CoffeeFiend

That's pretty much my opinion on that too: none of those "maintenance" apps. Getting rid of temp files by hand every now and then is quite simple and fast. Defrag every once in a while (I hardly ever bother). Virus/spyware scanning whenever you like (I've got nod32 resident, and I never bother doing scans for viruses or spyware as I haven't caught any in a VERY, VERY long time - no spyware since I ditched IE, and no viruses in years). As for the other apps, I wouldn't want those on my system. Most registry "fixers" often do more harm than good and such, and with no real/noticeable improvement (unless your system's an absolute mess, in which case you might as well reinstall anyway). I see no need for apps like this...

I like opera. It takes far less memory than firefox does. And it has a couple innovative features (xhtml + voice anyone?), but too bad they're not useful as no one uses the technology as browser support for it is practically non-existant (well, there's also a mediocre BT client too). But Opera is also the ONLY browser I use that's given me problems rendering some pages. Some pages on MSDN won't even show, some of the DHTML widgets on some pages end up having scrollers and such when they shouldn't have and what not. Works well for most pages, but just not good enough to use as a primary browser. That, and the download screen that's totally obnoxious! (is there a way to make this thing just GO AWAY?) But the real deal breaker? Firefox has extensions. TONS of great extensions. And until Opera gets those, Firefox will stay as my primary browser. And I'm not talking about just an adblock replacement here - the dev developper toolbar (yes, I know about W3-dev and I also use it but it's not quite the same), LiveHTTPHeader (yes, I also have a http debugging proxy, but it's unecessary to even bother when you have this), forecastfox, foxytunes, bugmenot, proxy switcher, great JS tools, tabmix plus/gestures and all that kind of stuff, PDF download, flashblock, greasemonkey, stumbleupon, and countless others... Can't wait for the day Opera adds a way for people to easily create extensions like that. And that "myths" page? That's the most sensationalist, totally wrong, 100% biased piece of laughable blog junk I've read in AGES. Worse than tabloids! Total nonsense. It's so wrong it's actually funny to read.

Hi again. I never implied or said that ratings or tag clouds would necessarily be a good idea or work in this specific context. They were just examples, or ideas of features you could add to make it stand out from all the other similar apps. It's really up to you to do some brainstorming to find cool, interesting and useful ones. Reasearch similar products (apps used by libraries - google must list like a thousand of them), and see what features they have. Or try some easy survey (drop ballots at your local uni library or city library, asking what features they would like added to the existing software, and also encourage the library's workers to participate too - perhaps even try to do a quick "interview" with 'em, see what matters the most to them?) This is much like the usual "user requirements" part of most software projects - find out what it has to do before anything else. You could even try "competitor's" software (some of them likely have demos you can download on their websites). See what they're missing, what could be improved, things that are counter-intuitive... Stuff like that. Lots of those I've seen really could have used some simple, task-driven menus for most everyday tasks (at least for the library workers e.g. find a book, batch loans or returns operations, see loan status, etc) About book ratings... That's *his* way of how ratings should work. Many places just think otherwise (and aren't necessarily wrong by taking that approach either) - like IMDB: anyone can vote anything anytime (feel free to leave votes of "0" or "10" for movies you hate/like). Some votes won't be very representative (there will always be biased people, id-10-t's who totally miss the point and such). But overall, when you have thousands of votes, you can likely get meaningful statistics out of it. (But personally, I think most of the "bookworm" types out there wouldn't really use it. Even if the feature sounds useful, without a good amount of regular "voters" it wouldn't be useful at all). It works for many places (not just IMDB - I've seen that system used many other movie sites, game review sites and what not), but that doesn't mean it'll always work. The tag clouds feature has the same issue - only it's even worse... Likely WAY too tedious to write all kinds of keywords to tag books instead of just entering a number (and much more people are likely to not even understand the system). And those tag clouds system might need filtering/moderation too (to avoid "bad words", which isn't an issue with ratings). Good luck finding more features, I'm sure you can manage if you spend some time doing the reasearch. Like I said, it's just like the requirements part of pretty much all projects. You'll likely learn a bit too (how the whole process usually works at least) Talking about IMDB votes, they ought to make it possible to vote zero - anything more than that is too much for miami vice 2006. Go watch plan 9 from outer space or whatever - it just CAN'T be worse! Worst movie EVER (and I'm using the word "movie" loosely here). Now if I could only have that 2 hours of my life back... On a side note, I've cured my chronic insomnia

Zxian is right. You do NOT want to use that junk! And nope, it's no replacement for Visual Studio in any way... There are FAR better tools out there for all of that (and it's not like IBM's stuff's inexpensive either) The day they ask us to use that horrible thing at work, I'll start looking for another job...

