On Wed June 21 2006 00:11, R Parker wrote: > Is Windows any better? I've gotta setup a Windows box > during the July 4th holiday. It would be great if the > stupid thing threw me for a lope and I couldn't finish > the job before leaving for home. lol Basically, either Windows comes preinstalled on a PC and the video and wifi and all that stuff that gives us trouble is already working, BUT the thing is loaded down with nags to register this or that and take this survey and warnings that your computer is not adequately protected and there are a ton of what appear to be programs but are actually just demos and there are 37 icons in the system tray.... or you'll be installing it from scratch, which these days takes about the same amount of time as a decent Linux but is subject to some of the same problems with obtaining and installing drivers. Oh yeah, and in either case, you'll be needing to download and install a bunch of stuff. Openoffice and Firefox come to mind (friends don't let friends run IE, but MS Works is even worse), but I also usually do gaim, acroread or foxit, java, flash, PDF Creator, putty (for my own use), vncviewer (ditto), irfanview, gimp, 7zip, and most surprisingly a codec pack (I was amazed at how few video formats XP would play out of the box.) I keep all that stuff on a usb memory key on my keychain and update it whenever I remember to, because when people know that you're a total tool they tend to ask you for help a lot. Rob
