Firefox 1.0.7 now out

Originally posted by HighFlyer
Was the same at my workplace Michael, until i changed the policy There are some advantages to having control over your company's IT

Waaaah, I miss being a SysAdmin (and I never thought I'd say that!) [:(][:(][:(][:(]

Cheers

Michael

I thought windows 3.1 was an operating system... seeing as I used to have it years ago. If that wasn't the OS name that what was? It's weird how it was setup like a macintosh OS, with the "start" bar on the top and such.

As I recall, it was a graphics programme which ran over the top of DOS (5 or 6 I cannot remember)
Was it Windows 98 when it had its own OS or is XP the true OS version?

I think the point being made is that Win 3.1 was a rubbish attempt at doing a GUI, and was essentially a big fat ugly DOS program.

Anyway....

I'm going off FF because it seems to get slower and less stable the more I do with it. It's pretty unusable on my PC and getting worse on the Mac. Plus, it can't seem to handle Flash properly any more on my Mac. I could try and work out why, but instead I just use Safari which works fast and is rock solid.

I have "SafariStand" which gives me thumbnail tabs down the side which are, frankly, delightful.

Bin your PCs and buy a Mac Mini, NOW. [y]

[Scrooge]

Originally posted by onionz



Bin your PCs and buy a Mac Mini, NOW. [y]

uumm...no thanks..

I havn't had that problem with mine and as we know im on the net 24/7/365,as soon as I get a copy of VISTA (HINT) i'll let you know about the new IE,the one thing I have noticed with FF is once I mange to make the thing crash I have to reboot or looking at it badly will make it crash again.

[mitchja]

Originally posted by jetwet1

Originally posted by onionz



Bin your PCs and buy a Mac Mini, NOW. [y]

uumm...no thanks..

I havn't had that problem with mine and as we know im on the net 24/7/365,as soon as I get a copy of VISTA (HINT) i'll let you know about the new IE,the one thing I have noticed with FF is once I mange to make the thing crash I have to reboot or looking at it badly will make it crash again.

Isn't IE 7 not too far away now anyway.....it's out for beta testing at the moment. Sure I read somewhere it's due for general release before the end of the year.

Regards

Originally posted by jetwet1

uumm...no thanks..

I havn't had that problem with mine and as we know im on the net 24/7/365,as soon as I get a copy of VISTA (HINT) i'll let you know about the new IE,the one thing I have noticed with FF is once I mange to make the thing crash I have to reboot or looking at it badly will make it crash again.

I wouldn't get too excited about Vista, having used it myself. They have abandoned the genuinely new features (e.g. the Future Storage system) because "they don't have time to incorporate" them, despite having three years or so. They now seem to have produced a new theme for XP and are calling it Vista.

IE7 has tabs. Anyone who's had the pleasure of a decent browser will already be familiar with those.

Why no interest in the Mac? If you spend 24/7 on the net, you'd find Mac OSX can handle your needs quite well.

Windows Vista is actually the first windows OS to be built from the ground up since like windows 95 or 98 or maybe even before. I am pretty sure that what we are all seeing in terms of screenshots will not actually be what vista will look or feel like. It's still a while away. I will probably stay with XP though, it's been said that Vista will take an insane amount of RAM and a huge CPU in order to work properly.

I wish I could get a mac but I have so much stuff that won't work on it it's just not an option, unfortunately. Well, it is, but an expensive one!

In terms of an internet browser, if Firefox gets too buggy I will probably use Opera, or maybe this other browser that hasn't been released yet.

[Scrooge]

Let's not get started on the Mac V Pc thing again,the mini looks nice and sure takes up very little space,but for what I do it lacks shall we say horsepower.

I have been looking for a good emultaor to try OSx on my pc.

[Scrooge]

OT but kind of one topic.

http://www.malevole.com/mv/misc/killerquiz/

[HighFlyer]

Even more OT - but for anybody who hasnt tried Windows RG (Really Good Edition) check this out: http://www.deanliou.com/WinRG/WinRG.htm

Its fantastic, try out Word and Solitaire too!

(for one of our less techy guys in the office we mocked this up in Flash and ran it on his pc, telling him that we had upgraded our O/S to a Beta overnight for testing. He spent a good 10 minutes playing with it and finally commented "oh this is worse than 3.1" LOL

Enjoy

[Scrooge]

Sarah that is sweet.

Oh those old fun exe files ..the cursor chasing one,the one that would change the folders postions on th edesktop every couple of minutes,or my personal fav the earthquake one,every 5 minutes the whole screen would shake like in an earthquake,that had our IT dept. going round in circles for months.

[RichardMannion]

Originally posted by VS-EWR
Windows Vista is actually the first windows OS to be built from the ground up since like windows 95 or 98 or maybe even before. I am pretty sure that what we are all seeing in terms of screenshots will not actually be what vista will look or feel like. It's still a while away. I will probably stay with XP though, it's been said that Vista will take an insane amount of RAM and a huge CPU in order to work properly.

I wish I could get a mac but I have so much stuff that won't work on it it's just not an option, unfortunately. Well, it is, but an expensive one!

In terms of an internet browser, if Firefox gets too buggy I will probably use Opera, or maybe this other browser that hasn't been released yet.

There is a lot of hype and myth floating around regarding Vista. I have been working on it for a while, and the builds that have been leaked are not true representations of the product. Without getting into our build process to heavily (as it all get acronym heavy with idx, idw, tst blah blah), the current builds are now being stripped of debug code that is required during construction, and naturally the OS begins to run at its true speed and functionality. In terms of system requirements, this is one of the areas that is been misportrayed. True its not going to run on a 64Mb PII, but I have it running absolutely fine (with debug code) on my machines at home and work and they are not brand spanking new machines. P4 2.5 with 512Mb of RAM. One key element is your graphics card (the GPU) - to get the 'Glass' effects (modified Aero theme) you will need to have a Video Card that has supporting LDDM drivers (Longhorn Display Driver Model). At the moment NVidia are being a bit slack, and are behind ATI. I have an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro at home (128Mb) that works beautifully with glass, and that is a card from a couple of years ago.

Its not that far away to be honest, Beta 2 will be out very soon and if people (IT Pro's etc) are interested, they will be able to obtain a TechPreview version of Vista.

You have to remember that some of the changes are not going to be of use to the home user, but are a huge change and improvement for the corporate user. I am changing roles in the next month to work on Vista full time as a Deployment Speciailist, and there is a lot to learn!

Yes I know IE7 has tabs, but there is some other stuff that hasn't been shown yet which is really good for the home user (remember not everyone is computer savvy), which will assist with the security angle.

All the public info on Vista from us is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.mspx

Thanks,
Richard

Wow, Richard, didn't realize you were actually working on Windows Vista! Must be exciting.

I have a 256mB ATI Radeon 9600, 768MB of RAM, but only a 1.2 GHz CPU. I've been meaning to get a new one but don't really have the money right now.

[Decker]

VS_EWR - Windows 3.1 was a program that was intended to behave like an Operating System but as you needed to buy DOS to make it work it wasn't actually an Operating System.

Richard - we've had Vista for a while now but I refuse to allow it to be loaded on work kit - don't want to risk breaking it

[Scrooge]

Thank you Richard,glad to hear from you,wondered whrn you would drop in.

I'm happy to see Vista is coming along,there's been a few copies of im guessing the alpha floating around on the file sharing systems,not that I want anything to do with those..

The current CTP build 5219 of Vista seems to run reasonably well, if rather slowly as a result of the debugging code, and as Richard says the best driver solution for the fancy graphics at the moment is via ATI, not NVidia. Hopefully other graphics vendors (especially Intel whose new chipsets include on-board 3D-graphics) will get up to speed quickly.

Don't forget that there is still a long way to go before Vista is released: beta 2 is likely in the first week of December this year, but the actual release is looking like Q3/4 next year.

BC

PS. And I really hate IE7 compared with Firefox...

Will it run with my Radeon X600?

Originally posted by AlanA
Will it run with my Radeon X600?

Yes, I believe it will work fine.

BC

Originally posted by BlackCat

Originally posted by AlanA
Will it run with my Radeon X600?

Yes, I believe it will work fine.

BC

TA [y]:D

[Scrooge]

Well I just ordered the parts for my new system,I included an ati card rather than an Nvidia one just in case,I already have an Nvidia here so I will give that a try.

Ooops, I seem to have dropped into the position of MS-basher on this thread [:I];).

I use Windows at work, so I find OSX a pleasant change at home. I only suggest the Mini as a starting point for those interested in what else is available. There are iMacs and G5s when you're ready...

The changes in successive Windows version seem to be diminishing. XP after all, is mostly Win2k but looking nicer. Why are MS focussing on the GUI so much in comparison to other new features now?

VS-EWR - i wouldn't agree with what you say about Vista being built from the ground up and being the first such OS since Win95/98. My understanding of the product lines is like this:

Win 95 -> Win 98 -> Win ME

Win NT -> Win2k -> Win XP

Win Server 2000 -> Win Server 2003

Then Vista takes the codebase of Server 2003 and adds XP-ness to make it a consumer/workstation OS.

To give Microsoft some credit, Vista is much more than just W2K3 Server with an XP look and feel. There are two key technologies that stand out as advancing the platform: Windows Communication Foundation (codenamed Indigo) and Windows Presentation Foundation (codenamed Avalon). The former allows developers to build systems that talk to each other across networks, the latter creates the possibility of much richer user interfaces, the first of which is the "Aero Glass" UI that is currently shipped with the Vista beta code.

Together these technologies make up something called WinFX which is the new developer API. Importantly this is an "all-managed" API which puts .NET at the center of the Windows platform rather than as an add-in at present. Although the old style Win32 API continues to exist, and WinFX will be made available as a retrofit to Windows XP, the likelihood is that it will disappear over time in exactly the same way as has happened to the low level DOS API.

So yes, Vista is an evolution of XP and .NET, but in reality it marks a huge change, potentially as big as the shift from DOS to Win3.1, or from Win3.1 to NT.

BC

Is Outlook Express dissapearing? (As someone who has dragged his Card Files programme kicking and screaming all the way to XP)I am not yet ready to give myself totally to Outlook

Originally posted by onionz
VS-EWR - i wouldn't agree with what you say about Vista being built from the ground up and being the first such OS since Win95/98. My understanding of the product lines is like this:

Win 95 -> Win 98 -> Win ME

Win NT -> Win2k -> Win XP

Win Server 2000 -> Win Server 2003

Then Vista takes the codebase of Server 2003 and adds XP-ness to make it a consumer/workstation OS.

Okay, so apparently I misremembered the article. I just found it, (although you need to be a Wall Street Journal subscriber to see it) and it says that Vista needs to be built from scratch, but.... Basically what they mean, is that previously, a team of developers would make one part of the OS and then at the end it would all just be stiched together. This time though, it would have been so buggy and annoying that nothing would work properly, so vista had to be built from scratch that way. Sorry for the confusion guys/girls.