It really depends. Screen on full intensity watching mpeg4 videos with lots of post-processing (CPU ~100%) and such, or screen dimmed low, cpu idle and such? I could pretty much pick all the options on that poll...

That's more bytes than my entire Windows install. If .NET was a whole OS I wouldn't mind, but for just a bunch of runtimes it's rediculous. Even Java takes less space. 280MB? You're worried about a quarter GB of storage when storage is that cheap? That's got to be about 8 cents worth of HD space or so - not something I'm losing much sleep over (unless you got a P2 with a 8.4GB HD, then perhaps it is). For what it does, it's MORE than justified. Irrational hating - already had that much figured out (much like the java haters out there). I don't think you really had to mention it, it was obvious enough... If you don't understand how native code isn't harder to write (and that's only a small part of the idea), then either you're not a programmer, or you've never used anything else. Windows Forms vs MFC et al? The new ASP.Net page model (vs ASP classic a.k.a crap - perhaps the ONLY and single worst tech than PHP)? Not requiring hundreds of inconsistently named cryptic API calls for every little trivial thing and tons of headers? No DLL hell? Extremely powerful, nice, coherent frameworks with tons of very useful features (and lots of other very good frameworks for specific purposes)? Memory management and garbage collection? Better dev tools? Entirely OO design? Choice of several great languages (all running on same CLR - you can even mix 'em)? Not requiring nearly as much code for same job *and* being FAR faster to write - directly influencing costs, complexity and project timeline? The real/biggest point is productivity. Far better interoperability - something that's vital nowadays (via use of things like XML and web services or remoting and such). Smart Client apps (very nice) and lots of new great stuff. Newer and better deployment ways. Code security built in (even than java). Coding most of the apps we do in native code would FAR more than double the costs (often making it too expensive altogether). That one alone is a huge thing. Perhaps it means nothing to you, but for companies, that's a difference between spending hundreds of thousands or millions more in software development costs, or wasting that 8 cents worth of storage on the client PCs. Tough call, I know. Regardless, like all irrational haters, it doesn't matter if I listed a billion valid reasons to switch as logic doesn't have a whole lot to do with it. But personally, I wouldn't EVER go back (heck, I'd switch fields before). But don't worry. Soon you won't even have a choice. It'll come pre-installed with Vista. And you won't have the choice to use it if you want to use anything WPF related in any way. Most coders have or are making the switch. You know everything's going that way, no matter if you like it or not (well, you can switch to Linux just to avoid it or keep using WinXP forever - and to be honest, it wouldn't even surprise me one bit if you did just that)

Of course you'd need a new motherboard to fit an Intel CPU (LGA775 socket) - not like it'll fit on a AMD board (that uses a s754). They're completely different. As for that CPU.... meh! I wouldn't bother with it. it's not exactly a huge upgrade from what you have IMHO (especially since you also have to buy a board - not enough speed increase to be worth it). Overclocking wise, youy don't want to OC that thing to 4.2GHz do you have ANY idea how much heat this thing puts out @ 4.2GHz??? Two hundred sixty watts! Yep. You did read that right - 260w! As much heat and power consumption as *four* Core 2 Duos. You're going to have to invest a significant amount in water cooling (that along with an expensive overclock-friendly mobo pretty much negates the whole point of doing this by itself - the chip's only ~100$, but you just spent like 400$ to make it run). Well, either that, or some monster heat sink (still expensive'ish) with a monster fan that'll make a LOT of noise - and I mean, a LOT of it. Also plan to invest in a fairly powerful quality PSU (those aren't cheap either) - and that case of yours better have some real good airflow too! And hopefully electricity is cheap where you live, because this thing will use ridiculous amounts of it (adds up). As a bonus, you won't need to heat your house during winter (but you'll double your AC bill). 200 extra watts (over a conroe) * 365 days/year * 24h/day * 10 cents or so/kilowatt hour (adjust accordingly) = about 175$ more in electricity than a Conroe will use per year. Over a average lifespan of 3 years, that's 525$ of electricity more than a Conroe would have used (and the Conroe won't cost 525$ more to buy, and is a faster chip). And that's using moderately priced electricity (hydroelectricity) - I believe it's nearly three times that much over in the UK, so you'd be looking at closer to 1500$ worth of electricity over 3 years... (if you use AC in the summer, then it's even more!) Still sounds like an inexpensive rig? If you want a decently fast chip, Athlon64's are the way to go right now (again, IMHO) because of the ridiculously overpriced Conroe boards. If you want a high-end monster rig, then Conroe. I see no reason to justify buying netburst crap at this point. The only reason why people have done this, it's because back then it was about the same speed as a chip that costed 1000$ more, so even if you had to pay a fair amount for motherboard/cooling/PSU and all, disregarding electricity costs and heat. Just bought another PC today (permanent linux box)... Athlon64 3500+ s939, 1GB DDR (2x512 PC3200), 200GB HD, DVD-RW drive and all... Half decent motherboard (has PCI-E, SATA, high def audio and all; 4 DIMM slots). 9-in-1 memory card reader thingy at the front, XP MCE 2005...Cheapo mouse/keyboard/speakers included. 380$USD Not bad at all

Yes, it's a simple thing to do, but why even bother with that fugly batchfile (which only works for older headers i.e. REGEDIT4 and not "Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00")? It does take far less time to just do copy/paste in 2 notepad sessions regardless (just changing the filenames in your batchfile would take as long even if it already existed) Big f'n deal... Pretty much everything I make requires it too (application has dependancies: news at 11!) Better get used to installing it, more and more apps require it (and it's going to increase exponentially soon). If it's too much work to install it by hand (manually or from windows update or whatever), then it's trivial to add to any unattended install (there's even some switchless installers). It doesn't take long to install, and it doesn't take that much space (especially when you think a GB of storage nowadays is worth like 30 whole cents) and is shared by tons of useful programs.

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I'm not arguing if the language themselves are similar or not (they're all from the same "family" so of course they must be similar to some extent - but each language has their own set of extremely useful features e.g. generics or templates, polymorphism via inheritance, reflection, threading and much more things) Regardless of that, it will truly make a mega-huge difference: -managed and unmanaged code (I'd call that a very significant one... garbage collection is a great thing) -C# doesn't use a billion header files (which I don't know) -the difference between using frameworks I know thoroughly (like .net fw) or some I've likely never even heard of -the difference between using database interfaces I know quite well (ado.net) or god knows what else (java has jdbc, but c++? no idea), likely different ways to use stored procs (prepared statements), and will likely influence DB choice a great deal (mssql 2005 express or perhaps MySQL instead) -the difference between using dev tools I know in and out (visual studio), or those I've likely never even seen -the difference between knowing the common 3rd party tools (code gen tools and templates, apps for app architecture/patterns/UML, tools for unit tests and continuous integration, etc) or not at all -the difference between writing little bits of code to make SOAP web services sitting at the top of your middleware running on IIS (secured via WSE), or writing apache CGI modules in C++ from scratch (including all the serialization/deserialization to/from XML, descriptions, contracts, security and pretty much everything else by hand... or perhaps using tools/apps and frameworks I've never heard of - no thanks!) (no point going on for 10 full pages of this stuff really) With C# you've got visual studio's help, you've got MSDN (online or downloaded), TONS of webcasts, a good amount of training videos (a good part being free - and some being just dirt cheap, like learn247's), the .Net FW SDK, quickstarts, newsgroups (including MS' own NGS servers), forums, MSDN blogs, architecture mag and msdn mag, tons of samples, TONS of community sites (like codeproject and such), and countless more resources (versus god knows what for C++) - and arguably some of best dev tools out there, if not the very best. So in short, it WOULD truly matter a great deal. Both scenarios are like totally and completely different, with the exception of both languages looking somewhat similar. But language choice isn't mine, and I don't think he should pick whatever suits me best, but whatever HE's more comfortable with (I won't be the one coding all this) - and I don't mean based only on the language itself, but also on what dev tools and everything else (perhaps he does know linux and apache a great deal even though I sure don't, and he could be greatly familiar with everything C++ and also find C# totally alien)

