Windows 7 release date

[Deleted]

According to fairly reliable sources, Windows 7 will be released to the public October 22. I ran the beta and now the RC release and is it really stable and boots faster than Windows Vista--probably faster than Windows XP, too. One place where you really notice the lifference in speed is on a laptop when you are connecting to a wireless network. Win7 7 is Waaaay faster.

Wayne

[casualcollector]

My current machine dates from 2001. Maybe I'll finally get another. Of course I just upgraded from '98 to XP, so maybe I shouldn't rush!

[PeterW]

Wayne,

Because of his previous position as a lead engineer with Fujitsu-Siemens my son John has been receiving, playing with and reporting on various beta versions of Win 7 for a long time. Some of the early versions had problems - not with the system itself but mainly with drivers for peripherals, but he thinks Microsoft has at last got things sorted.

I've got two Hewlett Packard laser printers, one colour about three years old and the other an older, about six years old, big monochrome all-singing, all-dancing duplexing machine. It wasn't until HP brought out their 'universal' driver that I got it linked properly to Quark on XP Pro. Even now, if the mono printer is running when I switch on the colour machine or the scanner the mono is OK on text but receives images as bitmapped instead of proper greyscale until it comes to the end of the job, then everything's OK again.

So now I switch everything on before I start any printing or scanning. Both printers go into 'sleep' mode with the fusers switched off after a few minutes inactivity, so does the scanner, so they're not burning much electricity. I gather that electricity in the US and Canada is quite cheap, but over here it's b....y expensive.

I also had a few problems with Epson's Twain 5 driver linking the scanner to Photoshop until I got a later version of Twain 5. Even then I had problems with ABBYY's Finereader OCR program until I emailed them and they sent me a Twack to install. With the Twack installed it worked perfectly, one of the best OCR programs I've tried, even on old yellowed newsprint.

I phoned them to thank them, and innocently enquired what the heck a Twack was. The company is in Ireland, and a gentleman in second-line support, and with a delightful Irish brogue, told me "Ah, to be sure, a Twack is a something a Twain wuns on, so it is". Oh well, ask a silly question ...

I like the stability and speed of Win7 but I'll want to be absolutely certain that all my drivers, Twains and Twacks work OK with it before I decide to switch.

PeterW

[Deleted]

Peter:

Win 7 seems to be a lot better at identifying the proper drivers and if you don't have them it often goes to the device manufacturer's web site to find one. But even with Vista I had problems with dome older devices that the companies simply don't update the drivers. My Canon scanner (which was supposed to be the scanner to end all scanners. Never got a decent update for Windows Vista. If you want to use all the features you have to hook up to an XP machine (The scanner no longer is on the market). Twains and Twacks -- now that's funny

[mickeyobe]

Twouble, twouble, twouble. My IBM PC's were nothing but tewible twouble and pwoblems.

Then I got an eMac. No more twoubles.

Now I have an iMac. No twoubles.

The twick to avoiding computer twouble is to switch. Don't fight. Apples have always been my favowit fwuit.

Twuly yours,

Mickey

[Deleted]

But what will you do when the only Apple is an I-Pod?

[mickeyobe]

Jun 9, 2009 9:12:36 GMT -5 wayne said:

But what will you do when the only Apple is an I-Pod?

I ignore it.

Pea pods suit me just fine, thank you.

Mickey

[PeterW]

I used to run a Mac, had several of them, but I changed to a PC and Windows because some of the useful little pieces of software I use aren't avaiolable in MKac format.

Wayne,

But what will you do when the only Apple is an I-Pod?

Do you think the Mac Pro 8 and its successors is going to fade away?

I rather doubt it for commercial graphics companies, but maybe you know something in the wind that we don't? An IBM/Apple merger perhaps, or maybe even Microsoft/Apple merger

PeterW

[Deleted]

Peter:

I think there is a good chance Mac the computer will disappear but I have nothing to base that on except my beliefs. I do know Mac no longer rules graphic arts to the degree it once did and that was the area where the computer divisions made most of its money. A lot of Graphics users bailed because every time a new Mac or a new OS was introduced, a good share of the old software had to be updated--very costly since Adobe was the main supplier. I would bet that even with the Mac prices being higher than the pc equivalents, Apple probably loses money on every Mac sold.

I think one big reason they still make Macs is Steve Jobs wants to do it for sentimental reasons. But Jobs may not be around much longer and when he's gone it wouldn't surprise me if the bean counters step in and make the I-pods and I-phones what Apple is all about.

The commercials Apple runs on TV making pcs appear to have constant problems are absurd. That may have been the case a decade ago but not now. If Apple has less virus problems it's primarily because the number of Mac users is so small, hacking that OS doesn't cause as much trouble and the hackers don't think it's worth their while. If Apple ever did take over the market to the degree pcs have then Mac users would be the primary target of hackers.



Wayne

[mickeyobe]

Go ahead. Beat up on Mac. Trash and thrash it. Make apple sauce out of it.
Meanwhile I shall go happily on my virus free, crash free, ignorant way.

By the way. It is now possible to run Widows programmes on Macs. I have everything I need to install it except the courage to actually do it. I am waiting for one of my grandsons to come over and guide me.

Typed by hand on an iMac.

Mickey

[Deleted]

Mickey:

I can tell you message was typed on a Mac. All the letters are upper case and while I'm reading it I can hear a voice singing "We are the World."

[mickeyobe]

Hey Wayne,

Welcome aboard.

MacMickey

[Andrew]

I bought a PC for my son with all the latest bells and whistles for his engineering degree, has more fans than you can poke a stick at to keep it all running at optimal cool temperature (has readouts!) and lots of pretty glowing lights..nice machine, runs fast, i can find my way around easy enough because i am used to PC, no doubt

and then just recently i bought myself a Pro Mac tower 8 thingy, a reasonably cheap refurbished low end unit from Apple is what i paid for, but they sent me the top of the range model instead with a bunch of extras in it (i wasn't complaining!), also some expensive server cards in it that i wont use (i should probably think about selling them)..whilst my sons machine is very good the quality cant be compared to this Pro Mac, not even in the same class (and his is a very swish machine), it really is amazing in that respect, that was evident straight out of the box, it just oozes quality compared to the PC's..not the mouse though, i liked it to begin with but after a while it just doesnt like oil and grime from fingers and becomes inconsistent, so i ditched that

the apple i am still finding my way around but there are only one or two little quirks that i havnt figured out yet that i can do on the PC (i am told if i ring apple they will give phone tutorial on whatever i want, so thats should be ok), mostly though it seems very easy to negotiate and better than the PC/windows so far....its runs quieter than the PC, uses less power i think and already we have had the PC crash with the common dreaded blue screen and had to reload windows again arrrg!..the Mac does seem much better, no question about it but they are more expensive than a local built PC machine (but apple have great warrantee and help service), there about the same price as a Dell or other similar spec/branded PC though

so, so far i think the apple is much better machine (but you pay for it, compared to local built PC), although there are one or two little program things/features i miss with PC software, but as mentioned earlier, if i want, i can load PC software anyway..some of the apple software is amazing, easy and works better than the equivalent in PC though..

i certainly cant see Apple stopping any time soon lol, if anything they seem to getting more popular