Yes, games are the problem.... Although there have been projects around for ages, no decent flight simulator on Linux yes (and, BTW, that is one Microsoft product I did not mind buying - along with Fly!, Flight Unlimited and others, of course ).

I agree with basically all of this. I'm mostly talking about what might heve been going through the corporate minds of Apple and MS many years ago. I have to make two corrections:

AFAIK, there was no binary compatibility between x86-NT and Alpha-NT. In fact, IIRC, the only reason Alpha support existed at all was because of a lawsuit DEC brought against MS (but that could be a corrupted memory).

IE is not the best browser for MacOSX. I would have to give that to OmniWeb. It's a little slower, but it kicks some major ass. You should try out the 4.1 beta if you haven't already.

Any browser with a spellcheck for fourms wins in my book

Though IE on the Mac is decent. Much better then the Windows counterpart. Then again, Microsoft's Mac department has a history of releasing decent things.

I've been running OmniWeb for two weeks now. I met some of the guys down at Macworld (had to lend them our Firewire drive and a video card ) So of course I grabbed a CD.

You could run x86 binaries under Alpha NT. Using DEC's FX!32 - an an emulator of sorts (translator anyway). I don't know if NT for Alpha had anything to do with a lawsuit. It made sense at some point, just like it did for PPC. I'd love to see MS move to another base, because Intel chip technology bites the big one.

Bruno

What about OSX for itanium? That's high level server hardware anyway. MS is trying that angle i think.

I agree Drakino; Windows XP is a step in the right direction for Windows ME users, but definately a step in the wrong direction for Windows 2000 users...

I've had my own horror stories w/ WinXP- (latest one caused me to reinstall from scratch which wasted half of a day since it was on a laptop with no cdrom drive/no floppy...)

-mark

Explorer wouldn't respawn? Ugh. Does the "hold-down-shift-when-selecting-Restart" trick work to get it back perchance? (Worst case, three-fingered salute to get to Task Mgr in XP, then there's a shut down menu there - more or less the same thing.)

Current Intel Roadmaps show a new Itanium, codenamed Madison. It should launch in 2004, and it will contain Alpha technology.

At least something finally came of the Alpha after the Compaq Digital merger...

Have you taken a look at FlightGear? I know a few years ago it needed something nuts like an Onyx to run, but the requirements have been getting easier to meet. The hardware requirements state that an Athlon 800 with a Voodoo Banshee was able to sustain 80 fps. Some of the things in this sim just rock. Take a look.

Luckily, I've been going on two machines (one lap, one desk) since december 14. very good luck so far, unlike most people I guess. little trouble with the install of the 802.11b, but now that it's in, it's fine.

knock on wood.

g

So now I have 2 choices to keep my data on it and do a clean reload

Option 3)
Grab a linux boot disc. Boot your laptop from, copy your data to a safe network drive.
Then you can do a fresh install of Win2K, or even better, Linux.

They seem to have gone long way since I checked them up last time (say, two years ago). Thaks for the pointer.

I've been running XP Pro for about a year I guess...maybe a little longer...I have had overall good experience with it. The main thing I found is don't be cheap on memory. I run a full gig and my desktop flys...I can d/l large files, play music or watch a video in a 'corner screen' have explorer up and three layers into a spreadsheet while also remoting into the servers at work for some mainantaince.
It's been much more rock solid than W2K was.
Also the Restore feature works really great also...where as under 98 and even 2K, it sucked hind tit.
Just my opinion....
dww

Wow, thats a blast from the past. Made me appreciate my Powerbook (soon to be running Tiger) even more. I did eventually get XP to a usable state on that laptop over time as more mature drivers came out. And even today I run XP on my gaming laptop, though I question the stability of it still. My work PC footstool runs XP as well, and even with light use a few months after a clean load, the thing is dirt slow for no aparent reason.

Again, I am much happier post OS X migration. While OS X does have quirks, they don't beat the ones on the MS side. The install on my Powerbook is rock solid, even after pulling my user data in from Jaguar when Panther shipped. It's now 18 months old. Only problems I had with it were due to a hardware issue.

I've been running Tiger on my PowerBook for just over a week and it definitely has its share of quirks. I can't say I've seen any OS-generated crashes yet. Hopefully some of the oddities will get corrected soon after its official release on the 29th with a web update.

I suppose I'll be using a Windows system at home for a long time to come, but I can't ever see myself using any current version on a notebook. Mac OS still lacks a bunch of really small things that I just learn to live with, but it more than makes up for it with its more intuitive annd robust support for tech I use every day (like WiFi, etc..)

Bruno