Windows Blew Away

Tripp Black  June 12 2011 09:46:35 PM

Well for the 3rd time in several months, my Windows 7 Explorer task bit the dust - starting hanging w/o saying this time that anything was even wrong. I did a repair from the install disk again, but it didn't work. Another day of work lost. I just wasn't up to yet another day and a half of reinstalling, loading drivers (which thankfully I have all saved now), and all my software again, and again just to have this happen again. It's much more stable than Vista, but it still stinks.

So I put Ubuntu 10 on it for a couple days. Ran fine - no hardware compatibility. Upgraded it to the newest 11 release -- a really beautiful release BTW. The window transition and desktop Gnome effects are subtle eye candy, rather than the tacky brute force lens flares and flashes of Windows 7. Unlike Windows 7, Ubuntu didn't have to try to cool or sexy, it just was. Unfortunately, the cool OS isn't good enough by itself.  I need Lotus Notes, Designer, a couple older Adobe products, and the VMware VI client. The best platform to get me the most of the way there (except Designer and VI) is Mac.

So today I got a Mac mini. In one hour I had almost everything installed. It's running both my 20" monitors - aahhh, sweet. The long part tonight is building my XP VM inside my new version 3 VMware Fusion client. Gee, my progressed slowed when I hit Windows lots of waiting time and driver install time. If only IBM and VMware would get their full client software on Ubuntu or Mac.

The really good news is that in NC our office has NO more Windows workstations. In fact, I'm the last running a VMware Fusion on a regular basis. We have about a half dozen Macs and 3 Ubuntu PCs. Only our account manager is still running a Windows PC tablet - she's in VA and if Apple sold one, we'd already have gotten it for her. She'll probably end up with a Mac mini and a touchscreen monitor.

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