3 months isn't bad. Not enough to code a masterpiece, but enough to create something useful, mind you there's so much more to do than just coding... Implementing it should be the easy part really (not much stuff to do for one whole semester sorta). Gotcha on the language choice. I likely won't be of much help there, I'm very much into C#, and I do some C for embedded projects (atmels), but hardly any C++ ever. That alone wouldn't be too bad, but it also means you'll be using totally different frameworks than those I use, perhaps even different compilers and IDE and all. I've never written n-tier middleware in C++, and I wouldn't know where to start about making SOAP WebSvcs as a front end to that middleware (C++ CGI app running onto Apache? Handling all the serialization and deserialization to/from XML? WSDL? Security? etc), whereas in C# it's pretty much trivial (a few LOCs - The .Net FW, IIS and WSE do help a great deal and does a large part of the job). You're also likely to pick a DB I'm not as familiar with (like MySQL which I avoid like the plague). For all I know, your app could even be running onto Linux... (different language, frameworks, OS and all - nothing in common) Things like database interfaces (or available ORMs and everything else) will likely also be quite different. Tag clouds? Think of it was weighted keywords or weighted lists. The more people tag something with the same keywords, the bigger they are shown. It's a fairly new idea AFAIK. It's used by a fair number of websites (flickr, del.icio.us, technorati, last.fm, etc) It's an interesting way to get better keywords, but requires users to participate (and to do that they must understand the system somewhat too). Say, you might have tagged a book with "cooking" which would have been appropriate, but it's not overly descriptive. With tag clouds, other people could add things like "health" or "gastronomy" as well. The more people tag it as such, and the bigger those will be shown as (and can be used to order results made by keywords). Other places (like google video) shows 'em all the same size, but ordered by the number of times specific keywords were submitted (keywords submitted most often show up first). Usually people can click on 'em to be directed to other items tagged with similar keywords. Using tag clouds was just an idea, trying to find something new to bring to an existing field that's cluttered with similar apps, but I'm not saying it's necessarily a good idea (or even if it is, perhaps it's a very low priority idea, WAY behind a decent set of reporting features, good usable/easy/intuitive interface and such things) I don't mind helping a bit, but I don't know if I'll be of much use honestly.

Yes. I've been on ebay for quite some time, and I'm starting to get away from it. I wasn't scammed yet, but just yesterday I just thought it had hapenned. The seller started telling me weird things about why I didn't receive the item yet (contradictory) and other odd things, only then to find out his paypal acct isn't verified either and such (finally got the tracking # and it's underway - some customs clearance issue delaying things). But for a short amount of time I was getting pretty worried - especially after I found out that paying with paypal isn't always quite as safe as I thought it was. I thought you were protected for 1250$ CDN automatically - but that's not the case (seller must have at least 50 feedback, have a verified paypal acct, etc). But regardless, it's getting pretty ugly on ebay lately. So much scams! I was browsing thru mp3 players the other day looking for a case, and it was totally cluttered with ipods below half price (cheaper than refurbs for new ones - impossible!), mainly coming from china, from a bunch of sellers with a feedback of 10 (all being from 99 cents purchases). And mp3 players is hardly the only category where you see things like this. And then there's countless counterfeit (or plain illegal) things like dirt cheap DVDs straight from china, warez, game consoles that come with like 200 game "backups" and a modchip installed and such - just goes to show how much they aren't policed or watched (they don't care, as long as can rake in the seller fees) It's far too easy for sellers to ripoff buyers, and there's very little one can do when it happens (paypal will mostly ignore you, and your CC company will be no help as money went to paypal and that's not the actualy problem) But there's way more problems with ebay: -people listing tons of junk in unrelated categories sometimes making it a PITA to find what you're looking for -overly inflated shipping prices - somewhat due to sellers wanting to pay lowe ebay fees, but some sellers seemingly just love to overcharge for shipping (and they don't have to reimburse that part if you'd return it or something) -ebay being known by too much people - including newbies who seemingly don't know how much things cost, often outbidding me by ridiculous amounts, often paying more than full retail price of an item for a 2nd hand one with no warranty (not uncommon at all!) -service being non-existant -scammers buying positive feedback(! like anyone cares for that mp3...) and such, often from private auctions -countless scam items for sale (get rich quick ebooks, high priced electronics for free, weight loss/herbal junk, etc) -sellers that use it as a normal storefront for everything at everyday prices. People go there for DEALS or hard to find stuff - not for stuff you can find elsewhere (including locally), often cheaper... -people bidding on their own items, overbidding you, just to drive your bid to its maximum, then give you a 2nd chance offer (they pay more seller fees, but you're likely paying a LOT more, and they get more feedback), often using private listings to hide their own bids -a fair amount of rather disgusting stuff I'd rather not see (frilly sissy underwear? WTF?) -bait-and-switch sellers (camera stores namely)... Either "we don't have it in stock but for 100$ more...", or you must buy overpriced accessories (was offered some accessories by a seller last week, the same 4$ cables from his website, but for 13$ each... Gee, thanks for the offer!) -TOTALLY broken feedback system. So many things wrong with it it's not even funny: sellers that won't leave positive feedback before you leave them positive feedback, and will retaliate if you leave negative feedback to them for good reasons (a huge portion of sellers, that is), why should someone buying 100 items @ 0.01$ each have more feedback than me (~60) even though I've spent over 1000$ on ebay this month alone? Or why should someone with 200 transactions, 150 being positive, and 50 negative (eek!) still have a higher number? (percentage is shown besides # in smaller letters, but still!), or oner person selling/buying 100 1$ items (positive) and then scamming someone out of 500$+ (-1 feedback) can still have a 99% feedback (it ought to be money weighted)? And negative feedbacks are almost being replaced by "no feedback" in fear of reprisal by seller (leaving neg feeback too), so their "negative" feedback is artifically low. And the feedback system also ignores how long the account has been opened for. -All the horror stories about paypal out there (some are quite scary) Anyways. I'm not giving up completely on eBay as it's a good place to find some hard to find stuff sometimes, but I'd rather pay a little more to buy from a reputable source.

