Problems with Microsoft

Not sure if Vista supports (or backward compatible with) MS Office 2000, maybe 2003 will work. Have not tried Vista yet, and still not adapt until perhaps a year or so.

USB to parallel adapter

http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/usb_printer_cable.htm#UP6C

will connect parallel printer to new computer but then should have a Vista version of the printer driver (if available) install to make it work.

"the easy way to fix it would be to get a copy of XP possibly from his old computer"

You mean to change the bundled OS to XP? He needs an original/legal copy installer disc and not OEM installer from old PC, for this will not work (new PC hardware specs/model/brand differ from old, I'm sure, otherwise no need to buy new).

Actually, he needs to do a couple things first.

First find the drivers made for the MB on the web and update the chip BIOS for the board. He needs to flash the botherboard and update the drivers.

I would not run VISTA even if you gave me ten years of lisencing. Vista has problems, it is always best to use a platform with all the bugs worked out. There is nothing wrong with using XP and his Office suite 2000 should still be usable.

Good luck in the fix,

Maximo

After I published this, I found out that the computer he got (with Vista) had Office with it... and thus should be Vista compatible. He complains that Word does not work.

I gather that we will make a trip to Seattle next week, and if we cannot make the thing work, then he is going to take the damn thing back to Costco and get his money back. FYI it happens to be a HP system although I do not have the model number.

I am also informed that the only way to get a new computer without Vista, with XP, is to get it through Dell... where they will load it with XP instead for an additional fee.

I firmly agree with you that Vista has lots of bugs. It is not only an infant operating system, but it was born prematurely. I think I will stick to this machine and XP until it rots away to nothng. IT WORKS!

Sincerely

Bill

take it back and find someone that sells Medion puters, might pay out more but they work very good, good MB and high end stuff on board as well. Then buy Win XP Pro, add on some free stuff on-line like a firewall; ZA or the full paid up version or try the free on-line Comodo, and a virus protection; AVG, then add a hardware firewall byway of a router; D-Link.

I just bought a Vista laptop over the weekend (HP variety, fully blown). There is a version of Office 2007 on the PC but it requires going to a MS website and getting a product key to activate. So if he's not connected to a network w/ web access when he tries to start Office he's going to think it's broken.

The Office 2007 does work with copies of Office 2003 but with caveats all over the screen. I'm willing to bet that Office 2000 is not going to work with Vista.

Of course I've taken the rest of the weekend (well, evenings) to download updates from HP, MS and Norton. SolidWorks and SmartDraw will go on tonight, maybe.

I've got an older printer as well. I have not been able to find drivers for the printer at all. For that reason I'm not sure that just getting a parallel / USB converter is going to fix his problem. It might be cheaper (and less frustrating) to just buy a new printer. Ouch!

I just heard that the EU courts have upheld the lawsuit against MS for bundling their media player with XP. Not that this is going to help any of us, but it's nice to see some justice.

What did you mean when you wrote:-

"The Office 2007 does work with copies of Office 2003 "

Who would need both???

I sympathize with your friend.

I too bought a (laptop) computer equipped (not sure that is the right word) with Vista. It sucks.

Every time I worked away and connected to another network for e-mail purposes, i.e. nothing complex, I would return home, be refused admission to my home network and have, ultimately, to transfer all data, uninstall and reinstall Vista. [Of course, the alternative is to show up at a client's office and ask every day for access to webmail - most professional. ] For uninstall / reinstall I employed a computer professional. He initially contacted the manufacturer and asked where he might locate XP drivers for the machine. They informed him that they had not specifically written any drivers for XP for this particular chipset, but he was free to install XP and try to arrange drivers. This was not just external (printer drivers etc.) but also internal ones, such that the touchpad, keyboard, USB ports, screen may (a) function (b) not function (c) intermittently function.

Ultimately, I am now left with an upper mid-range laptop with twin AMD Turion processors which has achieved system stability (1) if I leave it on my desk and (2) - on the advice of computer professional - if I install no more programs.

$1299 for a word processor. NOT good value for money.

Several weeks of altercation with manufacturer have resulted in them offering to give me a complete refund. Next stop ? A laptop with XP built in.

People should start demanding their money back and an alternative Operating system if Vista is 'Not fit for pupose'.

This is no different than the early days of XP. Suddenly, all my favorite stuff wouldn't work. Reading through the literature, I found the message "Make sure that any software purchased is marked XP Compatible." It took awhile (and some money) to get my computer life back in order.

Never upgrade your operating system without knowing how it will act. "ASK QUESTIONS!!!"

I didn't voluntarily "upgrade", I bought a new laptop.

I was told that I could reinstall XP if I didn't like Vista.

Not so !!

I work for a major oil company and we use HPs and Windows 2000 so I see two problems here:

1) HP (Compaq)

2) Vista

I researched Vista for my son's university notebook and decided 'No Way'. Virtually 100% of people contacted hated it and wish they had never done it.

We will switch to Vista sometime this year which means we all get a 6 month holiday from doing work. But we are insisting on major changes to Vista before we roll it out so it is on hold. As far as my HP goes, I take two computers with me. My company computer and one I can use.

I recently ordered a "round" (shape) notebook from out IT order system. The IT boys came back and didn't understand my request. I told them the request is HSE (safety) compliant since sharp corners of a rectangular notebook might injure someone when I throw the friggen thing !

I own 3 Dell notebooks personally with XP and other than any MS product complaints I have no complaints on the computers themselves. I had one screen go out in the jungle of Ecuador and they overnighted a screen to a local village IT contractor who was Dell certified and I was back in business in 1.5 days without leaving the jungle.

This old dinosaur is sitting here laughing at this entire thread. At the present time, the dinosaur has not completed the replacing his old broken hard drive with the brand new one he has just acquired and is using his wife's, Mrs. Dinosaur, Win98se machine and doing well. But in time, the main machine, a home built box, will be back up an running PCLinuxOS. At one time Mr. Dinosaur ran Windows 3.1 upgraded to Win95 upgraded to Win98se upgraded to Win2000pro never upgraded to Win XP never upgraded to Vista.

It takes some getting used to, but for any engineer worth his education, Linux is the only way to go, both from a cost standpoint and from a reliability standpoint. Microsoft has a pretty face but a soul of evil and greed. Microsoft will drain your back account then leave you for to rot in despair, broken and bald from pulled out hair. It is funny how marketing can make us send good money after bad when it comes to Microsoft. Microsoft equals one broken promise (window) after another.

the only thing that has cost loads is the photoshop software; two versions, a better CRT and now working to add another to split the work area, colour printer and time to learn.

Hap, I am sorry, but I cannot make heads or tails of your reply to my comment. Could you be a little more explicit, please? I think you are saying you had to buy photoshop software for Linux. If so, I suggest you look at GIMP, it is the premier photoshop software for graphics, it is open source for Linux and for Windows. If you want to do animation, it is outstanding. If you want to do 3D illustrations as well, Blender is great and works hand in hand with GIMP. And for engineering graphics, you might want to look at Qcad. All of this software is open source, some of it is also ported to Windows, too. As for an office suite, Open Office (Star Office in open source) is equal to MS office and is free for both Windows and Linux. I prefer Abi, however, since it is modular which allows me to install only those modules I need for my work and another bonus is that the output footprint is much lower than either Open Office or MS Office. None of the office suites convert to HTML properly, though, but Bluefish is an outstanding HTML editor and is equal to HTML-Kit which is for Microsoft only. If you want links, I can provide them, just ask.

You recommend OpenOffice as being equal to MS Office. While I will agree that one word processor is about as good as any other, OpenOffice falls far short of Excel 97 in performance in my experience. They have no where near the available functions (specifically, I really like the limited FFT function available in Excel 97 for a quick and dirty look at limited data). The graphics in the spreadsheet program are agrevatingly slow. Try changing scale or data range when looking at an OpenOffice graph- go off and eat lunch while you wait for an upgrade.

I have some heartburn over Excel 2003- some of the macros I developed in Excel 97 don't work at all in Excel 2003.

Microsoft should have stuck with Windows 98 SE. tweaking that one to perfection. Then they wouldn't have to face the current embarrassment...

