Errr...

"Bottom line is, no, OEM Microsoft Windows licenses do not have any transfer rights and live and die on the original computer they are shipped with and installed on, period."

Yeah, nice try...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/08/selling_oem_windows_copies_you/

@ratsac11

>>>-You can actually connect to the internet wirelessly, out of the box, or with either the drivers that come with it or those that come with most wireless adapters.

>>>-Other exotic hardware (like, um Nvidia video cards) works out of the box.

>>>-Exotic websites (like youtube) work without hours of mucking about (64bit version).

Err, the answers to that are:

1) You already can.

2) They already do.

3) That works fine too.

When exactly was the last time you used Ubuntu?

@Pete 2 - A little unfair, mate

"With Win 7 being little more than a service pack for XP, with some new eye-candy and incorporation of applications that used to only be available as freeware, this new version of Linux seems to be following a similar line. It looks to be a fairly minor tweak of the previous version - which was itself only slightly different from the preceding release - which was ....."

Windows releases come out every 5 years or so (or every 18 months if you fuck one up and desperately need to re-release it). Ubuntu comes out every 6 months - it's designed to be a series of incremental steps.

@AC 08:08

"What is it with the Linux fraternity and their stupid effing names for things?"

Two words: Snow Leopard.

Fast, stable, pissing on Kubuntu

Been using Karmic for donkeys, and yes - it is fast, reliable, and is another noticeable improvement over the previous version in terms of hardware support. However, the guys at Canonical, being GNOME fans, have started to piss in KDE users' cornflakes a little.

For a start, asoundconf is missing from alsa-utils, apparently because of some new (GNOME-based) tool that's coming in. So for those of us who like KDE, and whose bosses have forced them to change soundcard by accidentally destroying the old one, this causes more than a little annoyance, as we can't set the default soundcard any more - the utility in KDE only sets it for KDE-based apps, such as Amarok. Right now I've got sound in some apps and not in others. What would have been so bad about keeping the script around? I know it was removed from the standard alsa-utils package, but who cares?

Also, one or two GNOME apps won't start under KDE if you run the two alongside each other. Guess which ones. So if you want to install/modify apps in Kubuntu, you're stuck with KPackage, which really is a nasty interface.

Animal Cruelty?

Eh? Jacking off a dog is cruel to the dog? Yes, it's a bloody odd thing to do, but cruel?

@AC 20:24

No AV kit running, but I still can't copy files at any kind of speed. Colleague is reporting the same problems, and they don't occur under XP. As far as I'm concerned, Win7 is doing this somehow. Just need to figure out how.

@Watashi

That....was the biggest load of twaddle I've read in a long time. It's not the fault of Windows because your hardware isn't as good as a Mac?

Is the hardware in a Mac somehow superior? Does the nVidia in a Mac get blessed before it's installed?

Nothing wrong with my hardware. Something wrong with Win7.

@ Lord Elpuss

"You can't use MS Office on [Ubuntu]"

Yes you can! Works just fine for me. The wonders of WINE.

See, that's more like it

Hippie-pleasing tech, a design people would actually buy, and a range that is more than useable for the vehicle type involved. So long as it's not monumentally expensive.

Just had a thought

Double post! Following on from my original rant, a colleague of mine has described exactly the same symptoms on much more mainstream hardware, and we noticed something - installations are still really fast. So why does one type of file copying run fast, and one run slow? Is it something to do with privileges? Wonder if disabling UAC would help.

Suggestions?

File copying/deleting bullshit still there

I really, honestly, truly like Windows 7, and it works perfectly, except for one thing. One fundamental flaw: the little bastard will still only copy files at 1.5MB/s, and deleting them is no faster. WHAT THE FECKING HELL? I've tried changing, updating and reinstalling the storage controller drivers, but nothing helps. I don't want to see 1.5MB/s on anything in 2009 - my net connection's faster than that!

And before anyone starts on with that "crappy hardware" nonsense, this is a quad core box with 15000rpm hard drives. It does *not* dick around, and under XP x64 I would easily get 80MB/s between drives, no problem. I don't think it's the drivers either, because loading from the disk is still fast as hell - it's just anything involving a write that's slow.

I wouldn't pay 90p for an operating system that couldn't do the most basic operations without cocking them up, let alone £90 (or £150, as it now is).

If I can't figure out a way to make this thing...

a) Stop pausing for a couple of minutes halfway through the bootup process (no disk activity, nothing)

b) Start copying/deleting files at a reasonable pace

c) Stop lagging the rest of the system when copying large filesets (talk about kicking a guy while he's down)

...then it's going back under "unfit for purpose", which I believe trumps their EULA any day. Still got my copy of XP x64, and I am not waiting 5 minutes per module for a Maven build because Win7 wants to take its time with copying.

It's a real shame, because other than that, it's great, and worth the upgrade from XP.

Kubuntu Karmic would kick this thing's ass if I could get it to work properly with my Triplehead2Go.

The shuttle is much better than this

Probably a lot more expensive, but look at it - that's a proper 20th century spaceship, and no messin'. Let's design an updated version of that. Higher payload, greater capability, and let's not forget - more internal space! What the hell happened to Venturestar anyway?

@AC

"MS have a larger browser market share than all the other browsers put together and yet the complaint is that they don't conform to standards. What sort of standard is created that isn't support by the clear market leader... a sub-standard!"

That has got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever read. Worse than BBC tech reporting.

It's goooood

Been running it since the 3rd or 4th alpha, and despite a massive cockup in alpha 5, it's a nice improvement over Jaunty. Faster, definitely, and the tweaks to KDE are very much welcome, along with a network manager that finally works (though still not as well as the one in GNOME, which is superb). It doesn't bring a lot in the way of features, but as with all Ubuntu releases it's that steady march that slowly brings in more speed, fewer bugs/annoyances, and greater compatibility.

As much as I like Win7 (and I do) I still spend most of my time in Karmic.

@IceMage

"And for the record, the only reason Vista failed so hard was all of the negative ads from Apple."

You're kidding, right?

@lumatrix

So you installed it on a piece of shit so old they don't make drivers for the graphics card any more (and nVidia/ATI drivers go back quite a way), and you're surprised it's no faster than XP...

Sounds like they took a lot of stuff out

No?

Got mine!

Arrived this morning. I'll get that installed tonight. Hopefully they've finally fixed the slow file copying bug and sorted out the weird problem I get with boot times on my desktop...

Mate at work has his

But mine hasn't arrived. :-( Ordered on the same day from the same place. Bah.

I bloody knew it!

The boss bought in one of these for the management types that use Macs, and from day one it has kicked out colossal amounts of heat, considering that it is essentially a hard drive in a box. Wouldn't surprise me if it went the way of the dodo before long.

And the rest of us?

"ARCH has campaigned against the use of body scanners on children, arguing they are disproportionately intrusive and remove their right to dignity, particularly given many are sensitive about their bodies."

But adults are OK, naturally. How could we possibly object to a full body X-ray every time we want to get on a flight?

Please please please

Put it in Fennec

So he's associated...

...with a guy who's associated with a terrorist organisation?

The bastard! Lock him up!

LCROSS, by Atari

Did anyone else see the Atlas logo on the side of the launch tower and think "Atari??"

That's a right royal logo rip-off, right there. One for El Reg's LogoWatch?

@Pascal

"Win 7 not even out yet but already needs patching. Ah, I quit, it's too easy."

Be fair mate, the bug's in IE. I've got 70-odd updates a day on my Ubuntu pre-release system, some security, most still on development. So what?

Woo yay!

FTTP FTW! FTTC is pointless - just run it the extra ten yards. I'll pay the installation costs! Shit, gimme a cabinet key and I'll install it myself.

Where'd I leave that masonry drill....

@Charles Manning

"* Even XBox was a huge cock-up until 360."

*Until* the 360? You wouldn't consider $1 billion in broken consoles a cock-up?

Is this because...

...it's an overpriced piece of shit with no drive?

What? AC can call me a "Sony hating retard" if he likes - I've owned every Playstation up to this one, so it might not stick - but that thing is the aborted child of a brilliant idea. Why the hell would you buy one of these at a premium and then buy all your games at a premium when you can you can get a PSP Slim for a little over half the price, then buy all your games dirt cheap?

I'm unconvinced by the vid

I'll wait to see it moving. But if the sketchy info is true - a Lincoln Continental? Could you not have picked a better car? I know this is America, land of the shitty automobile, but c'mon!

Well it's got to be better than the current one

With all its 13-year-old-learning-Photoshop lens flarey goodness.

@By Unlimited

Mine does that when it's on full power. Doesn't bother me when it's plugged in, but obviously on battery power it's annoying, so I use Guidance Power Manager to automatically downclock the CPU/drop the brightness. CPU fan almost immediately stops and the heat goes away, and for general surfing/work, I really can't tell the difference.

@Adam Williamson 1

Duh, I know more people than Canonical contribute. That's kinda the point. But what end user cares about who slowly improved and then fixed it (though the proprietary nVidia drivers are sexy) - all the end user cares about is that it works. "They" refers to "whoever fixed that", because it's a damn sight more productive than the Canonical lot arguing over what to call the Home folder.

@AC 21:01

FUD? Here's something you might want to consider: your setup is not the same as mine. Perhaps it worked for you and did not for me. Hmm? Next time, engage brain before fingers.

Running Karmic Alpha 4

And it's awesome. Fast as hell, compatible with all but one of my machines, and KDE 4.3.1 is very nice indeed. The huge improvement for me was in multi-monitor support. It didn't work at all in Hardy, was a bit mental in Intrepid, was still buggy in Jaunty, but works perfectly in Karmic. Glad they finally sorted that.

