Re: XY, Vista, choices

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Si Wright wrote:
> More reasons to cling to XP over Vista in this NYT story about people
> having "upgrade" trouble. Interesting focus group: Microsoft execs.
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.html


Will look at it at the office if I remember. But of course,
upgrading opsys on an existing machine is almost always folly.
But if it comes installed on a new system, it may be worth your
time and money (as I said, XP costs more than some versions of
Vista) to try and live with it.


Heretofore, my "best practice"--both for my own systems and for
the office where I am, de facto and for lack of anyone more
qualified, sysadmin and tech gal--has been to buy bare iron and
install everything from scratch, after having first partitioned
the drive. Three considerations are making me seriously consider
departing from that for our next purchase (replacing the
bookkeeper's PC, which _died_): 1) the dropping price of hard
drives, which means getting a second hard drive and dedicating it
to data is so cheap that it's not worth the time it takes me to
partition and install; 2) Vista's ability to nondestructively
partition _after_ Windows is installed; 3) a tight time frame for
setting up a new system and then doing a musical chairs rotation
of the new and existing systems, so that the oldest XP box
becomes to bookkeeper's "new" one.


Of course, you have to buy a laptop all set up. There's no such
thing as a bare iron laptop (alas).


--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx