*heh*
Installed Turbo-Tax on the Vista machine. The execrable Vista will not recognize any of my DVD drives as CD drives, and thus would not install; so I shared an XP drive, mapped to it on the Vista machine, and installed using a networked CD. Vista is not really ready for prime time, and nothing I can do will get it to believe that either a read only drive, or a perfectly good Plextor R/W drive, is also a CD drive. DO NOT “UPGRADE” your XP machine to Vista!!!!
Oh, yes. Every time I have to work on a client’s Vista machine I have to watch my BP. I’m glad (I think–I have annual B&Ms about TurboTax) Pournelle did get TT installed finally, but I understand his frustrations. ANd there are multiple reports that Vista SP-1 “breaks” apps that once worked with Vista pre-SP-1, along with driver issues continuing (and in some cases worse) from pre-SP-1.
But mind you (from Pournelle again) Apple’s iPhone has some issues. Here’s one:
If there is no service — when there really is service — this is potentially serious, is it not? I have no idea of what to do about it, except that if you get no service, try restarting the phone. Note that reboot is the usual remedy for many Windows problems. Is Apple learning from Microsoft? Stay tuned.
*heh* “Is Apple learning from Microsoft?” Very funny.
In other OS news, Kubuntu 7.10 has a few more wrinkles to iron out and hoops to jump through than plain vanilla Ubuntu 7.10, but I like the interface better, so I put up with it. Still, installing WINE is a snap in either, and using my Windows version of Portable Opera (on a Memorex TravelDrive) is transparent. Oh, a minor puzzle for the Portable Opera under WINE: for some reason all web pages display in a non-proportional, seriffed font that is NOT the way it dosplays in Windows–nor does the Linux version of Opera on the same machine display that way. I’ll puzzle that one out later.
(Duh. The fonts specified under Windows aren’t available. Simply had to specify fonts that were installed on this box. Shoulda remembered that. Oh, I can make the Windows fonts available to WINE, but it’s just easier for now to use the fonts already installed.)
For the proverbial Aunt Tilly, I believe plain vanilla Ubuntu 7.10 is really about ready for prime time, but Kubuntu 7.10 is for folks who are just a little more ready to dig into the thing and do some of the scut work of getting it set up juuuust so. “Out of the box”–so to speak–plain vanilla Ybuntu 7.10 is a easier for a non-techie to tweak–the Synaptic installer is easier to use than the Adept Package Manager (and much easier for non-command line folks than apt-get *heh*).
I like either.
But for ease of setup and just using the computer, PCBSD 1.5 is just about as good as it gets, IMO. From bare drive on an old 1.3 Ghz compute to installed and up and running in about 20 minutes? Yes. Installing apps is easy-peasy, too. Easily passes the “Aunt Tilly” test. And yes, you can give it all the eye candy of Windows Vista or OSX, if you really want to. With less hardware overhead.
Interesting times.
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