I want to upgrade but Vista is holding me back

I'm in the same boat, locked in the upgrade waiting game.

I've got an old win2k machine with an AMD 2400, 1gb pc2700 memory, and a 6800gt (AGP). I've also not done a clean format/reinstall for years. [pause for laughter].

As tough as it is to just say 'screw it' and build a new rig now, I keep telling myself to wait for the Vista bugs to get worked out, and take advantage of technology that isn't available yet.

Hopefully by the time I pull the trigger and "upgrade" to a completely new system (about this time next year) to take advantage of Vista and DX10, I'll also be able to take advantage of technology like PCIe 2.0, multi-processor vid cards, smaller procs (maybe a true quadcore AMD chip), etc.

Guess I'll go format and reinstall good ol' Win2k now, lol ...

Quote:

---

Wow four year without a reinstall is no joke. That thing must be more messed up then Michael Jackson.

---

I can remember when I thought this was normal for an operating system too.

Today my main desktop has not been rebuilt for since 2002. It started out life as an install of "Woody" when Woody was Debian's "testing" distribution and had the 2.2 Linux kernel. I upgraded the install to Sarge in mid 2003 when it was the "testing" release and ran Sarge until mid 2004. At that time I started using apt-pinning and ran a combination of Sarge, Etch, and Sid (Stable, testing, and unstable) until mid 2005 when I dist-upgraded to Etch and then about 2 months later upgraded to Sid and have been running it ever since.

That means I have upgraded, in place and without formatting the hard drive, the operating system 4 times in 4 years, and have gone through 3 major and many minor kernel revisions. The system is still stable, even though I was running what would be considered a combination of a previous Windows release, and a beta1 and beta2 of their next release at the same time for a few months, or either a full beta2 or beta1 release for more than 3 out of 4 years.

Anyone want to tell me about how stable XP is, and about the quality of the design of a Microsoft operating system? I haven't had to fight spyware or viruses, spend time running things like registry cleaners, and have never defragged the hard drive once in 4 years. This system is also a major part of a home lab and has had literally hundreds of different software packages installed and uninstalled during those 4+ years. I have used this system to learn how to run and administer a Linux box so it started out life being tortured by a Linux noob who made far more mistakes than correct decisions. It's also run a half dozen of my custom kernel builds, including the first one I ever attempted, besides the Debian kernel-image builds.

Anyone want to tell me just how much easier and less time consuming it is to administer a Windows box than a Linux box? Has anyone even tried doing with Windows what I've done with this Debian box? Anyone think it's even possible? I don't.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gary K

I can remember when I thought this was normal for an operating system too.

Today my main desktop has not been rebuilt for since 2002. It started out life as an install of "Woody" when Woody was Debian's "testing" distribution and had the 2.2 Linux kernel. I upgraded the install to Sarge in mid 2003 when it was the "testing" release and ran Sarge until mid 2004. At that time I started using apt-pinning and ran a combination of Sarge, Etch, and Sid (Stable, testing, and unstable) until mid 2005 when I dist-upgraded to Etch and then about 2 months later upgraded to Sid and have been running it ever since.

That means I have upgraded, in place and without formatting the hard drive, the operating system 4 times in 4 years, and have gone through 3 major and many minor kernel revisions. The system is still stable, even though I was running what would be considered a combination of a previous Windows release, and a beta1 and beta2 of their next release at the same time for a few months, or either a full beta2 or beta1 release for more than 3 out of 4 years.

Anyone want to tell me about how stable XP is, and about the quality of the design of a Microsoft operating system? I haven't had to fight spyware or viruses, spend time running things like registry cleaners, and have never defragged the hard drive once in 4 years. This system is also a major part of a home lab and has had literally hundreds of different software packages installed and uninstalled during those 4+ years. I have used this system to learn how to run and administer a Linux box so it started out life being tortured by a Linux noob who made far more mistakes than correct decisions. It's also run a half dozen of my custom kernel builds, including the first one I ever attempted, besides the Debian kernel-image builds.

Anyone want to tell me just how much easier and less time consuming it is to administer a Windows box than a Linux box? Has anyone even tried doing with Windows what I've done with this Debian box? Anyone think it's even possible? I don't.

---

For part of that reason i'm thinking of going to Mac OS X