OT (not entirely): Vista and alternatives

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Someone called a horror story to my attention: a retired electrician
was helping kids learn computer-aided design. A project one of his
protégés did won him a free copy of some useful software, but the kid
had no PC powerful enough to run it. Some kind people offered to foot
the bill. Here's what happened (as told by the retired electrician):


>>I had ordered Windows XP Professional. The IT man explained that
>>Dell did not give him any choice in this matter, because it was not
>>an option. We tried every trick we have come to know, including
>>using DOS to reformat the hard drive and install XP on it. Perhaps
>>the BIOS is set up only for Vista, because it would not accept
>>Windows XP as an OS. So we tried to do a dual boot install using a
>>partitioning application, but after going through the setup, Vista
>>would not allow this.

I'm not surprised that a DOS format wouldn't take: Vista is no doubt
NTFS, but there must be a way to wipe the drive. And some companies do
offer XP in their business divisions (for a price premium). But why, I
have to ask, didn't they try bare iron from 3 Geeks and a Goat? How
long even XP drivers will be available is, of course, the big question.


Further on this, a bunch of open-source super geeks are trying to
clean room engineer an XP clone. See http://www.reactos.com/en/index.html
Still only in Alpha. If one wonders Why?, well, I'm not the only one
insulted by Product Activation. And not the only M$-paranoiac who
suspects that one fine day all copies of XP will deactivate. (On which
day, Macs and even Linux will look VERY attractive to a lot of people.)


--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx