[WriteLog] Operating system--followup

[W0UN--John Brosnahan]

Again, I appreciate all of the feedback and comments.  Many of them on
the reflector and many just to me personally.  Tough to reply to all of them
individually--but I wanted to respond to the issues that have been raised--
as well as thank the group collectively.

Win XP--I am not happy with the activation and registration hassles but I
am certainly willing to do it--either by phone or the internet.  But I 
really do
RESENT the jumping through hoops if you make significant changes
in the hardware once the software is activated.   I am a HAM and an
experimenter.  I tend to buy things and play with them--it is all about the
learning process--and I have heard many stories about the hassles of
trying to convince MS that you have just changed some hardware--and
not trying to run the OS on a second platform.

When I buy something I don't want hassles with trying to use it.  This is
why I boycott "pay-before-you-pump" gas stations.  All I can do is vote
with my money.  If filling up my tank with gas is a hassle then I will shop
somewhere else.  Same with an OS--once it becomes more of a hassle
than it is worth then I will change to something that is more customer 
friendly.
A very good friend of mine is a professor in Electrical Engineering and 
Computer
Science at a major university.  He is a ham and an active contester.  And he
has an MS-free home.   Running Macs and Linux systems. It is possible to
"stop the madness".    ;-)

What I was referring to in my comment about "phoning home" is the reported
property of XP that it sends information on your system and configuration
at future dates--ala "spyware".  I don't know exactly what XP does--maybe no
one does entirely--it is just too complex.  But I am uncomfortable with the
reports that I have seen about this OS behavior.

Another example of what to me seems like a hassle is to have everything
enabled and then you have to know enough to turn things off.  I don't know
what all is enabled in XP that I need to turn off.  I don't know enough about
cookies for instance to know for sure just what risk they pose to my
system's security versus what benefits they provide.  What I do know is
that today I was trying to us MS Word to type up a simple invoice.  I made
a column for hours and a column for task description.  The first time I filled
in the hours column it was for 10.3 hours.  As soon as I did a carriage return
MS Word insisted on numbering the next line 10.3.1.  Some sort of auto-
paragraph feature I guess.  And when I backed up to delete it the cursor
just jumped over the paragraph numbering.  I did find a way to delete it--
but in 10 minutes of looking through the pull-down menus I never found
a way to turn off that "feature".   I find it really annoying when things
make assumptions about what I want for features and it is hard to turn
them off--or at least hard to find out how to turn them off.  Much better
is to have features that I can turn ON when I want them.

I do know that I like the improved security of running Eudora and Netscape
over running the equivalent programs from MS.  (Netscape is about to go
away and be replaced by Mozilla.)

My time IS valuable--I am getting older and I am starting to count how
many years I have left for tower climbing--and after the pain I feel from
firewood splitting this week--it may not even be years.  I have a great
location -- it is very remote and is very quiet.   But it only has access to
the internet over landline and 26.4 KBaud at best.  I resent my limited
internet time being wasted by pop-up and pop-under ads using up my
bandwidth.

So I am trying to find a the most reliable OS that also is the most
hassle free.   I don't need an upgrade path in the near future.   If my
software runs under an OS and does what I need then I will continue
to run the same hardware/software for that application until long after
it is no longer supported by the factory.

I want to be able to do digital mode contests with Writelog--something I
have never done before but always been interested in.  And I may possibly
want to add a sound card to a motherboard that already has sound--so
I can use one for a voice keyer and one for recording.  I believe this is
possible with Writelog and XP or 2000 pro--but if not then I will run another
computer to do the recording.  To be able to do both the logging and
recording on one computer it is probably necessary to have faster than
average hardware--and RAM is so cheap right now (512 MB of PC133
for $34 after rebate) there is no reason not to go overboard on RAM as
well.

Although I THINK that XP is probably more of the way to go than 2000 pro
I am getting closer to deciding to use 2000 pro anyway--assuming there
isn't some "gotcha" that I haven't found yet--because I have a copy that is
already paid for.  And because it is less of a hassle for hardware changes.
And because I feel better about what it WON'T do when I am not looking.

As a general purpose machine--video editing, etc--the answer would be
XP or XP pro.   But for a dedicated logging program I am not as sure
that it makes that much difference and I already own the 2000 pro.

Feel free to convince me that I am wrong!    ;-)

I do understand that it may be easier to network XP than 2000 pro--but
I have been successful at networking multiple OS platforms both with
ethernet and with 802.11b--so hopefully I can network some 2000 pro
systems if I get serious!

Thanks for all of the input--the discussion has been very useful--even
though not entirely definitive.  There does seem to be a feeling that the
"best" OS is the one that the writer is using--whatever it is.

I wonder how many people would put up some money in advance for
a Linux port?  Maybe if there was enough interest backed by hard currency
someone would take the plunge.

Again, THANKS--

73--John   W0UN

BTW  I also resent that if I buy XP TODAY I will still have to download
the service pack to make it current.   At 26.4 KB this is really painful.