On Wed, 2007-01-03 at 08:14 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
> Any NT, 2000, XP or 2003 version since about 2001 that has been
> maintained with updates and does not have any of the spyware or
> viruses you might get from executing trojan downloads or browser
> exploits. Promoting Linux is a good thing, but misrepresenting
> the competition isn't the way to do it. Your experience may be
> different, but it is from hardware, drivers, or exploits that
> slipped past your defenses - the base OS is solid enough to be
> usable at least with a certain amount of grooming.
Hi Les,
I would qualify that by saying that it also depends on what you are
using 'DOZE' for also. For example, I used to have a very stable Windows
XP Home partition on my laptop that I used to edit Office files (yeah, I
know OOo can handle most docs, but for the badly formatted ones I used
to receive, it just doesn't cut it). But I also used to maintain a small
office network of desktops and laptops, all running Windows XP, that
kept me pretty busy almost every day. There are several factors that can
seriously reduce the efficiency of a standard WinXP PC: one of them is
putting them on a domain. For large domains, or if your small network is
part of a much larger domain, the bootup times can become very long.
Also, recovering systems that have crashed or been infected are
problematic. There are tools such as Norton Ghost, or you can have
bare-metal recovery utilities, but they often end up wiping away some
parts of the user's data ("You mean you didn't back that up? Well, it's
gone now..."). I especially despise the registry, which can run you into
all kinds of *political* trouble.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
Regards,
pascal chong
