I started out using computers a long time ago. Here is a brief re-cap: My first computer was a Commodore PET, simple and fun. I moved form platform to platform as different options became available for me to experience: Apple II’s at school, a Mac SE that my parents bought, PCs running DOS for Autocad. From that point on I stuck with DOS/Windows based machines because I had invested in software for that platform.
As most people know, Windows is a double edged sword, it seems easy at first but there are lots of potholes on this road. Windows 3.1 seemed to become corrupted almost weekly, and I was constantly re-installing it. Windows 95 was more stable, but you always had to exit into DOS to get some applications to run. Windows NT 4 suffered a similar problem as 95, and was drastically different in terms of system administration. Windows 98, and ME were really only patches to 95 to support USB and a few other technologies. And then finally windows 2000. Stable and robust like NT 4, but more inline with the workstation user than NT 4 which really felt like a server environment. I really liked Win2K. Even after XP came out, Win2K was better because it was just as stable as XP, but could be run on half the computer that XP required. Half the RAM, drive space, and video card. Eventually XP’s bells and whistles won me over and I switched. It made some tasks really easy, and the improvements from day to day were enough to convince me to switch. When I built my new PC I wanted to move XP onto it, so I had to decide whether I wanted to shell out for another license of XP, or try something more daring. I settled on trying Linux. (more…)