That said, the reason I'm still on alpha 4 is how badly they buggered up alphas 5 and 6. A set of updates came down and crippled the entire OS on two of my machines. Fortunately, we're talking about Ubuntu here, so a reinstallation took less than an hour, but it was still annoying. Hopefully the problems are fixed in beta 1. I'll try it in a VM this time...

And why in the hell does GNOME have an option to turn off touchpad tapping, but KDE doesn't? It's infuriating!

Foxsat?

Didn't the Foxsat kinda beat them to the game by a long way? When I had Freesat installed, the Foxsat was the only receiver worth buying. Plus, they already have a version that will record, have done for some time, and this receiver offers little or nothing above Humax's offering.

Fail. Though they would get kudos from me if they could code the Ethernet stuff properly. My Foxsat constantly pisses me off by forgetting its static IP settings every time I turn it on.

Wait a sec!

They named their kid "Q" and it's not NOTHING to do with Star Trek?

Superfail!

Not being able to browse your music would annoy me a little, though I could accept that as part of the point, but not being able to use my own headphones (or pay through the nose Apple-style for some Approved Listening Devices)? Get stuffed. Never in a million years. Apple's headphones are shite, the others will be prohibitively expensive. I'll keep my Shures, TYVM.

Perfect timing

I closed my part-time company down in August. Dodged a bullet there!

@Neoc

I agree that you should be able to uninstall Internet Explorer, but calling Windows a suite rather than an OS because it comes with a browser and media player is a little strange. Again, Ubuntu comes with a default media player (and that one IS crap), as does Mac OSX. You don't seem to have a problem with those...

This already annoys me

The model of DAP I have now is decidedly quieter than the model before it, and *that* one allegedly had a limiter (though I call BS on that). Good point about the US firmware though. Might look into that.

Much ado over the wrong problem

Microsoft should be able to bundle any bloody browser they like with their OS. It's...their OS! Safari in Mac OSX, Firefox in Ubuntu, IE in Windows. I don't have a problem with that.

The real problem is that Windows comes bundled with everything. It is almost impossible to buy a non-Mac computer without paying the Windows tax. That's BS. Users should be presented with a list of operating systems when buying a new computer. That might help even the scales a bit, but slagging off Microsoft for putting one of their own products inside one of their own products is nonsense at best.

And as other people have said, Opera should STFU at this point.

Killer Tits

For a minute there I thought this was going to be about Tits of Death:

http://www.titsofdeath.com

Reads like SYB

And I like that. :-)

"I swear most of the people in our Currys just go in there to take a look at things in the flesh, and then go home and order them online. That and annoying the staff with blindingly stupid questions."

Yup, that's pretty much it. Same with PC World, with the exception that a friend and I have a long-standing rule regarding PCW: every time we're in there, at least one sales stand must be sabotaged in some way. Our current favourite is connecting my iAudio S9 (iPods can kiss my ass) to the new Samsung surround sound units with Bluetooth, then blasting out whatever we feel like at mildly illegal volumes. When they run over to turn the machine off, pause it right before they get there. If they turn their back, hit play again. It's like playing with cats.

I wouldn't go with RapidSwitch now...

...simply because they appear to be illiterate. Is there a single quote from them in this article that actually equates to English? If you can't even write, I'm not trusting you with shit.

@Robert E A Harvey

Go on then mate, you design the AI.

@AC 12:44

"And get rid to the stupid names. "CatFish"...WTF is that? This is a computer, not an aquarium. "Nautilus"...WTF does that do? "Totem"...any clues there? "baobab"...in the name of god people. If it's a file searcher why not call it, I dunno, "FileSearch"? Or is that just too logical, too usable and too simple?"

Yeah, Windows apps are much better for that sort of thing:

Vista?

Silverlight?

Firefox?

Thunderbird?

Trillian?

OMG, without their purpose being in the name, I have no idea what these apps do! How can I possibly use them?

Idiot.

@Tom Maddox

"I just installed Ubuntu 9.04 (Insipid Imbecile or whatever), and Firefox 3.5 isn't in the repository,"

Yes it is.

Man, I love listening to people who don't bother trying, don't even Google stuff, then just start moaning and whining. It's not the main FF package in 9.04 because it was developed after 9.04. Given enough time they would have upgraded the package, but decided to keep two separate ones, and make 3.5 the default in 9.10, out in a months' time.

What I'm happy about is that they finally put Netbeans 6.7 into 9.10's repository. Thank God for that!

Quit thine bitching.

Dated?

Menus are dated? Actually being able to find what you want somewhere obvious is yesterday's news? Obviously I'm not keeping up with the times! I was under the impression that most people *hated* the ribbon interface...

@Adam

It's a working prototype, mate... I doubt styling was foremost in their minds.