That is a great message - Please do send updates as you try different
things with ubuntu.

i am 65 and am just glad that Ubuntu is so nice and simple
that even I can handle it :-)

(My friends around here keep on asking me to help them with Windows.
Now that's a challenge).

I am an anti-military man myself, but have decided that the time is
just a 24hour clock so I don't have to worry about changing it.

Yea another senior who thinks young the only thing that word is good for is the
discounts.
I have been helping others with windoze for years and I'm sick of it I'll
still.
help 'em but I stop with XP.

I'm sure I've been kinda lucky 'cause aint nothin truly simple besides I still
have to set up my printer and net work this and an XP machine together so I can
help friends unless I can move them to UBI.

I am also sick of reinstalling Windows and lots of software for others. I gave
up.
My mother also uses Ubuntu, she is 58 years old. Sadly, she plays games most
of the time. Little emailing and web browsing.

I know people who use some expensive windoze PCs for the same thing.
At least she can enjoy her PC with out the frustrations the other OS can cause.
Also 1 less PC for you to fix.

Why would you constantly install windows ?

I help people at home and seldom have that job with XP or previous
versions that so many people use.

As well as ubuntu I use XP, Vista and now the new Win 7.

All the people I know who reinstall windows do it to make things work
again....

Over the course of my 20+ year career in IT I can count on one hand the number
of times I've had to re-install Windows to fix a problem. And that goes back to
the dawn of Windows time - Windows v2.0.

It's great that you're a windoze ueber geek, but the average joe 6 pack
isn't going to spend the time and effort to become an mcse just to get
his peecee back up, when he can just re-install.

I don't think the gentleman styles himself an uber-geek.

I, assuredly, am not yet have used Windows since the Windows 3.0 days and have
only had to re-install XP for user's whose systems were "hosed."

A re-install from time to time may be warranted when the hard drive gets to look
a little like Fibber McGee's closet. It's not especially fun doing a bare metal
install of the OS and all one's applications. And your data, you DID back it up,
right?

And I see a lot of Linux users install this Distro and that Distro searching for
the Goldilocks, "This one's just right." If you can fix your installtion, why
not?

I can give several reasons to re-install Windoze.
When the person your helping insists on perusing porn sites and the stuff they
get there kills the machine to the point that it won't boot.

when another person decides to just deleat a program or 2 or 3 not un-install
and they deleat the wrong stuff.

when someone plays in the registry without backing it up.

And most recently some one who jumps from WIN98 to XP and is a die hard DOS
military man and thinks he should be able to force the new machine to play WIN95
and DOS games. His old 98machine died and I built him A new machine of course he
wanted 98 but the hardware didn't. Have fixed it twice and just re-installed. I
told him he breaks it again he's on his own.

Well you do get some like that but then you seem to have more than most.

I have several friends who when they first got computers were gung-ho and had to
learn most of them have A few like that last one really try my @@# patience.

you must have some "unuaual hands" ..

I agree about fixing rather than re-installing.

[Before Windows (TM) used GUI on Commodore PC] Not in the IT field yet.

MS systems, DOS and Windows, learned from reading books and hands on.

Still looking. Can't understand why seniors are excluded from entry level IT
jobs. Don't the employers know that we have a longer life span now?

This is the result of global capitalism. If you believe in capitalism then
you have to accept the result. It always seeks the lowest cost of labour.
This is how Wal-Mart got rich. People want the cheapest and are not willing
to pay extra to keep jobs at home. Mumbai is in the midst of a boom that it
can't keep up with while domestic technology is suffering. You have to look
at the big picture.

Who is behind this? Capitalists do not care where they make their money.
Their allegiance is not to you or the country but to its share holders.
People forget that. They want to believe that their corporations care about
them. If you live by the sword ...

Over the last 30 odd years I have usually been able to fix them from
Win1 up to Vista.

Only when they needed a bigger HD would I reinstall and format the old
HD as the slave.

That incredible level of dedication and windoze skill is so far beyond
the comprehension of the average user that it beggars description.

Yes but I had children who wanted to play game so I had to learn quick
in those far off days.

I would just like to add that most of the people who re-install Windows
in order to make it work again do so because they either don't want to
take the time to do a competent repair job, or they don't know how to do
a competent repair job. I have been running Windows since 1996,
upgraded from 3.1 to 95, then to 98, then to XP, which I have been using
for about 7 years. I have upgraded each time, not reinstalled, and I
still have email in here from the 90's.

Or, as in my case, when Vista decided it wasn't going to talk to any
printers anymore and wouldn't give me any information as to why, ran out
of time to do a repair job after two days of the most intense
frustration. (A problem, I have to say, that took me less than half an
hour to - competently - fix when the exact same thing happened on my
Ubuntu box.)

I, like you, have extensive experience with Windows, having run every
version from 2.0 to Vista (yes, including NT, 2000 *and* Me). I have
done numerous upgrades and fresh installs and re-installs in my time -
both personally and in my previous life as a support technician - and my
experience of Windows is that it is a severe pain in the anatomy - and,
in many, many ways, is designed to be so.

Just because *you* have never had any problems keeping your systems
running, please don't assume that that means that anyone who *has* had
problems which have led to rebuilding their system is therefore most
likely to be incompetent.

I did not mean to imply that there were not any unresolvable issues with
Windows, I know that is far from true.
I am having a problem with a Vista machine of mine right now that at
first worked with my Xerox Phaser 6100 printer on this machine through
my wireless network, but has now stopped working for some reason. I
have not been able to get it to work at all now, even when I plug the
printer directly into that computer. So I even tried upgrading it to
Windows 7RC, but still no printer. So I guess I too will have to save
the data and reinstall to get that machine working.

One of the main problems of email - it is far too easy to take offence
where none was meant. My apologies.

Good luck with fixing your printer problem - I never did get to the
bottom of mine.

Just go to the printers web site to see if they provided a Vista driver
for that version.

If they did not it will not work on Win 7

If you had all that experience then a Vista driver for the printer would
surely have saved you the frustration.

They do not suggest incompetence but just lack of knowledge it one or
other area.