Since I am not an accountant, I do not use Excel for anything. I have looked at some of the other functions in MS Word, however, and found that, for the most part, Microsoft tries to micro manage everything as they try to do it all for their client robots. I get really upset when they do grammar check. I think that perhaps their programmers need to go back to school and learn the English language. And when it comes to technical writing, forget it, they don't seem to know basic science at all. It is like they never took Junior High Science.

Now as for staying with Win98se, I agree, that is the OS I have on my wife's machine. When I was using Windows, however, I used Win2000pro. I may re-install it if and when I have need of my Autocad LT 97, however, now that I am retired I doubt I will ever have the need. Any Engineering graphics I might have now will likely need to be in GIF file format for use in HTML.

As for the current embarrassment, Microsoft has been embarrassing themselves for years, why should today be anything different. It seems to me that today they are also thumbing their nose at the Justice branch of our Government and will yet have the wrath of the law fall down upon heads.

Dear you just Image here only cost. Not facilities now compare microsoft and linux:

windows is one of the largest operating system which can handle every unknown person.but linux can not because it's most functions are based on shell command this is an old process of operating the computer.

There are some draw backs in windows like currpting and missing the dll files but it is not at all.

I am not a friend of bill gates or microsoft but these are the problems with linux. i used the linux for 6 monthes we can do every thing there but that is so much difficult.Like go to shell type a long sentance as a command. Most of the peaples are using the microsoft software and developing the application based on microsft operating system.

The above discussions are related to desk top.

Now come to server :

When we looks at Red hat enterprise and windows 2003 Enterprise edition i saw every thing in the windows is in front of administrator he can touch and do every thing on the mouse click. where as in linux we do every thing but like this

Suppose we are installing the active diretory on 2003 and Fedora Ds on Red hat we can check it garpically on 2003 and run it after installing it once. where as in red hat Installed Fedora DS so many long times but i could not login there i don't know wat was the problem. i could reach to login screen but could not login it was giving an errror message like the login server does not exist whereas i istalled it my self on the same machine on which i was running.

Next thing is error reporting:

Microsoft based operating system gives the original message which is real error.where as it is very difficult to find the original error in linux based operating system.

Now you can guess why the crazy people like to spend there money on microsoft "old brand or rubbed" windows. A person who like to work not looks at cost how thins only one thing that is how to increase the productivity at any cost.

Linux is a good way for education development because it comes with raw data. There may be the chances linux can chalange the microsoft but not with this tech nology.

Very good post!

Ar you a member in disguise?

If not, please join the forum, your experience is welcome here!

no i m not

plz how to join it

You are joined on CR4 under the name Sushil Kumar, it therefore appears that sometimes you or your PC forgets to log you on in your name....

I have had that too when I log in from different locations......

Andy u did not read my post care fully u replied the last ontopic only so read is carefully

Does it matter? You are logged on and you have a name.....who could ask for more?

As someone else mentioned, there can be several reasons for occasionally not being logged on.....if that was the case in question.

It could be that he checked "no cookies" on his web-browser preferences.

dear life is too sort for chess

- ?

Use Linux, blazingly fast, reliable, does every thing it says, everything now available on this platform, free and does not crash !!!

If you are going to get a refund and search for a new computer -- check out Apple -- I just bought a new Mac Book for my daughter -- she loves it and has had absolutely no problems.

What problems? This sounds like normal Windows operations to me.

As many have said, Vista sucks, just like XP did at first.

What I would do in his position (I would not have bought Vista yet, so that is not quite accurate!):-

1) Do a proper "remove" of Vista from the PC, so that in 3 years time, when it works properly, he can re-install it if he wishes....this may involve making an image on DVD(s) if he only has a recovery version....or whatever Vista calls that today....

2) Buy a copy of WinXP Pro, nothing less, and installing all his software on that.

For anyone who is thinking of buying Vista, simply don't unless you want to help BG redesign it.....business people cannot afford those types of problems....

Also, if you have invested a lot of money in hardware or software for XP, check that it will work with Vista before buying!!! Or have a really big System disk and partition for both Operating Systems.....

