Kirb’s Musings

Kirby Witmer’s ponderings, ruminations, and meditations of… anything.

Engadget has a post up comparing the featuresof Vista and Leopard, and you would think its Word War 3 by the comments. (Ohh, by the way, there is exactly 666 comments over there now as I’m writing this post.) Its funny how people get all fired up about which OS is the best. I’ve worked with enough Operating Systems in my short life to know they all have big flaws.

However, Vista is still the best.

 Update: And don’t even get me started on this. That’s a huge reason why I don’t more appreciation for Apple than I do. They are so arrogant.

I’m so frustrated right now with this old, old problem of installing Windows XP on a RAID hard drive system. The only way to add the drivers is by using a floppy disk. That brings up several questions.

1. What is a floppy disk?
2. Where do I find one?
3. Where do I find a floppy drive? New computers don’t have them.

Ahh.. Here we go, I found a used floppy drive in one of my old computers, but now for a disk. Ahh.. found that too. First disk doesn’t work, second one doesn’t either. Is it the drive or the floppies? Try the third disk.. sweet, that one works. Start Win XP setup, hit F6, insert floppy disk. ERROR!!  grrrrr…. still no go. Ok, lets try with a new disk. Attempting to write files. Error :

Windows Error N. 5
Access is denied.

I agree with Iain Magee :

So - all told - a 5 minute job took probably the most of an hour. Why Microsoft? Why can’t we have setup read the file from a CD or USB key? This was a problem 5 years ago - and I just can’t believe that 5 years on it’s still a problem.

 A really good version of Windows has just been released.

Hmm.. Apple’s announcement to release the Safari browser for Windows wasn’t exactly what a lot of some people were hoping expecting to hear, and given the number of complaints and problems with installing and running Safari on Windows, I think I’ll stick with IE 7 and Firefox.

grrr… Right now its past 12:00 AM and I’m still working on a computer that had CA Internet Security Suite 2007 installed on it. Somewhere along the way it had developed a problem with the firewall, and when I went to uninstall it, I couldn’t. It was a royal mess. After spending a bunch of time on it, I finally resorted to uninstalling it manually. I deleted every registry key that referenced C:\Program Files\CA. And it worked, but it sure took a lot of time. Do yourself a favor, and don’t buy CA’s Internet Security Suite. Stick with CA Antivirus 2007 and you should be fine.

Slashdot is reporting that a Symantec Study has confirmed what we already knew, Microsoft’s Operating Systems are more secure than Mac OS X and Red Hat. “The report found that Microsoft Windows had the fewest number of patches and the shortest average patch development time of the five operating systems it monitored in the last six months of 2006.”

Windows has encountered an error. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. Or you could click the Start button, click Search, and enter the name of the file you are looking for. You mean, I gotta type that whole thing? :gasp:

I added a gig of memory to my computer box and guess what? Upon booting my computer I was presented with a message informing me that since Windows XP was first activated on this computer the hardware has changed and it now needs to be reactivated. What!!?? I have added, changed, swapped, removed memory many times from computers and never got that message. Dunno what happened. And I couldn’t even activate it using the internet, I had to call in to the Microsoft Product Activation center, where I was gravely informed that everytime you make a hardware change you have to reactivate Windows. I know for a fact that is not true, unless Microsoft recently changed it. (I’m not always pro-microsoft. ) The nice fellow from India reactivated Windows for me, and even wished me a Merry Christmas!! Thank you, and a very Merry Christmas to you and everyone else!!

I’m noticing that Microsoft is pushing out Internet Explorer 7 as a high-priority update today on it’s Microsoft Update website. I’ve seen it on a couple of computers now.

Are you still running XP SP 1? If you are, you better upgrade to Service Pack 2, because Microsoft has ended support for Windows XP SP 1 and 1a. Now just imagine how much easier my life would be if our business would adopt a policy like that. When somebody calls in about a networking problem on their Windows 98 machine, I would just say, “I’m sorry, but we only support Windows XP SP 2 or later.”