Tag: PC

How to Download Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 Installation Media

You can reinstall Windows from scratch using the product key that came with your PC, but you’ll have to find installation media yourself. Microsoft offers free Windows ISO files – if you know where to look. These tricks let you reinstall Windows without visiting a shady BitTorrent site and downloading ISOs that may be filled with malware. These links give you official installation media straight from Microsoft. Note: depending on the OEM version of Windows that you are running, you will sometimes have an issue using the OEM key with a retail version of Windows, but you can always install and then call Microsoft and get them to straighten it out and allow your copy to activate. The most important thing is that you have a…

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How to Download Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 Installation Media

Looking for Love in All the OS’s

What is your quest? My quest is to find the OS, the one OS to rule them all. Over the past twenty years I have been an avid Mac and PC user running both much of the time. About eight years ago I started using the PC most of the time, but the Mac was still nearby, on the next table, running Windows XP as my desktop. When Vista came out, I tried it and while I loved the new “eye-candy”, it had some idiosyncrasies. Mostly it seemed keen on making me wait. ; “Not Responding” seemed to be its mantra. So I began my quest for something better.

This was about the time when Windows Server 2008 was releasing so I did some research and with great expectation installed it as my workstation. Everything I read said it was everything Vista should have been but it was “stable”. It installed well and things seemed promising. After a few weeks I began to get pauses again. So much so, that I thought it must be a hardware problem. I created a diagnostic CD and ran a “level-1” diagnostic for a day – no problems were found! This was ridiculous. Now I have to tell you that this is my work computer. At home I had installed Windows XP x64 at about the same time I abandoned Vista and that has been going along just fine. Everything seems to be working well at home. So what should I do?, I thought. Being of the opinion that the “grass is always greener” and the Utopian view that some other technology will be just great, I decided to take the plunge and install Linux on my work computer, Ubuntu 8 to be precise.

So how did that work out for me? It’s been two weeks and it seems ok, it seems stable. Only a couple of times did it lose its mind, but at least it came back. I’m still waiting for the dust to settle, but I think this might just be a workable OS on my work computer. But — since we use Exchange as our corporate email server and I have been using Outlook Web Access with Firefox 3. While it is usable it is nowhere near as good as Outlook itself. I have a love hate relationship with Outlook; I love the functionality but I hate its sluggishness, talk about “Not Responding”. But its utility trumps its bad attitude. I did try Evolution and it is surprisingly good but not good enough. OWA is not great in Firefox, but it is more reliable than Evolution. I tried to use OpenOffice but it doesn’t work as well as Office 2003 or Office 2007. So I got WINE working and installed Office 2003 under Ubuntu.

I find that now I am doing less with my computer (in some ways because I am less familiar with how to do things in Ubuntu) and doing less seems to directly contribute to greater reliability. But since I am very used to Microsoft applications and can be very productive with them, I’m considering going back to Windows. Heck, Windows works pretty well, well except for Vista — so maybe I will switch to Windows XP x64 here at work. What do you think? Give me your advice, comments are welcome.


Also published on Medium.

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