Nah... It's not the enhanced security doing it, that doesn't give you 403's. But there's just not enough infos for us to be able to guess either. -Is it only IE doing that or do other web browsers work just fine? -Did you check see if DNS queries resolve properly? (right IP address), or even if you can access other sites directly by IP instead of name (w/o getting 403)? -If you're still getting 403's, try using a http debugging proxy (or LiveHTTPHeaders in Firefox) to capture the requests so we can see what's hapenning (paste captured infos in code tags or such) -Does everything else network related work just fine? (and if IP addr & subnet is OK) -Any valuable informations on the actual 403 page? i.e. NOT the "friendly" 403 from IE but the "real" one. (is it from squid? local IIS/apache? anything at all?) -Any firewall filtering queries or restricting sites in use? ... Give us some more infos and then we can try making an educated guess, but with so little infos, there's no way to tell. My current wild guess would be, somehow your IEAK build of IE is messed up (I'd have censored the branding if I was you... "nice" script in /pv/ )

Something for a library is a valid idea (perhaps not an overly creative one though). Automatically categorizing books? Not a bad idea, but I don't know how you'd expect it to work (by keywords in title? that'd be too trivial almost. ISBN related? dunno...) You can keep that idea and do something novel, new, unusual with it - bring the old book database app thing to a whole new level! Find some new and useful features people would want. Do some brainstorming from looking at other apps (other book management apps, or even borrow some ideas from some other great apps). I dunno... Perhaps things like: -book reviews and ratings (a bit like amazon does, or IMDB does for movies) -- could work with some central login (student accounts) for other school related things? -tag clouds instead of plain keywords -availability and reservation features (and perhaps email students when a reserved book is returned, overdue books and such) -work with barcodes (readers and printing them) if possible (fair amount of work to do from scratch though) -reporting (so many possibilities! - overdue books, missing books, etc) ... (I could go on and on and on! Finding potential features is so easy) And of course things like this are not just about features or such, but about programming, so I wouldn't go crazy on the features either, but would definitely have a solid architecture behind it (n-tier app, web services, good DB schema, etc). You can perhaps use an ORM or even code generation to speed up development if you're short on time (no idea how much time you can devote to this or of any project constraints). Good, maintainable, stable (unit tests, etc), well documented and commented code. Preferably use existing/well established standards (like MARC records in this case). If you choose this, I would look into ways to get the existing data into your new app (can you even get the data?) Not like you can expect someone to manually re-enter every book, and without that data the app would be rather useless. Anyways. So many possibilities, but not knowing how much time you can devote to this (nor how much you can accomplish per hour or day), not knowing much in terms of constraints (besides "C++ only" which seems odd), it's pretty hard to make any recommendations...

The beta (well, last RC)? Likely it will. But then again, they expire. Either 14 days with no activation, or one year with the current evaluation keys for those who asked for one (I missed the opportunity, and 14 days is too short of a trial to even bother with it). I was looking forward to it, but since I would need a new PC to get it, and that's it's highly overpriced, I just may not bother with it at all...

