Jody Thornton

I've opted to go with Kingsoft Office 2012/2013 Professional. So long Microsoft Office (unless you want to make a product like v2003 again...lol)

First off, I hate it too, but I don't think Metro is going anywhere. Microsoft needs to compete with Apple and Google, and though I think they will lose the battle, they need to be seen as doing something to attract the phone and tablet markets. Even though corporate business is their core market, they are not the progressive business that will allow Microsoft to move ahead. It's kind of like how Asa Dolzer of Mozilla frowns on business because they want longer acceptance periods of standardization than the rapid release cycle allows, whereas Asa wants to appeal to those who want the latest and greatest. Unfortunately, Microsoft feels they need to appeal to the same bunch. . Second point is, I really wonder if the "dominant" market constitues those of us who want to stick with more traditional Explorer type applications. Those of us who do tend to want to stick with XP or windows 7. That doesn't translate into sales. Windows 8 hopefully does, but I don't think the desktop really represents the future (it will become a niche really). I think that for most people, the upgrade path has benn Windows XP to the iPad or perhaps Android as a close second. Newer versions of Windows don't even register to younger people now for the large part. And Microsoft needs to clawback and get a least a bite of that tablet pie.

I like those too. What I would like to know is were there any tablet/netbook hybrids that would run Windows 7? What about the ARM devices that run Chrome OS? Could they run a Windows OS?

I don't think social media is going away at all. Just more Twitter (which I loathe) I like certain groups on Facebook (ones with Vintage pictures, history and the like) but I think that's an example of how Facebook is attracting older audiences.

Which was precisely what I ended up doing. I have her back on IE10.

My girlfriend's HP Notebook with Windows 7 SP1, really bogs down on Gmail when using Internet Explorer 11. I have checked that Compatibility Views are defeated, and that Default (Edge) is used as the rendering style in the F12 console. So I visit my friends this weekend. She has a Windows 7 based Dell PC. He has a new gaming system with Windows 8.1 installed. Both have Internet Explorer 11, and both load Gmail just fine. They both work great. All three builds are x64 editions (both Windows 7 and the one Windows 8.1 PC). So what gives? Why is my girlfriends IE 11 installation stupified by Gmail? If I unistall IE 11, then IE 10 works fine on the same PC.

This weekend I setup my friend's new PC. It was a gaming PC with Windows 8.1 installed. Now guess what? [OK....here goes.....] I actually liked it. It ran quite well. The first thing I did was install IOBit's StartMenu 8 (though since it's ad-supported I may try something else for him. But I installed Office 2007, setup IE 11 and transferred his data back, giving me ample time to use the system. It really felt like a less animated, but more speedy Windows 7. It worked VERY well. So maybe, ahem, just maybe Windows 8 is somewhere oft in my future. Er, we'll see.

I have installed Sharky's loot, and it is working with MPC-HC x64. Now to get it to play by clicking a link....hmmmm

Hey dencorso, it sounds as if you are more "anti-client" rather than "anti-OL 2003". I guess what I really wonder if how much more unsafe is it to run Outlook 2003 than it is to run say Outlook 2013 or 2007.

I should really ask this on the Windows 2000 forum, but just how usable is it when UURollup is installed?

So I take it you'd agree to ABSOLUTELY NOT EVER use Outlook 2003 again, eh? See I really like Outlook 2003, so it bothers me a great deal to abandon it.

I was able to find v1.8 of WinSxS Lite which seems to do a credible job of searching out what componenets are obsolete, and then it can delete them (Almost like DISM for Vista...lol, but not really). I may try that and see if Windows Updates work afterwards.

Really? Wouldn't Server 2008 R2 be build on the Windows NT v6.1 codebase? I would think that 2008 and 2008 R2 would be distinctly different operating systems. So I'd be surprised that Win7/2008R2 updates would work on Vista, no?

Yes that I'm familiar with. But thanks nonetheless.

Some of your points I wanted to address. And this was exactly the sort of viewpoints I was looking for. I am a capable person when it comes to systems, but I like to hear others opinions. So no worries about being off-topic. ( a ) I didn't "Lite" the installation of Vista x64 when I used it last year, and it was on an alternate hardisk. I am the first to say that it ran VERY WELL. Other than the boot logo/welcome screen taking much longer than XP (I use classic logon with XP x64), once the desktop appeared, it was likety split fast. I even foucsed on authoring MMC plugins using the Trusted Installer creds (so for example, I could customize my services screen), running all of the apps I needed (I know now that I had to install Windows Help so that I could use "Help" on classic apps using the Help code based on v3.0. Everything ran pretty smoothly. ( b ) I did defeat services and processes, I found that turning off Indexing, and removing the Index Pointers on the NTFS partition gave a resonably noticeable performance boost (except of course with searching...lol, but that's OK). Defeating SuperFetch also performed better (I retained conventional Prefetch). An I have many years experience with NTFS parttions since the Windows NT 3.5x days, modifying cluster sizes, etc.... I have just always noticed that FAT32 performed better on small volumes (It certainly did in Windows 2000 and XP) and I didn't yet try to see if Vista followed suit. But given the difficulties, I'll stick with NTFS ( c ) I still hate to hate something bloated just because we have ample hardware resources to our disposal. I like things quick and tight. Just because I can get a 1 TB drive doesn't mean I want my OS to gobble up half of it. I want it so I can store insame ooodles of data. ( d ) I will definitely go with Windows 7 on my next machine (I am not a fan of Metro, so Windows 8 is out; though I hear that when using the Explorer shell and Explorer based apps, it's actually faster than Windows 7), but since I have the Vista OS and it's legit, I'll use this until 2017. I really appreciate your comments. Have a super weekend.

Thank you for your comments (very well thought out I must admit). Are you saying in your closing statements that I should stick with Windows XP x64 Edition? Will the stability I have with it remain as exploits are possible down the road? I wrote this on the XP x64 Forum; maybe you can give me your thoughts: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I mentioned on the Vista forum that soon, I'll be ready "upgrade" to Vista x64 Ultimate in January. For some reason, the bios and SCSI subsystem on my HP XW8200 Workstation doesn't fully support Windows 7, so I'll move to Vista x64 instead (I ran a test installation back last year for a couple weeks and Vista ran REALLY well on my system). So that means I am on my last two months of Windows XP x64 Edition. As I mentioned in the other post, it's almost bittersweet, since I'm looking forward to using something more updated and supported, but my XP x64 installation runs so smoothly. I guess my concerns are two-fold. One is that support for current software will be increasingly dropped week by week, and month by month. Gradually, I won't be able to browse a modern web, and that concerns me. Also, I am concerned about the lack of support when it comes to Windows Updates after April. Now I know there are convoluted workarounds to allowing Windows Server 2003 updates to install on Windows XP x64 Edition, but even then; that's only fixes me until July 2015. So I figure I may as well jump to Vista now and enjoy three years of having a supported OS. That should last the life of the machine. I would love to stay on XP x64. I loved using three specific operating systems in my computing life: OS/2 Warp v3.0, Windows 2000 Professional and now Windows XP x64 Edition. They have been absolutely trouble free (acutally OS/2 had that single input queue freeze up issue but oh well...lol). But I wish there was a direct replacement for XP. I wish there was a newer version of Microsoft Windows that had a low memory footprint, and worked well with a wide variety of apps. XP was also easier to streamline thanks to nLite...lol. Oh well, thanks for the memories Windows XP.

Wow - this is VERY disappointing. I'll take a look at the WinSxS removal features in vLite, but they sound dangerous.

Really? Wow that's disappointing. So what will shrink it from the start? What is the benefit to slipstreaming? I thought if service pack leftovers could be clean, that maybe there are some updates that could be cleared too.

Yep. More exactly it was the "passive" form, "You had already been told so", implying "What did you think, that it was instead doable with a partition conversion and that it was easy?" LOL - Actually yes, I reluctantly take someone's final word without challenging it, and I've learned that while some see it as a contestant persoanlity trait, it's actually a good thing. Too many times when I've taken "no" for an answer and then pursued something further, I ended up getting my wish (whether it was finding a vinyl LP that every online and retail channel said was not available, or accomplishing a function on the PC that could not be done) When you think about it, the Win9x and Win2KPro forums are full of cases where users of those OSs were told "no", but because they were stubborn, they can now do many things on Win9x and Win2KPro that were deemed impossible. To me that sort of stubbornness is inspiring (off putting to some indeed...lol, but inspiring in terms of what it can accomplish) Nonetheless, I'm very appreciative of all of the information and ideas you've all offered.

I'm not sure that I follow jaclaz (???)

In XP (using nLite), I am familiar with using slipstreaming to reduce the size of the $hf_mig$ folder. I wonder if slipstreaming Vista updates into the source have the same exact effect on the WinSxS folder?

Wow nothing eh? Oh well - that's bumped it...lol

Wow! This is sounding VERY difficult. Like I said, I thought that a partition conversion utility would do the trick, but it's sounds like a process ridden with problems. I think come Januaray when I perform my installation of Vista x64, I will stick with NTFS using 4 KB clusters. Now I just need to figure out how to not let the MFT grow too much in size after I delete files. But that's for another thread.

At least with XP you have integrated wireless support. And you can support more modern browsers.

First off, I wanted to apologize; I never meant blast anyone. I think you know where I was coming from, and I'm sorry I misinterpreted the intended tone of resonses. Wow this is getting involved. I was just hoping to use a partition conversion utility. I will still try that though.