I agree. In a couple of years Windows Vista will probably be an OK operating system. But not yet!

Which probably means that by now, Win 3.1 works adequately, just as they said about DOS 6.1 in 2003...

That is overdoing it, look at XP for example, until SP 1 was available, it was just about the same as Vista is today.....

Today XP is a pretty good and reliable product, still fully supported (rumour has it only till 2008 !!).

As OSs get more complicated, the "growing up" time gets longer.....

Andy,

Tried that - see my earlier comments.

Manufacturer did not write ANY drivers with XP compatibility -EVEN for the internal support of the machine. In one of the many, long conversations, they said "Go ahead, install XP, but it may or may not work."

That's what I call thorough engineering: they had not even tried and tested the laptop with a loaded version of XP prior to launching on an unsuspecting public. They literally DID NOT KNOW whether it would work or not.... That is the hallmark of either (1) genius) or (2) engineering arrogance. Me ? I'll go for 2.

Then you should have backed out of the sale completely.....immediately.

My new laptop (Toshiba with Dual core intel ) that I bought last year has a sticker on it saying that it is XP and Vista compatible....it even had XP Pro installed on it, (I was unable to buy this laptop empty!!)the other option was Vista later....no way!

I build my own PCs, that today is an AMD 4400 X2, (last years model), the mainboard I wanted also had an XP compatible sticker.......

You MUST do your homework before you buy.....if not, you may be stuck with the consequences.....

It takes me several months to buy a new PC (parts only) or a Laptop, I key in all my wanted features into an Excel sheet and then add all the Parts or Laptops I find that might fit the bill.....its slow but thorough. My Laptop is still (over a year later!!) in the bangs for bucks price that I paid, good value for money today even....

Now my brother, just has say an hour extra for lunch and goes and buys something, really expensive, on a whim!! Cars, PCs, printers, TVs you name it. He is NEVER happy!!!! Neither is his wife!!!

Andy,

agree entirely. I bought the laptop because the sales guy told me that I could install Windows XP either with or instead of Vista.

My computer guru also believed that uninstall and reinstall would be a gimme.

Not so. Until we uninstalled Vista and got all sorts of warning flags ( built into the motherboard chipset) about contacting the manufacturer before we went any further, we had no idea.

Perhaps that is why the laptop is being returned for a full refund ? Misrepresentation ?

I respect you, you are another one who puts his "money where his mouth is!" and does not let such salespersons run all over him.

I have been know to require important points on a bill of sale and SUNDDENLY, the salesperson does not want to sell me the item anymore. I have to admit, it has only happened once, but he downright refused to sell to me, I was not unhappy either!! He knew something that I did not that would have bitten him in the arse!!! i have forgotten what it was, but basically he would have been caught out in a lie as far as I remember!!!

Respect from us all and have a great weekend....

"1. His version of OFFICE no longer works. I suspect that he needs to upgrade to OFFICE 2000. Any thoughts on this?"

Look before you leak. Check out what is compatible with a new OS. Contact vendor of new machine and talk the entire situation over with them.

"2. His parallel port printer no longer works. I suspect that he will have to get an adapter so he can connect his printer through a USB port. Any thoughts on this??"

Printers and compatability are another issue. May need new drivers for printer depending on various factors. Does printer have a USB port?

"In my opinion, the easy way to fix it would be to get a copy of XP possibly from his old computer, and replace Microsofts latest mess. Any thoughts on this??"

Maybe, maybe not. Just try to reformat a drive with XP without special software. I suspect Vista is even tighter. Either way he either received an XP disc with a new machine, he bought an XP disc or a bootlegged a copy of one.

If you're persistent, hp support (for instance) will give you a suggested driver to use that is written for a NEWER, but similar model printer and say "you can try this one .. I don't know if it will work or not, but at present HP has no driver for __version and I cannot tell you when, if ever, there might be one."

I have been successful in at least a dozen cases; using a driver for a newer but similar printer model, let's say, written for windows xp pro 64, and applied it to an older model printer with no existing printer driver for xp pro 64. . . . and the older model photosmart RUNS in windows xp pro 64 just fine.