Yes, VMWare Server (or even better - ESX if you can afford it) truly rocks for server consolidation! While GUIs inside VMWare aren't quite as responsive than a native OS install (no hardware acceleration for one thing), for server purposes/processes it's not all that bad. I run several such things inside VMs (pgsql/db2/oracle/mysql/fbird mainly for testing and porting apps, low-overhead lamp stack, iis and mssql 2k & 2005 on win2k3 for testing deployments and upgrades, same for AD and network stuff, etc) and it's performing quite well. I expected pretty high latencies and such, but it's nearly as fast. The big advantage being I can fire up what's needed only when required (or leave some running). No need to have tons of testing boxes - just one box with enough RAM and HD space for images (and CPU depending on load).

Don't wanna pay for it? Then use linux or whatever old version you got. Advocating piracy and having "spam" for a bt site (w/ torrents of copyrighted contents as expected) as your nick and sig... Against the most basic forum rules (piracy AND spam as far as I'm conerned). Won't be surprised if you get banned without warning. I haven't used XP upgrade (much less a Vista upgrade version), but all the upgrade versions I've tried so far did ask for some previous install media and/or keys (or an installed and registered version) - useless for unattended installs, and quite bothersome. Yes. That would be far better. I already find my PS CS2 upgrade version annoying (but price was right - just 150$). And 500$ is way too much money for a desktop OS indeed, even at 300$ I find it pretty bad (XP Home OEM is like 96$ CAD right now, and most people find that bad enough!) Zxian: yes, but then again who needs and buys XP Pro retail for home? For 99% of them, XP Home is more than enough, and the OEM version is cheap (96$CAD like I've said before). Not everyone changes motherboard every other week either, so most people I know go for that (if it wasn't already bundled with the PC they bought) I'm definitely NOT switching to linux as a main desktop OS anytime soon as basically none of the apps I use and need run on it, nor have direct equivalents (Visual Studio 2005 & SQL Server 2005 & tons of other programming stuff - and all the apps I've made, Photoshop CS2 & DSLR's RAW software and such, MS Office (although OOo isn't all that bad), Visio and TONS more). But it'll be useful for some little tasks to start with (browse web, play music - things like that) but mainly for some server tasks I've meant to get a permanent linux box for (firewall/NAT, LAMP stack, Asterix, samba, etc). I've meant to try mono for quite some time too. Looks like I was late on the news though. It was also posted under the "news" section, and the site's front page too (I always go directly to forum, so hadn't seen it).

IE is totally unsecure and absolute junk, I'd remove it if it wasn't of all the useful stuff that depended on it

Prices in $ Canadian/ $ USD / $ Euro (using current rates) Retail versions Windows Vista Ultimate $499 CAD / $450 USD / 351 EUR Windows Vista Business $379 CAD / $342 USD / 266 EUR Windows Vista Home Premium $299 CAD / $270 USD / 210 EUR Windows Vista Home Basic $259 CAD / $234 USD / 182 EUR Upgrade versions Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade $299 CAD / $270 USD / 210 EUR Windows Vista Business Upgrade $249 CAD / $225 USD / 175 EUR Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade $199 CAD / $180 USD / 140 EUR Windows Vista Home Basic Upgrade $129 CAD / $117 USD / 90 EUR Prices, and release data of Jan 30th 2007 is based on Amazon (it's now available for pre-ordering) Thanks god the OEM prices will be cheaper, but even then it'll still be a fair amount of cash. I sure ain't paying 499$ for a desktop OS anytime soon (I'd buy a SBS 2003 Standard license WAY before that, which funnily is cheaper; or even the action pack perhaps). Chances are, lots of people just won't upgrade to Vista because of the price (most people will also need to upgrade their PC too), or will only get it if it's bundled with a new PC. I was looking forward to some of the new stuff in Vista, but not at those prices (home premium, 300$? Still too much). The OEM prices better be substantially lower. (And then again all the fun of complicated and bothersome online activation things - lovely! Especially motherboad-tied OEM licenses... And likely still all the WGA joy -- what an advantage!) The other thing I'm starting to see more and more is people who decide to stick with older versions of OS'es (i.e. they'll stick with XP forever), or people moving on to linux (partially or completely). Actually, I just might finally buy an extra PC as a permanent Linux box in the next few days... Sick of paying an arm and a leg for windows.

