Day: February 2, 2009

I really should be making hay while the sun shines, getting with the program, and all sorts of other clichés. *heh* But. Last night was a loooooong night. No pressing appointments today. Things–many!–to do, but

Lethargy. All my vigor’s seeping out of me,
Now I’m barely rising to my knee,
Oh, lethargy came over me…

(You know the tune. Some sing other words to it, like, “Leprosy. All my skin is falling off of me… “ *heh*)

All I wanna do is nap, but I’m getting some things–“needful things”–done that will stand me in good stead when my schedule picks back up tomorrow. Still, I’m definitely NOT getting the chainsaw out and whittling away at the woodpile or cutting down those small trees I need to give our new neighbors. (They have a nice 3-walled shed to dry the wood in for their fireplace.)

Nope. Right now, I’m just getting used to my second keyboard/mouse combo in two weeks. Yeh, yeh. Got ’em both for less than the retail on one. Loved the keyboard on the first combo (a Gateway branded wireless combo) but hated the mouse. Stiff buttons and wheel. Really stiff. The mouse my Wonder Woman has (at work) from the mate to the Gateway set I was using was much better. Just individual differences, I guess. So, when I ordered her a nice lil Logitech wireless mouse for her notebook, I picked up a Logitech keyboard/mouse combo for me at the same time.

*sigh* Love the mouse. The keyboard’s not nearly as nice as the Gateway branded keyboard, though. Feels kinda cheesy. Oh. Well. I can either add the Gateway-branded sensor back on and use the keyboard that goes with that or get used to this keyboard. I think I’ll try for the latter for now. Sure do like this mouse, though.

BTW, what the heck ever happened to LED indicators for CAPS/NUMLOCK, etc.? Maybe it’s a power-saving thingy. Oh, well. I’ll stuff some high-density foam under the CAPSLOCK key anyway pretty soon now so I don’t have to deal with my indifferent typing skills resulting in inadvertent ALL CAPS typing.

Oh, the “old” wireless keyboard/mouse combo? Spare. Always need spares. 🙂

I’ve had a love-hate (more like, “moderately friendly/utterly despise”) relationship with Microsoft since about DOS 4 (known to some of us as DOG 4), and even in the halcyon times of Windows 3.X, I preferred running those drafty Windows versions on top of IBM’s PCDOS or Novell DOS.

I suffered through the cranky, creaky, crappy Windows 95, the almost good Windows 98 (and the “quite acceptable for most uses” 98SE… with some appropriate thefts from–> ), passed on the Muppet Edition, found NT4 useful and Win2K to be Just Right (for most things), never warmed much to XP and was appalled at the truly bad decisions that brought out the bloated resource hog, Vista.

In spite of my gripes, I’ve found Ubuntu 8.04/8.10 to be better overall than most Microsoft OS offerings, for most things (still sucks dead bunnies through a straw for midi creation).

But the rumbles going on about Windows 7 intrigue me. Seriously. I meant to install and evaluate the beta in January, but things just got in the way. I’m way off schedule on things, already, for February, but I hope to get to taking a serious look at Windows 7 this month. For one thing, this caught my eye:

…Windows 7, unlike Vista, has a small footprint and is not a resources glutton. I know this to be a fact because I have the beta version running on my Eee PC and it works fine – and it’s just a beta!

Intriguing. Me$$y$oft publish unbloated code? Could be a Very Good Thing. Since I’m considering a netbook purchase this year for myself, this could be a Very Very Good Thing indeed. And my Wonder Woman would probably appreciate some sort of Windows on the HTPC I might install this year, so if Windows 7 is at all acceptable, it could well be a candidate for that PC.

Even if I do make such a move though, it’d still leave three or more ‘nix boxes on our lil network–and maybe more, since I know an old Compaq (seriously spiffed up hardwarewise) will be going online this month with PCBSD, and when Son&Heir gets his softmods done on his old XBox, that’ll be another.

But the early reports on Windows 7 bode well for a new computer or two here at twc central using the OS. If it really pans out like the early press indicates.

UPDATE: *heh* This guy claims to have installed Windows 7 on a 600Mhz box w/only 512MB of RAM. If so–and the video of him doing it is compelling!–I have a few computers to try the 32-bit version on just sitting around unused. Need a DVD drive for ’em, though (yeh, they’re that old).

Update#2: Oh, heck, why not. *heh* Since I removed the “personal media drive” connectors and backplate, I have two more ready-made places (one in the bottom of the case) for SATA drives–and three open SATA connections on the MOBO. In addition, since I probably will remove the DVDROM drive from this computer for the old comp I’ve singled out to try the 32-bit Win7 on, I can install another drive–either SATA or IDE, in that bay, cover the bay opening and bob’s your uncle. While I seriously doubt I’ll add three more drives to this rig, I could, so even though I dislike the idea, I could easily do a dual boot of Win7 (64-bit) and Ubuntu 8.10 (64-bit)… and I might do just that.

---

Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Faultline USA, Democrat=Socialist, Walls of the City, The World According to Carl, and DragonLady’s World, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.