I have been looking at purchasing a new laptop for my son as he starts
his PhD program and another for my daughter as she enters college. When
comparing the cost of a 15" Laptop from Apple to a comparable 15" PC, I
can not justify the cost difference. I looked online to see when was
the last date Windows will be selling the XP version, and noticed that
their is a petition to request MS continue selling XP beyond their
current cut off date of June 30. So far, they have over 100,000 people
to sign the petition.

If you would like the option of buying XP after June30, stop by and sign
their petition, it just might make an impact on MS decision.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/

Reginald P. Smithers III wrote:

I have been looking at purchasing a new laptop for my son as he starts
his PhD program and another for my daughter as she enters college. When
comparing the cost of a 15" Laptop from Apple to a comparable 15" PC, I
can not justify the cost difference. I looked online to see when was
the last date Windows will be selling the XP version, and noticed that
their is a petition to request MS continue selling XP beyond their
current cut off date of June 30. So far, they have over 100,000 people
to sign the petition.

If you would like the option of buying XP after June30, stop by and sign
their petition, it just might make an impact on MS decision.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/




If you buy before 30 June, what the hell difference does it make? Do you
think the information on the CDs disappears on that date? If you don't
want to pop for two new laptops, just buy two XP CDs.

If you get the right laptop, it'll run Leopard OS, XP *and* VISTA. Apple
offers a 10% educational discount to students, and some universities
have programs that beat that discount.

Buy whatever the hell you want, but don't use a cut-off date for sales
as an excuse: if you are such a big fan of XP and the laptops you buy
run VISTA, you can easily wipe the hard drives and install XP.

On Mar 18, 7:46*am, HK wrote:
Reginald P. Smithers III wrote:







I have been looking at purchasing a new laptop for my son as he starts
his PhD program and another for my daughter as she enters college. When
comparing the cost of a 15" Laptop from Apple to a comparable 15" PC, I
can not justify the cost difference. *I looked online to see when was
the last date Windows will be selling the XP version, and noticed that
their is a petition to request MS continue selling XP beyond their
current cut off date of June 30. *So far, they have over 100,000 people
to sign the petition.

If you would like the option of buying XP after June30, stop by and sign
their petition, it just might make an impact on MS decision.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/

If you buy before 30 June, what the hell difference does it make? Do you
think the information on the CDs disappears on that date? If you don't
want to pop for two new laptops, just buy two XP CDs.

If you get the right laptop, it'll run Leopard OS, XP *and* VISTA. Apple
offers a 10% educational discount to students, and some universities
have programs that beat that discount.

Buy whatever the hell you want, but don't use a cut-off date for sales
as an excuse: if you are such a big fan of XP and the laptops you buy
run VISTA, you can easily wipe the hard drives and install XP.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Harry, wasn't you just whining yesterday in the guitar thread because
it wasn't boating related?

HK wrote:
Reginald P. Smithers III wrote:

I have been looking at purchasing a new laptop for my son as he starts
his PhD program and another for my daughter as she enters college.
When comparing the cost of a 15" Laptop from Apple to a comparable 15"
PC, I can not justify the cost difference. I looked online to see
when was the last date Windows will be selling the XP version, and
noticed that their is a petition to request MS continue selling XP
beyond their current cut off date of June 30. So far, they have over
100,000 people to sign the petition.

If you would like the option of buying XP after June30, stop by and
sign their petition, it just might make an impact on MS decision.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/




If you buy before 30 June, what the hell difference does it make? Do you
think the information on the CDs disappears on that date? If you don't
want to pop for two new laptops, just buy two XP CDs.

If you get the right laptop, it'll run Leopard OS, XP *and* VISTA. Apple
offers a 10% educational discount to students, and some universities
have programs that beat that discount.

Buy whatever the hell you want, but don't use a cut-off date for sales
as an excuse: if you are such a big fan of XP and the laptops you buy
run VISTA, you can easily wipe the hard drives and install XP.

I would prefer to order the computers in August to get the lowest price
on a faster CPU, just before they need them, but if they don't extend
sales beyond June 30th, I will probably buy the one for my daughter
before the cut off.

My daughter definitely wants to have a PC, my son stated he wanted a
MAC, but he really needs to get in touch with the University Dept, to
find out which one is used the most in his dept. Since specialty fonts
are heavily used in his field, he needs to use the software and fonts
used by the professors.

