Thread: Anyone using Windows 7?

Originally Posted by Sharke

Am I the only one who's never had a virus infection in all my years of computing? I wouldn't even know where to get one if I wanted one. All I have is Avast running on my laptop and its never detected anything yet.

I've never been infected in my 15+ years of computing, but once NAV found & quarantined a virus in a file I downloaded on Kazaa.

Originally Posted by Sharke

95, 98, 2000, NT, XP, Vista...........and so forth?

Presuming they're counting from 95 (which of course was the first 'hit' version of windows - its release was a primetime news story, anyway..)

All versions of Windows after ME are based on the NT code base. 95, 98 & ME were non-NT versions.
I've used NT 3.51 & 4.0. I'm guessing there was a 1.x & 2.x at some point?
Windows 2000 is just a 'cooler' name than NT 5.0, then they continued to use 'cool' names instead of Windows NT x.0

Am I the only one who's never had a virus infection in all my years of computing? I wouldn't even know where to get one if I wanted one. All I have is Avast running on my laptop and its never detected anything yet.

I've infected myself on purpose on a few occasions.

There have been other times. I got this desktop, and it would shut down immediately after booting (to simulate the experience, I think the command is "shutdown -s"). That turned out to be some sort of malware thing, and I have no idea where it came from. I wasn't using the internet at the time.

I've had bad luck with new computers before now. I bought a Compaq laptop when they cost $2000. It turned on, but the monitor was still off, so I never even got to use it once without a problem. The tech people had to replace the mobo. Not a virus, but I'm just waiting for computers to decide when they'll dislike me outright, and being around them will make them explode, etc.

Originally Posted by whiteflags

I've infected myself on purpose on a few occasions.

There have been other times. I got this desktop, and it would shut down immediately after booting (to simulate the experience, I think the command is "shutdown -s"). That turned out to be some sort of malware thing, and I have no idea where it came from. I wasn't using the internet at the time.

I've had bad luck with new computers before now. I bought a Compaq laptop when they cost $2000. It turned on, but the monitor was still off, so I never even got to use it once without a problem. The tech people had to replace the mobo. Not a virus, but I'm just waiting for computers to decide when they'll dislike me outright, and being around them will make them explode, etc.

http://img292.echo.cx/img292/9489/hackerbomb1mh.jpg

there is really no reason to connect your XP box to the internet directly.

In that particular instance, I had no control over the network at the time. If memory serves however, there was a router between the laptop and the internet. It had the same connection as the rest of the machines in the room. The first thing I did was to update it compeletely, and the second thing was virus removal. (It had Norton then entire time.) After the updates, it was fine, but there was no reasonable way to get the updates except to connect to the Internet. I also had to go to safe mode to get rid of the virus.

Originally Posted by Elysia

NTFS does support symlinks and has for quite some time

NTFS might, Windows however, doesn't. The functionality is crippled between things like it's impossible to use (no UI entrance to the functionality at all), the UI tends to do the wrong thing (deletion of symlinks didn't delete the symlink, but what was symlink'd to!), and, as of Vista, you need root privileges. (To create a file!)

Has anyone tried the "math input panel" in the Accessories start menu folder? Jeez, what a pointless piece of junk that is. I drew an greater-than sign and it interpreted it as a "3," so I used the select and correct on it, selected "greater-than" from the list and it said "Please try a different correction."

I sure do hope other people have more luck with this nonsense than I did!

EDIT: You're ideally supposed to use it with a tablet, but it does say you can use a mouse as well.

Originally Posted by Sharke

Has anyone tried the "math input panel" in the Accessories start menu folder? Jeez, what a pointless piece of junk that is. I drew an greater-than sign and it interpreted it as a "3," so I used the select and correct on it, selected "greater-than" from the list and it said "Please try a different correction."

Works pretty well for me.

This is with a mouse. The only thing I had to redo a few times was the 10. For some reason it kept reading it as 'D', and then 19... I had to add that weird loop at the top of the 0 to make it read as 10.

Originally Posted by Cactus_Hugger

In that particular instance, I had no control over the network at the time. If memory serves however, there was a router between the laptop and the internet. It had the same connection as the rest of the machines in the room. The first thing I did was to update it compeletely, and the second thing was virus removal. (It had Norton then entire time.) After the updates, it was fine, but there was no reasonable way to get the updates except to connect to the Internet. I also had to go to safe mode to get rid of the virus.

Know that it is not Window's fault for being infected so quickly--especially not an OS without updates that is so old!

NTFS might, Windows however, doesn't. The functionality is crippled between things like it's impossible to use (no UI entrance to the functionality at all), the UI tends to do the wrong thing (deletion of symlinks didn't delete the symlink, but what was symlink'd to!), and, as of Vista, you need root privileges. (To create a file!)

No. You may be only partially right.
There is no graphical UI for symlinks, true, but there is a command-line tool, and all Linux junkies would be satisfied with that. Some are not, including me, but there are great 3rd-party extensions that fixes these problems, so that's good.
The functionality isn't crippled at all--the command-line utility in Vista does its job and it does it well. Deleting a symlink, beginning from Vista, will delete the link itself and not what it points to. Plus Vista also separates symlinks from normal folders (they are shown with a green arrow).
Creating a file can be done without admin privileges depending on where you create the link/file. Of course, I turn off UAC, so I cannot be 100% sure on that one.

What Windows lacks is this:
- No GUI or otherwise easily accessible function for creating soft/hard links.
- No choice between deleting the target or the link itself.

I never did really get the difference between junction points, symlinks, soft links and hard links, though.
From my knowledge, junction points = soft links and symlinks = soft links.

Then you're alone.
I didn't find Vista that bad as many does. It's mostly a ruined reputation because a lot of problems early in its life.
Windows 7 has been good, stable and a great OS even since the beginning of the beta.
Try it before you badmouth it.

Vista was very acceptable once its service packs came out and you had a computer that could more than handle its requirements. It was definitely a memory hog, UAC was an extreme nuisance, and it hid some of its more useful features... but for those that knew how to tame the beast, once you got it going the way you liked it, I found it pretty nice. I like Windows 7 better, at this point and I don't see any need to wait for service packs when I'm getting it for free, right now, anyway. Once I need to shell out the $200 or so, I'm sure I'll assess just how much I need the new features and likely will revert back to an older (already purchased) selection for a period of time.