has 8 is on the verge of smashing their machines.


I got 7. It does its job.


Rab.

[G1ZmO]

That's my email migrated to the Win7 lappy successfully.

[Takahashi]

I've been an MS user pretty much forever, through necessity and habit, and 7 is by far the best OS they've punted out yet. Yep, it's getting a bit bloatware-y now, with umpteen updates, but still sails along quite happily on a moderately specced machine.

[gary1968]

I have to disagree about 7, XP, imo, is by far the best most stable platform to date. I hate Win7 but that's what came with my lappy so I have to put up with it.

Sent from my HUAWEI U8815 using Tapatalk 2

[Canon Pete]

When ya drift close to the vortex that is MS, ya get sucked in Paul. Have to agree that Win7 is probs the best for the home market , although I really miss the NT4 platform for business.  Do not upgrade to W8 as said, your lappy instantly becomes a frisbee!
 
Pete
 

[Canon Pete]

Sadly no more support for XP. I agree it was brill ( built on back of NT4 )
 
Pete

[Takahashi]

Well, I'm basing my opinion on the literally thousands of PCs and laptops I've built and/or sold and serviced in the last 15 years, and user incompetence notwithstanding, Win7 (the OS itself) is easily the more stable. Don't get me wrong, it isn't infallible, I've seen us install a fresh, service-packed, win-updated, driver-updated system, with what we consider the best off-the-shelf security package available; Kaspersky IS, only for the machine to came back to the shop, majorly messed-up with malware, trojans, rootkits, whatever... and no OS is in this respect user-proof. From my own perspective, I've had virtually no issues with software or hardware in Win7 since its inception, and when we first got trial versions of it from MS, we tested it on a Sempron 2800 (1.6Ghz) with 512MBs ram, and a clunky old Maxtor IDE 40GB HD, and it behaved impeccably. Better, in fact, than the WinXP SP2 that we previously installed on it.

EDIT : I'm not putting the boot into XP, far from it - I used it for a decade or more, and reluctantly changed my two home PCs to 7 when I absolutely had to (XP-incompatible software), but I only put off doing it at first because I couldn't be arsed doing all the backups and software reinstalls. I reckon the thing that impressed me most about 7, especially at first, was the fact that it just worked, and worked well, even with a lot of older software that anyone would rightly expect to have probelms with. XP had to go through 4-5 years and two service packs before it became truly stable and reliable.

[dtr42]

have used xp it was very good for it's day but win7 worked right out the box with no problems .linux can be a bit funny for software updates .

[turbolord]

I'm running Windows 8 and I rate it as one of the best Windows yet. Fast reponsive and its easy to do things.

[DaveT]

Cat among the pigeons now LOL --- Windows sucks big style, i have just spent 2 days formatting and reinstalling win7 x64 on my studio PC as well as all my programs, and im still not happy with it. My macbook -- different story, wiped and all back up and running in less than 2 hours including all my apps!!!! My macbook never ever gives me any problems with new hardware etc on usb. I have just spent 4 hours trying to get a 32 channel firewire/usb mixer to talk to my windows machine with no luck (i got 4 channels working only). was about to put it down as a faulty £3k mixer, when i plugged in my macbook -- connected first time on both firewire and usb, all 32 channels in and out!!!. Revisited the PC, and checked all usb and firewire drivers as well as ASIO, and still no joy. If i had the money right now, i would throw my pc in the bin and buy a new MAC. I only hold onto it, because of the need for windows programs for work etc, and the lack of mac support by SW companies
I await the flames LOL




Dave

[Canon Pete]

Now a Mac, thats a whole different story, wonderful, lovely, safe and does what its meant too, usually from the get go.  Sadly out of my price range atm.
 
Pete.

[Takahashi]

No flames Dave, but how can Windows possibly "suck big style", when so many people have no (or very little) problem with it, in countless configurations and scenarios? I understand that if you've had issues with your specific requirements, it's going to appear to you to be the worst thing out there, but that's simply unreasonable. Believe me, there's plenty about Windows that gets my goat, and I have to deal with these foibles, day-in, day-out, but to write the whole thing off because you had nightmares getting a 32 channel mixer to behave under Win7 is no reason to condemn everything to do with it. I run an M-Audio Firewire device, connected to a Korg X5D & CME UF70, going through a Yamaha MW12 CX (12 channel mixer), midi'd through Cubase SXv3.1.1.944, on Win7 Pro 64 bit... and the only difference between this setup and my old XP Pro 32 bit is I can't use my old SB Live sound card... so I upgraded to my current SB X-Fi Audio, and have never looked back. Then there's the camera software for my 7D, Photoshop CS6 64bit, Lightroom 4.3, all my astro software, Vegas Movie Studio for my video camera, and a wodge & a half of games... none of which have any problems running in this "sucks big style" OS.

...

Cat among the pigeons now LOL --- Windows sucks big style

I await the flames LOL

Dave

[DaveT]

Given the price that MS asks for their "latest version" (£130 for basic home win7) that we as consumers are used as guinea pigs to test until SP1 is released i find it incredible that MS as a business are still there. My last operating system update on Mac was £15... and it worked straight out the box.
I think the reason so many people use Microsoft and PC's still is because it has been mainstream for so long that it has made its "home" in many an office and house, and people dont want to go out and spend money to change -- its the old beta and vhs scenario, where VHS won even although beta was the better quality format. I used nothing but windows up until 2 years ago, and like everyone else, just got on with any problems i had with Windows. My mind was changed when i got my first mac, and being honest, for the first week i hated it -- because i wasnt used to it, however what did catch my eye was that everything "just worked" without having to load driver after driver, random crashing etc etc. It was such a pleasure to work with after i found out how to do things i was used to doing.
Its just annoying that more SW companies dont write software for Mac as well as Windows. Its like iPad and android. I love my android device and got it after getting rid of an ipad. Although i see things are starting to change and most mainstream software companies now do both in most releases.


On another point -- i ust admit to a wee white lie further up when i said i never ever had any issues with any software on my Mac -- one piece gives me no end of issues -- microsoft office for mac LOL. I bought it because i was so used to using excel / outlook / word etc and i could still do a lot of my work stuff and send docs etc to staff using windows machines without needing to convert it. It crashes, it freezes, whereas my mac mail program has never once let me down, heck even with skys recent "upgrade" from google mail to yahoo, my mac mail still support imap -- outlook doesnt, it has to be pop or nothing, and as i found out today, outlook on a pc with their new mail doesnt support imap - fair enough not a MS full problem, but android and Mac seem to have been able to work with imap without any changes.


Any music software i use on mac, i have no issues with at all, everything works without any hassles, the same with my canon software.


I must admit, i was never ever a big apple fan, until i tried it. I suppose was a bit over the top to say windows sucks big style, but after using something that doesnt give me any headaches, you can imagine how i feel about windows lol


Best wishes
Dave

[G1ZmO]

As I said at the beginning I'm returning to Windows only because the softwares I want to run just wont run on Linux (my favoured OS due to it's open-source-ness and the fact that I'm fairly anti-microsoft for the same reasons you've stated above. Ridiculous licensing costs for unstable products. However, in saying that, Win7 is what I use at work and has been the most stable of the Windows version to date.

My machine is now installed with a clean Win7 64bit OS with Photoshop CS5, Lightroom and various other software.

Might need some tuition (Ivor hehe)

Paul