{POLL} Windows Vista vs. Linux ? Worth the upgrade ? Worth the switchover?

[Greg Rozelle]

I've wanted to dump Windows for years. I started trying Linux more
than a decade ago. But there's just no way, for the following reasons:

1. I use Quicken to download my banking transactions and automatically
match them to my my register entries. When I started this, my bank
provided a program (Managing Your Money) and an 800 number, but they
couldn't manage the development or the tech support, and the whole
thing ground to a halt.Muy bankd forced me to switch to Quicken or
givbe up the major benefits of online banking.

Quicken is also a dog, as is MS Money, from the reviews I've read. But
that's all there is folks. The Mac version of Quicken is rumored to be
even worse. Linux has nothing that can do this. But if it had, it
would still need the banks' cooperation to make it a workable solution
for end users.

Well you can buy or download a check book type programs. There are
programs out there for Linux and Mac

2. I'm comparing three Asian OCR programs right now. They're the only
ones I've been able to find. One has been around for some years, but
only recently provided English documentation. The other two are quite
new. They all require Windows. I haven't found anything similar that
runs under Linux.



3. I have two Brother MFCs not too new, not too old, and not bottom
drawer. In fact they are the only two Brother MFC devices supported by
a $2000 Win2K/XP OCR program I'm testing right now. None of the
current Linux Live CD's I've tried(SUSE,Knoppix,Fedora,Mepis,Mandriva,
PCLinuxOS) support ANY Brother MFC scanner. In fact, it's a real chore
installing just the printer functions manually.

4. Voice Recognition Software - there's one program that apparently
works, Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred or Professional (Standard
doesn't support importing files). It requires Windows. There's nothing
comparable in Linux.

I've even considered buying an Intel-based Mac, but that strikes me as
jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Hardware is costly and
limited, quick obsolescence guaranteed, and frankly, I don't think the
Mac is going to survive.

The Mac will be around for a long time to come.

The simple reality for Operating Systems is the same as for hardware.
Most people, unlike many posting here, buy a computer because they
MUST perform certain tasks. Most people don't WANT to have to learn
more than one Operating System, so they want the OS that will meet not
only all of their present needs, but hopefully, all of their future
needs for at least the next three years or so.

Windows is more likely to meet that requirement than Linux or the Mac.
And this is especially true of potential "killer apps", such as push
button OCR or Voice Recognition. If you're a software developper
investing your resources, or that of your shareholders, in a new
application, are you going to aim it at an OS that owns most of the
desktop PC real estate in the world, or at some very distant second or
third place competitor?

That depends on sales. If consumer switch to a Mac, more software
will become available on a Mac

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

....

Well you can buy or download a check book type programs. There are
programs out there for Linux and Mac

I write very few cheques any more. I'm mostly concerned about matching
and reconciling dozens of credit card transactions every month.
Quicken and MS Money allow you to download these transactions and
match them automatically to your register entries.

....


The Mac will be around for a long time to come.


That depends on sales. If consumer switch to a Mac, more software
will become available on a Mac

There's no indication that will ever happen. The opposite seems to be
the case. As Windows (and Linux) become easier to use, it's harder and
harder to justify the high initial cost, limited software and
peripheral options, and scarcer hardware and software support of the
Mac.

I remember when Atari, Amiga, and OS/2 enthusiasts clung to the same
hopeless dream.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BBQ=AB?=]

In <

I'm mostly concerned about matching
and reconciling dozens of credit card transactions every month.
Quicken and MS Money allow you to download these transactions and
match them automatically to your register entries.

What format are they using which Quicken and MS Money will handle but
GnuCash, KMyMoney and grisbi won't?

There's no indication that will ever happen. The opposite seems to be
the case. As Windows (and Linux) become easier to use, it's harder and
harder to justify the high initial cost, limited software and
peripheral options, and scarcer hardware and software support of the
Mac.

The percentage of Apple laptops I see used in cafes has grown to about
50%, with students being the majority of the Apple users. They mostly
have the tiny, tiny ones, but I guess it's worth it to them to be able
to connect to any WLAN without worrying about security. I don't know
that that will lead to increased sales when they can afford better
machines, but I wouldn't doubt it.

I remember when Atari, Amiga, and OS/2 enthusiasts clung to the same
hopeless dream.

I remember people predicting the Mac would die back then, too.

 

[Anthony Irwin]

Actually I would of consider a linux, however I am thinking of going
with a Mini-Mac way in the future. I think you can get Microsoft
Office/word to work with a Mac.

Hi,

You can get microsoft office to work on linux also if you want to.

I believe crossover office is the easiest way but it may also work in
standard wine.

crossover office: http://www.codeweavers.com/

You may also want to check out openoffice http://www.openoffice.org
which is a competitor to ms office.

