Desktop V Laptop.

[Yorkie]

I must admit that I'm disappointed at how much I like Windows 7!
There are people who can optimise their Linux installations with excellent results, but I'm not one of them! When I have more spare time, I'd like to have a go, but I'm afraid that the days of playing with OS installations for fun have long gone. To me, a computer is a tool, and the OS should perform optimally out of the box. Windows does - although yes, it can be made a lot better if you're so inclined.

One of the reasons that I scrapped my XP machine was that over the years it became slower and slower, and was made slower by installing Norton Internet Security. (Can't blame that on XP of course). I guess I could have taken everything off it re-formatted the hard drive and reinstalled what I needed, because I'd probably put stuff on over the years that slowed it down and was redundant to my needs. It reached the stage at which it was taking 15 minutes to boot up, which was ridiculous. I'd had the PC several years, it only had 1gB of RAM and a not very fast processor.

I have a chum who runs a little business building and repairing computers, maintaining office computers and networks, and just over two years ago I asked him to put this PC together for me to meet my needs. It has W7 and AVG (paid for) anti-virus/internet security and boots up in exactly one minute. On the rare occasions that I have problems, I give my chum a call and he's here the same day to sort it out while I get on with things that interest me.

There are those whose hobby seems to be playing about with various OSs, and who derive endless hours of fun from dabbling around with such things as Linux, but I'm not one of them. I'm no more interested in what makes my computer work or what to do if ever it doesn't, than I am about the engine management system under the bonnet of my car. I just want to turn it one and use it. Not interested in whizz bang processors, sound cards and video cards that are so essential to gamers, and not interested in downloading films and music - I just want a PC that's suited for home/office use, and that's what I got.

I understand why Microsoft was forced to stop bundling their own browser and e-mail software with their OSs because the default became Outlook and Explorer, but it's a bit of a nuisance, and users who wanted to could always install other browsers and e-mail facilities. I don't know to what extent Chrome, Safari, Firefox etc have made inroads into what was MS territory. Not very much would be my guess.

As to internet, I'm lucky to live in an area where there is only one landline ISP - KC 'Karoo' because while it promises up to 8mB speed, it rarely delivers less than 11mB. Poor old John ('oldjohn' that is) who lives just outside the KC supply area, continues to have difficulty getting a reliable connection and his internet has been down for days. All he gets when he calls his ISP is an answerphone when he calls them.