Word isn't a picture/image format! Ever heard of jpegs, gifs, pngs and such? :angrym:

This poll is like "What do you use Microsoft for?". VMWare is a company, not a specific piece of software. They have several different apps: the free player, their workstation product, their new and free server product (used to be called GSX), and finally ESX (plus a bunch of extra tools like P2V). And the choices are OS'es instead of actual uses. (So the question is seemingly more along the lines of "what OS you run in VMWare workstation" - and you pick only one single OS as an answer! (I doubt you'll get meaningful answers out of the poll results) If the question is really meant to be "What do you use VMWare workstation for?", then my answer's "nothing". I have no use for it. Although I do use their new free server app everyday for what would fit under "other". It's used for testing networked apps, temporary testing servers (if I want to test some app against say, a PostgreSQL DB running on Linux, I'm not buying a PC for that which will get used twice a year - you just create a VM instead and fire it up as req'd), I use it for testing app deployments and installs (on clean installs of OS'es and different/older OS'es), management scripts (ran against networked PCs), testing various *nix stuff (I might eventually build a dedicated *nix box, but I already have too many PC stuff laying around, and that's one more PC to update and maintain) - there's lots of good and free appliances you can get from their website (some of which are very good/nice), etc. Virtualization has tons of uses.

Yeah, that makes no sense. If you cancel during lead-in, there won't be anything on the CD (lead-in is before the data track itself). And cancelling during the lead-out will NOT prevent anyone from copying... Besides, it takes very good timing to do so. Lead-out is quite short, and the burning apps don't react instantly (click cancel, confirm you want to, app does it's thing and tries to make the drive stop - always takes a while). If anything, you'll just have a non-standard CD that will give you problems. If the PC using it to install can read it, it can be copied. The only effective protection here is preventing physical access.

A script made in vbscript is not automatically better than some app just because the language used is built into the OS. I'd say it's more of a question of how well it does what it's meant to do. And between adding a vbscript to your disc or adding a little 3rd party utility, there's not much difference either. Your script didn't come with windows anymore than that utility - they're both "3rd party" if I can say. What language was used to create it (c++ or vbscript or whatever) or which way it's executed (compiled win32 binary or an interpreted script) doesn't matter all that much. There's many ways to shutdown a PC too... There's API calls for that e.g. ExitWindowsEx and InitiateSystemShutdownEx (use via Interop / P/Invoke if req'd), utilities built right into windows (shutdown.exe) and similar 3rd party utilities, and other ways - like the WMI method you've used (which also can have issues - like not having SeShutdownPrivilege in local security policy). You just can't say it's better because windows supports vbscript (which again can be removed or not supported right, have it's extension's association messed up in registry or whatever). It depends mainly on what method is best suited to reboot your PC i.e. For Win9x, forget about WMI... There's "no one-size-fits-all" solution. There are different scenarios, and people have preferences (compiled apps - open or closed source, basic scripts, methods of rebooting, etc). WMI is very handy for remote management of PCs, but in this case it's only acting as a wrapper that calls InitiateSystemShutdownEx for you (just as shutdown.exe and picking reboot in start menu does). Calling it directly from native win32 code works just as well if not better (no need to interpret a script and bypass "wrappers") -- my 0.02$ HTAs only have even more overhead (IE takes quite a fair amount of RAM just for a messagebox) and requirements (IE 5.5+, and some features could be disabled as well) I'm not saying vbscript isn't a good solution or anything. I'm just saying it isn't the only nor automatically the best one either. Others can pick whatever they prefer/think is best/works best for them... Your favorite/ultimate best solution ever != everyone else's preferred solution.

Why bother moving it to the poll center? That's already a couple threads and polls like this. As everyone's already said, XP for desktops, and 2003 for servers. That's what they're meant for, and are better suited for. Besides, have you seen the price tag on win 2003? That alone should prevent most people from even considering it (beisdes 12yo kids pirating it and then using it for gaming and such just because they can). If you need IIS6/RRAS/DNS/WINS/RIS/MSMQ/WMS or such server components, or need to install server software (SQL Server, ISA, Exchange, ...) or server purposes (corporate file/web server, terminal server/citrix, mail server, VPN, etc - and I'm not talking about home use or a for couple users) then you use 2003. Otherwise you use XP. Pretty simple...

More good? You mean, gooder? Nah. The console really isn't better, it's just quite a bit more expensive. The other real difference (besides price) is game selection. Oh, and seemingly it's not in production yet(!) and major component shortages are already predicted, which will lower sales even further (as if the price alone wasn't enough of a deterrent)