Kind Regards,
Anthony Irwin

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

What format are they using which Quicken and MS Money will handle but
GnuCash, KMyMoney and grisbi won't?

I don't know, but there's been a great deal of wailing among long-time
Quicken users since Intuit started forcing them to buy an upgrade
every two years or lose their ability to download transactions. I
followed the debate for some time in
alt.comp.software.financial.Quicken, and Gnucash came up repeatedly,
but no one reported success in performing Quicken's download function
with it or any other financial management program except MS Money.

Maybe things have changed, but I don't see any download options other
than for Quicken, Money, Simply Accounting, or Excel on my
banks'transaction download menus.

The percentage of Apple laptops I see used in cafes has grown to about
50%, with students being the majority of the Apple users. They mostly
have the tiny, tiny ones, but I guess it's worth it to them to be able
to connect to any WLAN without worrying about security. I don't know
that that will lead to increased sales when they can afford better
machines, but I wouldn't doubt it.

Students using Apple laptops in cafes? I don't think that's a very
reliable gauge of computer trends.

I think what you're observing is snobbish display by a tiny affluent
minority of the North American computer using public. I doubt very
much that you could make this observation in Beijing, Shanghai,
Taiwan, or Mumbai.

I remember people predicting the Mac would die back then, too.

Some things take longer to die than others. Snob value always prolongs
the agony. Look at Leica....

 

[Guest]

{POLL} Useful questions from people that require help vs. Spam
Leave your votes here

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BBQ=AB?=]

In <

Students using Apple laptops in cafes? I don't think that's a very
reliable gauge of computer trends.

Surely it's not; it's only anecdotal. But you didn't say what you
were using to gauge the demise of the Mac other than your personal
assessment of Mac hardware and software. In 2006, their sales were up
12% in Q3 and up 30% in Q4 compared to the same quarters in the previous
year.

I think what you're observing is snobbish display by a tiny affluent
minority of the North American computer using public.

Eh, they just look like students to me, but I guess they could be
affluent snobs. I'd think the affluent snobs would want bigger Macs
than they have, though.

 

[Mike Horton]

Hi,

You can get microsoft office to work on linux also if you want to.

I believe crossover office is the easiest way but it may also work in
standard wine.

crossover office: http://www.codeweavers.com/

You may also want to check out openoffice http://www.openoffice.org
which is a competitor to ms office.

Kind Regards,
Anthony Irwin

Looks like quicken 2000 and 2002 to 2007 work with crossover.
http://www.codeweavers.com/compatib...96ea493f5122ca72;sort[app_name]=ASC;curPos=50

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

Surely it's not; it's only anecdotal. But you didn't say what you
were using to gauge the demise of the Mac other than your personal
assessment of Mac hardware and software. In 2006, their sales were up
12% in Q3 and up 30% in Q4 compared to the same quarters in the previous
year.

It's easy to have large percentage sales increases when your base
numbers are small. But what was their increase of overall desktop
market share?

Furthermore, my understanding is that Apple stock value slumped during
this period.

Eh, they just look like students to me, but I guess they could be
affluent snobs. I'd think the affluent snobs would want bigger Macs
than they have, though.

Affluence is relative. In the world of computing, anyone who has a
current laptop when all they need is a desktop is relatively affluent
(ie. they have money to burn).

Snobbery is also relevant, and not related to affluence. A large part
of the Mac's appeal is simple brand recognition. Therefore, it doesn't
really matter whether you've got a cheap or expensive, small or large
one. Its recognition factor is greater than any other brand of laptop.
and of course, being a laptop, you can show it off at the cafe.

In other words, the prevalence of Mac laptops in student hands at
cafes can be explained as a personal statement - "I'm an Apple
person". It's somewhat like joining Hari Krishna, or some other
exclusive cult. Major decisions are made for you. You buy a whole
lifestyle package, and minimize the hardware and software choices to
be made.

I doubt that the observed phenomenon indicates what most college
students use for desktop machines. And perhaps college students who
own other laptops don't frequent cafes as much or don't bother to
bring their laptops, since they don't have the cachet of a Mac.

But what I was chiefly trying to say was that the biggest PC markets
opening up are in Asia, especially the two largest nations, China and
India. Laptops are largely irrelevant to this market growth, at least
until and unless someone offers an expandable laptop, on which you can
upgrade the cpu, RAM, and video significantly.

North America is a largely saturated market. You can't hope to grow a
company enough to compete with a behemoth like Microsoft by catering
to college students that frequent Starbucks.

 

[Koster, H]

Op Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:58:54 +0000, schreef KonradK:

I am moving my TWO computers to Linux. I am still looking for the best
distro and so far Kubuntu seems to be a good choice. My older pc is
allready with linux - Kubuntu. For LESS powerfull computer I recommend
xubuntu - will work perfectly on even 800Mhz CPU with 256 of RAM.

I made Ubuntu 6.10 work on a P2-360 / 384 RAM.
its no big deal but enough for www, office, usenet & mail and the new
allin1 hp printer/scanner works better than under win2k.

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

Op Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:58:54 +0000, schreef KonradK:


I made Ubuntu 6.10 work on a P2-360 / 384 RAM.
its no big deal but enough for www, office, usenet & mail and the new
allin1 hp printer/scanner works better than under win2k.

Which model of HP allin1?

 

[Linonut]

After takin' a swig o' grog, Koster, H belched out this bit o' wisdom:

Op Sun, 11 Feb 2007 19:58:54 +0000, schreef KonradK:


I made Ubuntu 6.10 work on a P2-360 / 384 RAM.
its no big deal but enough for www, office, usenet & mail and the new
allin1 hp printer/scanner works better than under win2k.

That's an easy one!

I've got ubuntu on a K6-380, 96Mb RAM.

(Still, I remember SunOS on a 68000 workstation with 32 Mb.
Code is so bloated nowadays.)

 

[Achim Nolcken Lohse]

....

I've got ubuntu on a K6-380, 96Mb RAM.

(Still, I remember SunOS on a 68000 workstation with 32 Mb.
Code is so bloated nowadays.)

Oh Ho! You've made me run down to the garage and dig out my old Tandy
Model 100, bought Xmas '85 with my Radio Shack employee discount. It
came with a whopping 8K of RAM, Basic, wordprocessor, scheduler and
address book in ROM, one socket for extra ROM programs, and a built in
300(?) baud modem. I topped up the RAM to 32K immediately.

It still works, too. Right on time at Jan. 1, 1900, which was a
Sunday, apparently. And Microsoft has its monniker on the startup
screen too.

Ah, if only we had had flash memory and NiMH dry cells then.

One day I hope to finally find a use for the barcode reader I bought
for it speculatively.

 

[L. Scott M.]

I've wanted to dump Windows for years. I started trying Linux more
than a decade ago. But there's just no way, for the following reasons:

1. I use Quicken to download my banking transactions and automatically
match them to my my register entries. When I started this, my bank
provided a program (Managing Your Money) and an 800 number, but they
couldn't manage the development or the tech support, and the whole
thing ground to a halt.Muy bankd forced me to switch to Quicken or
givbe up the major benefits of online banking.

Quicken is also a dog, as is MS Money, from the reviews I've read. But
that's all there is folks. The Mac version of Quicken is rumored to be
even worse. Linux has nothing that can do this. But if it had, it
would still need the banks' cooperation to make it a workable solution
for end users.

2. I'm comparing three Asian OCR programs right now. They're the only
ones I've been able to find. One has been around for some years, but
only recently provided English documentation. The other two are quite
new. They all require Windows. I haven't found anything similar that
runs under Linux.

3. I have two Brother MFCs not too new, not too old, and not bottom
drawer. In fact they are the only two Brother MFC devices supported by
a $2000 Win2K/XP OCR program I'm testing right now. None of the
current Linux Live CD's I've tried(SUSE,Knoppix,Fedora,Mepis,Mandriva,
PCLinuxOS) support ANY Brother MFC scanner. In fact, it's a real chore
installing just the printer functions manually.

4. Voice Recognition Software - there's one program that apparently
works, Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred or Professional (Standard
doesn't support importing files). It requires Windows. There's nothing
comparable in Linux.

I've even considered buying an Intel-based Mac, but that strikes me as
jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Hardware is costly and
limited, quick obsolescence guaranteed, and frankly, I don't think the
Mac is going to survive.

The simple reality for Operating Systems is the same as for hardware.
Most people, unlike many posting here, buy a computer because they
MUST perform certain tasks. Most people don't WANT to have to learn
more than one Operating System, so they want the OS that will meet not
only all of their present needs, but hopefully, all of their future
needs for at least the next three years or so.

Windows is more likely to meet that requirement than Linux or the Mac.
And this is especially true of potential "killer apps", such as push
button OCR or Voice Recognition. If you're a software developper
investing your resources, or that of your shareholders, in a new
application, are you going to aim it at an OS that owns most of the
desktop PC real estate in the world, or at some very distant second or
third place competitor?

So, while I've managed to pass up XP, and have only adopted Win2K
recently under duress, I see no likelyhood of going all-Linux in the
forseeable future, and can't rule out having to adopt Vista if a
killer app I need becomes available exclusively on that platform.

--

Achim
_____/)
axethetax

I would also like to get off the dependency on Microsoft Windows but
am finding it hard to accomplish for the similar reasons stated.

Several years ago I built my machine, had a removable drive and put
XP on one and SuSe on the other. I went from dial up to direct
connect and SuSe would not, I had stepped on myself, XP was no problem
to move to the direct connect. XP after several years XP crashed the
disk it was on, I thought of putting it on another old machine, but,
then there is the licensing agreement. So I used this as an excuse to
plug in my SuSe Linux and try again from scratch - now the only
problem is that the damn thing locks up on some internet sites (no
keyboard, no mouse, no errors logged, only some sites).

Quicken uses an altered XML format, think they call it OFX, to
transfer its data to your machine, if you look at the files the data
can be extracted and a program written to view and store your data - I
did this in VB.NET, before XP crashed on me.

 

[Alias]

I would also like to get off the dependency on Microsoft Windows but
am finding it hard to accomplish for the similar reasons stated.

Several years ago I built my machine, had a removable drive and put
XP on one and SuSe on the other. I went from dial up to direct
connect and SuSe would not, I had stepped on myself, XP was no problem
to move to the direct connect. XP after several years XP crashed the
disk it was on, I thought of putting it on another old machine, but,
then there is the licensing agreement. So I used this as an excuse to
plug in my SuSe Linux and try again from scratch - now the only
problem is that the damn thing locks up on some internet sites (no
keyboard, no mouse, no errors logged, only some sites).

Quicken uses an altered XML format, think they call it OFX, to
transfer its data to your machine, if you look at the files the data
can be extracted and a program written to view and store your data - I
did this in VB.NET, before XP crashed on me.

Try Ubuntu. http://www.ubuntu.com/

Alias

 

[noshellswill]

Keeping win2k on my old Dell Laptop. I may move to Vista on my more
modern computer wit 2GB of ram and a decent 128MB video card. But I'm
biding my time to see what issues Vista brings.

At some point, I'll have to support vista, so I'll be forced to a move
on my home system sooner.

I tried Ubuntu 6 and do like it, but it's still not prime time.

BigP:

My fave WinME ( rock solid 4-hours at a time ... ) will be my last M$
product. I've taken the whole trip, from punchcard IBM mainframes to
UBUNTU. Truth is, nobody has given more-power to more usrland-folks than
B. Gate$. He stole 'fire from the mountain' ... by freeing computer power
from byteboyz and data-managers. He allowed the yeomanry to
become a danger.

He did good.

Now he does evil by pimping for the video_crack / audio_cocaine
DRM crowd. Enough.

nss
*****

 

[Davorin Vlahovic]

Truth is, nobody has given more-power to more usrland-folks than
B. Gate$. He stole 'fire from the mountain' ... by freeing computer power
from byteboyz and data-managers. He allowed the yeomanry to
become a danger.

Sure, let's not mention the BSD and GNU projects, or at least the
Apple (first GUI on the mass market)/Atari (interest in gaming)/Commodore
(multitasking and power with Amiga in the 80's).

 

[OdarR]

No point int trying to make MSO to work, you have OpenOffice, which does the

"NeoOffice" : native Aqua gui and derived from OOo.
OpenOffice.org needs X interface which is not so easy and nice.

Olivier

 

[OdarR]

Hi,

How many users are going to make Windows 2K/XP (or even ME) their last
version of Windows and simply make the switch rather than upgrade vista?

I don't plan to use Vista and for sure I won't never pay for that
(like I never paid for a Win).
This new system disappoint me on several points : no real new robust
filesystem (fragmentation, journaling?), too heavy for the hardware,
too many unnecessary belt and whistles, and I hate DRM's.

I switched (dual-boot, 2 physical disks) my old PC to Ubuntu more than
18 month ago, and I recently installed a fresh Ubuntu on a second more
robust PC.
The whole family is using this one with linux now: gnome, Firefox,
OOo, Amarok, etc
There is a whole bunch of softwares to discover.

I still keep a small dual boot for XP for backward compatibility for
one software I use more rarely.

I also added a big iMac, but the goal here is digital photography and
fun/pleasure of the OS.

I am plenty satisfy for switching.

I've already started the move over myself; currently tripple booting 2
version of linux and windows xp MCE (simply for the fact I need the
programs my school uses but once support runs out for XP I'm done with
Windows). I just bought my computer in October and it says that its
Windows Vista Ready but I doubt that very much from what I've read.

I did a "sweet" switch, I never blocked the main pc so everybody could
still access all applications meanwhile my tests and experiments
Ubuntu and other linux are very good to give a second live to "old"
pc's.
You can then continue to use those old computers for simple tasks
(browsing, word processing,
test new software,paly games) or act as file server/backup server

Of course I'm not going to use any version of Linux that has the Oracle
label on it as Oracle is just as bad as Microsoft.

just experiment, enjoy and make your best choice.

Olivier

 

[Koster, H]

Op Wed, 14 Feb 2007 05:18:02 +0000, schreef Achim Nolcken Lohse:

schnip

Which model of HP allin1?

not new as in bought yesterday but new with respect to the '98 PC: HP psc
1216