Many suppliers never did or never intended to write drivers or software for the 64 bit version of xp and when it came out, I barely got a sound driver and a printer to run without going out and buying new.

WHICH, BY THE WAY, IS WHAT DRIVES THIS WHOLE HUGE PROBLEM. WHERE WOULD ALL OF THESE MANUFACTURERS BE IF WE ALL WEREN'T FORCED TO CONTINUE TO UPGRADE HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE AND MORE JUST TO KEEP UP?

JEHU

http://www.apple.com/getamac/

Decisions have consequences.

milo

I'm on the wait and see if the advertising is true. Spent $1400 for my daughter's MAC Book.

I can buy the "Parallels" program and a copy of Windows XP and it will run both at the same time "SO I'M told" Pretty pricey though --- Parallels is 79 bucks and I don't really know what a legal copy of XP is..

I'm from the show me state originally and I will see if the banter in advertising is true.

Windows XP Pro (OEM package) is available at Tiger Direct for $139.99.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_tlc.asp?CatId=26&name=Software

Still expensive but have not found other online retailer cheaper that this yet.

Thanks for the link

I bought several copies on ebay, new original packing, unopened, for about $80 (€68) each, not even OEM versions....!

You just have to be patient and search for an offer that everybody else has missed, usually because its not under computer....

Thanks for the tip.

Somehow when Bill, Linus and Steve decompiled Amega Dos, it lost it's functionality...

I wonder why?

Get a Mac

You'll never look back

Just as a general update, we found out that his printer is a Cannon laser jet Model 761 printer, so we went to Cannon and found a beta level driver for it. We downloaded it here. We will take it to Seattle with us Thursday and see if we can make it play. If (after loading the driver) it still does not work, then we will look at adapting from the printer parallel port to USB.

Regarding his problems with Office, since it came with the computer, I am hoping to find his problem to be pilot error. I can't imagine HP shipping a non compatible version of Office with their computer.

I also found out that he has his system(s) on a LAN which is not functioning too. Well... we will worry about that problem Thursday when we get to it.

I will of course keep everyone informed as to what happens. It might help keep someone else from having to re-invent the wheel.

Sincerely

Bill

Isn't "Laser jet" a copyrighted term by HP and not Cannon?

It may be... I don't know. I just put it in as my girlfriend copyed it from her telephone discussion.

Bill

Update!!

Regarding Office problem, it turns out that the Office he has is a 45 day evaluation version, which still requires the umpteen letter code to activate it, which was not included in the documentation. I guess he still has to pay the big bucks to make it work. {we will work on that later.}

Regarding the printer, it was USB driven so parallel port didn't matter We loaded the driver we got from Canon, but we ran into problems with the print spooler. (when we installed the driver). If we tried to print, the printer would wake up, and eventually spit out a blank piece of paper. The driver we got didn't work.

At this time, I decided to take a brand new cheapy HP printer USD$85 out of the box and try and bring it up... {The box said VISTA COMPATIBLE}. Running the installation for it also caused an error, with similar results as above.

Now there were incentives for this. I wanted both HP at the computer end AND at the printer end... This brings in HP as a resource group. This resulted in being tossed around HP customer service like a bean in a coffee can. {with no one knowing their rectal orifice from a hole in the ground}

In any case, I believe a PRINT SPOOLER to be a section of memory allocated for various print jobs in which the computer places the data for each job it is printing, to be printed in sequence. Right? And can we agree that this is a software (aka Vista) function rather than hardware?

Sincerely

Bill

WOW !

Also many thanks for the update, it should serve as a warning to anyone contemplating buying a new PC or Laptop with Vista......

DON'T DO IT GUYS!!! Wait for a couple of more years!!

Have a great weekend and thanks again.

They have never listened up to now, why should they start after this Blog?

After all these years, they still cannot write code that would prevent Virus coders doing their dirty work!!

If they achieved that point alone, the rest of the world would beat a path to their door!! But of course then the Anti Virus coders would be out of a job!!!!

I'm inclined to think that since they were perceived as those who pioneered the industry, they developed the attitude saying "We know what's best for our customers, instead of them telling us what they need, and how they should do it"

Now, since they are also the biggest, it tends to become a self-justifying re-enforcing attitude.

Maybe not exactly so, but something like that.

Just a guess.

Come to think of it, many veteran companies have this syndrome

YUP!

They are still perceived as opportunistic parasites, as they have been since they convinced IBM to let them have DOS for next to nothing, as a favor to IBM. Now that they've eliminated the need for PCDOS or DRDOS, they're doing the same thing to us

Oh, they are soo good to us.

richH

I think that you got that the wrong way round, Didn't Bill make his first money by selling DOS to IBM as PC-DOS? But he had bought it cheaper somewhere else first?

Check this web site out:-

http://www.woopidoo.com/biography/bill-gates.htm

This is an interesting thread, but can you explain this bit more Andy;

After all these years, they still cannot write code that would prevent Virus coders doing there dirty work!!

I agree about price matching by anti-virus software providers, but I don't get the bit I quoted above.

If you have WinXP on your computer, there are updates produced on a weekly basis almost to make MS programs harder to attack by Viruses and the like.

Why can't they write the code from the start better? Its not like that they completely re write the OS and Office every time they bring out a new version......after so many years, you would think that such loopholes could be fixed up front!!

First, UNIX had a massive head start on Microsoft. For years in MIT (The school of the old Silicon Valley), students tried to hack into each others systems. If successful, it was considered fair play to delete the guys files!

Even today, there are a number of hackers that specialize in UNIX/Linux systems. However, I suggest that the only reason you don't see more hacking on these systems than you do, is because they're small fish and rather uninteresting than the vast Windows territory in business and corporate deployments. The Linux and UNIX dorks are just going unnoticed... So don't get cocky!!!

Who cares about hacking into a UNIX database run by the USGS regarding some esoteric geological crap, when they can hack into a modern business' HR files and email the salaries of everyone to all members of the company. Or crack into bank accounts or steal someones identity. You're just small fish!!!

The only reason why Apple turned to a UNIX based system is that wanted to keep independent. However, Microsoft never stopped supporting them with Microsoft Office... Without which, they would have died a long time ago.

Windows exists because it gives 90% of the world what it wants - a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a database. And all the games you can possibly handle!!!

Even though their new operating system releases are characteristically painful, they eventually get the job done for business, which is the main user of computer power in the World today. And because of that the crooks comb through every-single line of code, looking for the slightest crack and a way into the "big fish" money!!!

Excellent post.

There is however, an additional point to the whole UNIX / XENIX / LINUX hype, and all their look-alike and related apps: It's structural:

The 'User-Interface>Shell>Kernel' structure, in which you can use the user-interface to define the shell (the intermediate layer between the user and the ALU, the heart of the computer), to lend itself as a user-defined system, or in other words: It's an ideal "Open-Source" system, evolving by interested users for longer periods, leading to a more and more stable and dependable system over years of use and refinement.

This is actually how C then C#, and C++ were developed. C was initially invented (early seventies) as a macro-control system for UNIX user-interface and shell, then evolved into a fully-fledged compiler able to become an efficient programming language, to shape and re-design the shell and user-interface, and also capable of integrating 'assembly routines' ('machine-code run-times') to swap and replace even the most basic ALU function-blocks.

Today, C and UNIX are one and the same. UNIX helped C evolve, and C helped UNIX evolve, not in commercial or cultural terms, but in practical, technical terms, simply by turning the whole UNIX culture, into a global academic 'Open-Source Culture', where executives and technicians turned C programmers 'of sort', just to be able to try and fix their local system's bugs.

This happened mostly in the academia during the eighties.

I was under the impression that C was created by the AT&T labs, and then released as one of the first "open source" programs available, without licensing fees, allowing developers to commercially sell their own work along with. Several (microsoft, Borland, etc.) had their own libraries and compilers built on and into the C language, so that they could make some money from the development. As I recall, C programs were cheaper than Pascal, Basic, Fortran, or even Cobol. Perl and the others didn't have enough market for the biggies to be interested, but at that time SCO was the closest to pure unix available, with Sun and several others making their own proprietary versions of Unix so that no one but them could make any real money from their clients.