As far as the discount offered by Universities, I have been comparing
the price, and they do offer a 12% discount, if you order they 3 yr
warranty, but if you watch for sales, you can actually do better not
buying it on the educational discount. Software on the other hand is
much better at his University. They offer Vista Ulitmate at $18.00 and
Windows XP at $14.99 and Office Ultimate at $49.00.
Apple Iwork is $39.99 and Fusion is $39.99.

I still can't figure out what is the advantage of buying a MAC if you
are going to be using Windows OS and software. Since you now own a MAC
do you see a difference between a MAC and PC, and why not just use MS
Office for Mac instead of using Windows Office?

Reginald P. Smithers III wrote:
HK wrote:
Reginald P. Smithers III wrote:

I have been looking at purchasing a new laptop for my son as he
starts his PhD program and another for my daughter as she enters
college. When comparing the cost of a 15" Laptop from Apple to a
comparable 15" PC, I can not justify the cost difference. I looked
online to see when was the last date Windows will be selling the XP
version, and noticed that their is a petition to request MS continue
selling XP beyond their current cut off date of June 30. So far,
they have over 100,000 people to sign the petition.

If you would like the option of buying XP after June30, stop by and
sign their petition, it just might make an impact on MS decision.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/




If you buy before 30 June, what the hell difference does it make? Do
you think the information on the CDs disappears on that date? If you
don't want to pop for two new laptops, just buy two XP CDs.

If you get the right laptop, it'll run Leopard OS, XP *and* VISTA.
Apple offers a 10% educational discount to students, and some
universities have programs that beat that discount.

Buy whatever the hell you want, but don't use a cut-off date for sales
as an excuse: if you are such a big fan of XP and the laptops you buy
run VISTA, you can easily wipe the hard drives and install XP.

I would prefer to order the computers in August to get the lowest price
on a faster CPU, just before they need them, but if they don't extend
sales beyond June 30th, I will probably buy the one for my daughter
before the cut off.

My daughter definitely wants to have a PC, my son stated he wanted a
MAC, but he really needs to get in touch with the University Dept, to
find out which one is used the most in his dept. Since specialty fonts
are heavily used in his field, he needs to use the software and fonts
used by the professors.

As far as the discount offered by Universities, I have been comparing
the price, and they do offer a 12% discount, if you order they 3 yr
warranty, but if you watch for sales, you can actually do better not
buying it on the educational discount. Software on the other hand is
much better at his University. They offer Vista Ulitmate at $18.00 and
Windows XP at $14.99 and Office Ultimate at $49.00.
Apple Iwork is $39.99 and Fusion is $39.99.

I still can't figure out what is the advantage of buying a MAC if you
are going to be using Windows OS and software. Since you now own a MAC
do you see a difference between a MAC and PC, and why not just use MS
Office for Mac instead of using Windows Office?




I can't see any distinct advantages between identical apps running under
windoze and apps running under leopard. Some of the "mac" apps i have do
appear to be a bit more elegant than apps for windows that perform
similar functions. I like the mac's aperature photo program better than
I like photoshop. Firefox and Thunderbird are the same on both machines.

I really do not like the MS Office suite, so I am playing around with
several mac word processors. About 90% of the text I write for paying
customers is straight text, and I never use 99% of word's features. So a
simple, quick, lean WP is what I prefer. Mac Pages seems reasonable, and
it does save in *.doc format.

I run XP and VISTA on my mac under VM Fusion. It works very well. I have
a couple of windozes apps for which there are no mac versions, such my
garmin stuff.

The mac packaging is quite elegant on the laptops, though it is
overpriced. It is much much easier learning to use a mac these days than
it was five or six years ago.

wrote:
On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 06:47:10 -0400, "Reginald P. Smithers III"
"Reggie is Here wrote:

I have been looking at purchasing a new laptop for my son as he starts
his PhD program and another for my daughter as she enters college. When
comparing the cost of a 15" Laptop from Apple to a comparable 15" PC, I
can not justify the cost difference. I looked online to see when was
the last date Windows will be selling the XP version, and noticed that
their is a petition to request MS continue selling XP beyond their
current cut off date of June 30. So far, they have over 100,000 people
to sign the petition.

If you would like the option of buying XP after June30, stop by and sign
their petition, it just might make an impact on MS decision.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/



You would have to find a way to send Bill Gates some more money to
impact his decision. That is all the greedy ******* recognizes.
Certainly older operating systems will still run (I am using W/98
here) but he always makes sure his new applications are not backward
compatible so the content you can access shrinks to the point that you
have to upgrade.
Usually the "improvement" is meaningless and only done to force
obsolecence of the older OS (like the DOCX file)


If the improvements are "meaningless," then why worry about backwards
compatibility?

In the consumer world, most MS apps that run under windoze will run
under XP or VISTA, the two "current" operating systems. Most current
apps also ran under Win2k.

I'm not a big fan of MS "apps," per se, and in fact have a copy of
Office 2007 I installed and then removed. I prefer the older Office 2003.

There are plenty of reasons to criticize MS, legitimate reasons. Trying
to move the line forward is not one of them.

And while Gates is a very wealthy man, he is most busy these days
working to give his money away through his foundation. Gates is a huge
contributor to educational and health causes.

wrote in message
news
On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:53:57 -0400, HK wrote:

Usually the "improvement" is meaningless and only done to force
obsolecence of the older OS (like the DOCX file)


If the improvements are "meaningless," then why worry about backwards
compatibility?


Because you don't generate everything you might want to see.
The people on the bleeding edge drag everyone else into the morass
if we want to share data with them.

It is not just Microsoft, adobe is the same way. There are now PDFs
all over the internet that you can't open with a version of the reader
that runs on W98, yet it is still just a picture of a page. Where is
the increased value ... other than making software companies a little
richer.



Hmmmm... With that logic, the automobile industry should have stopped with
the model "T".

Eisboch

wrote in message
...




It is not just Microsoft, adobe is the same way. There are now PDFs
all over the internet that you can't open with a version of the reader
that runs on W98, yet it is still just a picture of a page. Where is
the increased value ... other than making software companies a little
richer.




Hmmmm... With that logic, the automobile industry should have stopped
with
the model "T".

Eisboch



If the actual benefit to the customer didn't improve they should have
kept building model Ts. Probably why they did for 18 years.
Creating a new format that is not backward compatible, simply because
they can is pure greed.


It's also how companies stay in business.

Eisboch

Eisboch wrote:
wrote in message
...


It is not just Microsoft, adobe is the same way. There are now PDFs
all over the internet that you can't open with a version of the reader
that runs on W98, yet it is still just a picture of a page. Where is
the increased value ... other than making software companies a little
richer.



Hmmmm... With that logic, the automobile industry should have stopped
with
the model "T".

Eisboch


If the actual benefit to the customer didn't improve they should have
kept building model Ts. Probably why they did for 18 years.
Creating a new format that is not backward compatible, simply because
they can is pure greed.


It's also how companies stay in business.

Eisboch



That only is accurate if they make a superior product than the
competition. If MS continues to make a product that the consumer is not
happy with, it opens the door for serious competition.

Reginald P. Smithers III wrote:
Eisboch wrote:
wrote in message
...


It is not just Microsoft, adobe is the same way. There are now PDFs
all over the internet that you can't open with a version of the reader
that runs on W98, yet it is still just a picture of a page. Where is
the increased value ... other than making software companies a little
richer.



Hmmmm... With that logic, the automobile industry should have
stopped with
the model "T".

Eisboch


If the actual benefit to the customer didn't improve they should have
kept building model Ts. Probably why they did for 18 years.
Creating a new format that is not backward compatible, simply because
they can is pure greed.


It's also how companies stay in business.

Eisboch


That only is accurate if they make a superior product than the
competition. If MS continues to make a product that the consumer is not
happy with, it opens the door for serious competition.


Yes, there are all sorts of systems software manufacturers making great
inroads into Microsoft's market share on PC operating systems. Why,
there's x....and y...and z.

Having said that, though, I do believe Apple's porting of UNIX into
Leopard (or Leopard onto UNIX) and its use of the UNIX foundation are
pretty slick. Apple's business model requires it to charge premium
prices for its hardware, though, and in today's overly competitive
market, that is keeping it from attaining the market share it might
achieve if it operated differently.