well, early, at least. today, i'll install the DSL at the car wash, this i will enjoy.
i adore both my jobs, but there is one thing that absolutely drives me to drink. windows XfuckingP. both places have newer, nicer computers than these here. not top of the line, but faster by a bunch than mine at home. and yet, and yet, they run like dogs. not fast dogs, mind you. they run like thirteen year old overweight three-legged arthritic dogs with asthma. all that foo-foo pastel prettification, all cloying and patronizing and intended to hide any actual control or functionality behind layer after layer of helpful options - "here, we've decided you want one of these things, rather than what you actually want". it pisses off power users and confuses newbies, which should be a really sucky business model, and yet, and yet ...
... and you know, i really had to dig to figure out something to bitch about, otherwise, other than the of course frantic nature of the way my days go these days, things are good.
XP is an improvement for Windows, and a lot like Apple's OSX, but I agree that it's got a mind of it's own. I use PC's at work and Apple at home. My TI Powerbook is the best computing experience I've ever had. Period.
I went by the Verizon sales office today and tried out their DSL demo; do I gather correctly that I have to have an Ethernet 10/100 card installed in order to make it work, along with their modem and the right memory, disk space, etc.?
That sounds about right; most broadband modems feed to you over Cat5. So a NIC compatible with their output (100 or 10/100) and the appropriate drivers and such... Some disk space for sure for the drivers and software and a decent amount of memory to handle some overhead should cover it (I don't name numbers: I'm a poor example 'cause I think half a gig is minimal. Hit me on email).
Then again, you could go wireless: there's quite a selection of wireless routers out there, even at the office supply stores (and often with four RJ45 ports and even a print server), that will plug into your dsl modem and feed to a wireless card in your computer (either PCI or PCMCIA). You do have to deal with security with that, although it sure beats a long wiring run...
"...things are good."
Very nice to hear. Now get that DSL installed so you can come out and play!
heh....well, at least they're dogs...and not slugs.
I'm going to sound like the anti-christ here, but I dig the WinXp on my new computer a lot better than the Win98 on my old one. This is based strictly on the fact that the new Dell goes from a dead stop to fully on in about 8 seconds, compared with minutes for the old Win98.
The GoBack feature (system restore) is cool too.
Of course I don't know any better because I've never had the guts to run Linux or buy an Apple...
the more i use my mac the more i absolutely despise xp. i'm just so friggin stoked it's got unix underneath.
WinXP actually runs fantabulously on anything 266mhz and above. The school I'm going to has a crowd of 266's, sure they're not as fast as my Athlon 1600+, but they aren't slow. In fact, they run faster in WinXP than they do when I boot onto the Win98 partition. Maybe there's something wrong with the WinXP installs you're using? WinXP can be horrid if the install b0rks because it KEEPS WORKING, just very very very slowly.
::ignores the comments from Mac addicts above about OS X, which makes me want to run into the wall screaming and pulling my hair out:: My G3 is happiest in Linux,thankyouverymuch. =]::