Maybe my memory is off a bit.

RichH

No, no, you're right, I think.

I recall just about the same. Maybe Wikipedia would give the most agreed upon account, but basically my point was that UNIX and C had opened the way to popularise the Open-Source Culture by showing that users can evolve their OS by de-bugging it and creating new apps for their own local demands, which is in complete contrast to the Big-Brother attitude of deciding in advance how should everybody use their application, and not even bug-proofing at that...

After being exposed to my first computer input via teletype / punch tape terminals, my memory hasn't been as upgradeable as computers usually are. So I still need a memory refresh, as my native is even slower than the 8 kilobit 120 ns chips I later used to replace on the memory card, making for an 8 kilobyte XT bus card.

RichH

"Patches?"

"We ain't got no patches!"

"We don't got to show you no stinkin' patches!!!"

So are you saying that people like Microsoft know of all potential future virus attacks, and that they simply aren't building in code to stop that vulnerability ? I thought that providing security updates was a response to an evolving situation.

What I am suggesting is that they can't do a good job first time around, even today......and I am NOT talking about functionality improvements or fixes, I am talking about possible entry points for a virus....

You would think that by now an MS Guru, would have some software that looked at the executable files and checked in areas that a Virus might use.

A good and common example:- Buffer overflows are a popular(?) way for viruses to generate themselves a new front door, but good software is/should be written to prevent buffer overflows being generated and not detected and if detected, they should be stopped by "NOT ALLOWING AN INPUT THAT WILL GENERATE AN OVERFLOW IN THE FIRST PLACE". Why can't MS detect these areas and fix them before publication???? They fix them AFTER publication!!!

I do not consider myself a particularly good programmer and I have not done it for many years, but writing a program to do something useful is no great task, BUT, when the program works and has been debugged, we would have to then classify and filter correctly all inputs to the program so that ONLY values of the correct type and size would be allowed. Halts would be left in the program with error codes for at least beta testing. A buffer overflow for example would (sorry SHOULD) generate such a halt.

In sensitive areas, I would leave them in for the final version....I never told anyone directly as it would make the program a bit larger (criminal!!!) in the days when we worked in 64 or 128K.....but I left the error codes in the handbook, just in case. It was just too dangerous not to, not because of viruses, we had none, but Business software cannot have errors that might cost the company Millions of $$$$$$......

By the way, I learnt to program when 8K was considered a reasonable amount of memory to sort customer data onto 4 separate tape drives, when other companies were still doing it with punched card sorters!!! (IBM for example!!)

This last action of making a program Bombproof took the longest and usually trebled the physical size of the program AND brought some extra bugs that needed fixing too!!!

Programmers today are spendthrift with memory and it would appear that due to the high level languages used, nobody takes the time to look for potential problem areas in the code (most do not understand MC anymore!) before publication......

I still have a few (well written programs in MC from DOS days) that will still run on Win95 (I must try them on my XP machine in a DOS box.....just for fun. One is a CAD program that used to lay wires at a good speed on a 286, I still have it on an old 486 Laptop, it works blindingly fast!!

The program, all the library files and some PCB layouts all fit on a 1.44 MB Floppy!!! With a tiny amount of space left over!!

Meanwhile...

We took the computer back to Costco to have their computer people look at it. They wiped the disk clean, and totally reloaded the software, for a successful fix. Costco tried to charge my friend $35.00 for fixing the computer and he told them "No Way!! Bill it to HP warranty repair!" which they did. My friend also learned to ALWAYS buy a set of restoration disks with the system. That would have saved us all alot of grief

Next feat of magic is to find out why his "upstairs" computer won't talk with his "downstairs" computer... and the Internet, over a wireless link... but that is a job for another day.

Sincerely

Bill

Lets hear it for Open Source

speak away, the best p;ace pt hear about open source is with either /. or freshmeat. Either way or your own way, one can use "key word" searches for open source.

Why not say what you like and dislike about open source, being a guest does not keep us from listening to you.

Its Freeeeeeee