Silicon Shecky

We all know that Windows 7 is on the horizon. We all know that Vista is a huge hunk of junk. We all love our Windows XP, which is why we are willing to pay a little more for the “downgrade” to XP that a number of manufacturers will ship, even though the machines officially count as having been sold with Vista (Microsoft loves to punch up its Vista numbers this way). Now, Windows XP is about to pass to the next stage, drawing us closer to the end of one of our favorite OS’s life.

Mainstream support for Windows XP ends on April 14, which just happens to be the next Patch Tuesday. What does this mean for everyone? Well in simple terms it means a few things:

1) No more Service Packs or feature upgrades! This of course is something that can be expected. XP can only do so much and handle so much, seeing as it is way beyond what Microsoft intended its lifespan to be.

2) No more free incident support. Yep, any support from Microsoft for XP is now fully chargeable. Make sure you know your way around google, Microsoft’s knowledge base, or know someone who is a tech that can help you.

3) No more Warranty Claims. Yep, XP is out of warranty, even if loaded on a brand new machine by the manufacturer. How does this affect the fact that Microsoft still pushes XP for Netbooks? Time will only tell if they are smart and make an exception, otherwise, make sure you get a netbook with Linux on it.

Now not everything is doom and gloom. There are still some thing that the Extended Support Phase, which is what XP is going into, does give.

1) The Microsoft knowledge base, and support site still will have all the XP information it can hold. So you still can look through all the things.

2) Security updates will still be pushed out. It is important to remember that Security Updates are different from Feature Updates. While no no features of feature bugs will be fixed, at least any Security Holes that could allow viruses, such as Cornficker to grab a hold of your machine, will still be created and pushed out, and this will continue until 20014.

So XP is not dead yet, but instead is more on life support for the next 5 years. Personally, I would have likes Microsoft to have pushed XP 64 bit more and longer instead of forcing Vista out there. The other thing is with end of mainstream support, Microsoft now can reallocate resources to other projects. Here is just hoping that Windows 7, which is in beta and has been getting decent reviews, doesn’t get screwed up and suck when released.

Server 2008 is a nice Operating System. Works pretty smooth, pretty easy to find things in it, DFRS management could be a little bit easier, but the biggest problem I have with it so far is…

Aero. That’s right the stupid looking, pain in the arse, Vista look. I can hear you now saying, “Come on, it just takes some time to get used to.” That is what they said about Word 2007, and after a year I still can’t find half the stuff I used in Word 2003, heck I found that they pulled some of my most useful things in that.

So pardon me if I say it loud and proud. I HATE THE AERO EXPERIENCE! The way that you “explore” a network is unintuitive, a pain in the rear, and just cumbersome. The layout, even when switched to Classic Mode, is extremely poor, and again unintuitive. The fact that you have to turn on the run command is just plain stupid on a server. The login screen is a pain also, especially if you want to log onto a different domain or workgroup.

Yeah, there are people out there that might love it, and good for them. I’d rather see microsoft give us a choice of the old XP desktop or the Aero desktop. Hey, with Linux you have KDE and GNOME, plus a bunch of other lesser known GUI desktops. Give us the choice!

I am sure you have all had this sort of a problem before. You have a piece of software on CD or DVD, pop the disc into the drive, start going through the install and then WHAMMO! The install bombs out, gives you some error that you start googling, try everything you can find to no avail, and finally break down and get a new copy of the software. It sucks cause you only had the disc for a couple months, and yeah the company won’t send you out a replacement.

Well, I’ve run into that scenario and here is a set of things to try before spending the money on a new set of discs:

1) Try to copy the CD or DVD to your hard drive. If it gives you a CRC error or any error, put in a known good disc and copy to make sure it is not the drive itself.

2) If it is not the drive itself, and you can get a trial version of the software, download it. No you won’t be installing the trial version, but it will allow you to access the files and folders that can not be read off the CD.

3) Once the trial is downloaded, let it extract and then Copy whatever wouldn’t from the CD from the trial install area. Copy them into where the CD was being copied to.

4) Finally install off the hard drive. Use your key from the CD, everything in most cases will install just fine.

Yeah its a little time consuming and a pain, but I think its better than spending the money on the software again. Of course ti all depends on how much the software cost you.