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My experience with upgrading to Windowxs XP was not a joyfull one! Hoever, after three months for problems it's finally working. Once thing I noticed was that the results you get an in any type of listing that checks for XP compabitily may not always be correct (I used the XP CD and did the 'checkupgrade only' option). For example, the list said my 2001 verion of VirusScan was not XP compatible! I had to do some investigative research to find out, yes, it was compatible. Before taking the results list as accurate, thoroughly investigate the results. I determined that my version of VirusScan was XP compatible because (1) the documentation said it was, and (2) it came out AFTER XP was released. My guess is that the 'checkupgradeonly' option checks for certain things. And since my version of VirusScan came out after XP, the certain thing it was looking for did not exist!
Honestly I haven't had one application that wont run on XP. The only problem I ran into was a driver issue for a scanner which was resolved my installing the XP driver.
What I find is that most apps that dont run are pretty darn old. I mean honestly if you are running some old VB exe app or something that came out during the win95 win3.1 era you really need to consider upgrading. It amazes me how much industry oriented apps (banking, payroll etc) are built on VERY old technology. I understand cutting costs, but some of these companies (and I mean pretty large big money firms) need to seriously update their software. Some of this stuff is built on technology from the windows 3.1 days. Unbeleivable.
What I find is that most apps that dont run are pretty darn old. I mean honestly if you are running some old VB exe app or something that came out during the win95 win3.1 era you really need to consider upgrading. It amazes me how much industry oriented apps (banking, payroll etc) are built on VERY old technology. I understand cutting costs, but some of these companies (and I mean pretty large big money firms) need to seriously update their software. Some of this stuff is built on technology from the windows 3.1 days. Unbeleivable.
Don't you get tired of having Microsoft products come out that are not compatible with their own other products? Or that have problems big enough to drive a truck through in other ways? And never knowing before you install if you're going to be able to use anything else you have on your system? I wish I could bill for all the time I spend figuring it out when I upgrade. I'd be rich.
We made the opposite choice. We stayed with Office 2000 rather than moving to Office 2002 because it was just to costly in time and effort to figure out exactly was causing the problems (and there were many, many problems) when we upgraded to XP.
I get tired of getting what's supposed to be a final version, then ending up paying to be Microsoft'sbeta tester until 3 or 4 patches down the road, they finally have a product that does what they claim it does.
And of course, by that time, they have the next version ready to be shipped and the cycle starts all over again.
I've decided for personal use, I will use the oldest version until the time comes that I can no longer run it for whatever reason.
At my house, we use use the 602 PC Suite on the kid's computers for schoolwork. It's free, we don't have to buy a separate license for each kid, and it's pretty much compatible with Microsoft Office.
And I'm learning Linux, just to give myself a choice when it comes to operating systems. I'm pretty much an applications person, but it seems worth it to me to just have a choice.
I'm not a Microsoft hater - I like a lot of what comes with the office suite and operating system. But I'm just tired of all the crap you have to go through to get it to work right, and the price we have to pay to keep up with all the changes.
Of course, there's always Apple -- and it too is sounding better and better to me.
Thanks for the place to vent!
We made the opposite choice. We stayed with Office 2000 rather than moving to Office 2002 because it was just to costly in time and effort to figure out exactly was causing the problems (and there were many, many problems) when we upgraded to XP.
I get tired of getting what's supposed to be a final version, then ending up paying to be Microsoft'sbeta tester until 3 or 4 patches down the road, they finally have a product that does what they claim it does.
And of course, by that time, they have the next version ready to be shipped and the cycle starts all over again.
I've decided for personal use, I will use the oldest version until the time comes that I can no longer run it for whatever reason.
At my house, we use use the 602 PC Suite on the kid's computers for schoolwork. It's free, we don't have to buy a separate license for each kid, and it's pretty much compatible with Microsoft Office.
And I'm learning Linux, just to give myself a choice when it comes to operating systems. I'm pretty much an applications person, but it seems worth it to me to just have a choice.
I'm not a Microsoft hater - I like a lot of what comes with the office suite and operating system. But I'm just tired of all the crap you have to go through to get it to work right, and the price we have to pay to keep up with all the changes.
Of course, there's always Apple -- and it too is sounding better and better to me.
Thanks for the place to vent!
I skipped Office 2000 and I'm glad I did. Office 200 is exactly the one that is most incompatible of all.
I used Office 97 happily for long, after staying with 3 and skipping 4.
What is the "logic"? Simple: Skip every "breakthrough" change, until they come up with the 2nd. version. This way I saved us a lot of grief. It's a half-assed way of dealing with innovation... but it works.
Office 2002 is as good as it gets (apply the 2 Service Packs, though
). It has a nice feature - keeping a local backup of the Excel stuff you're working on, in case your contact with the Network is broken. This alone saved hundreds of lost hours in my office when the network went through troubled times. Another good thing going for XP is that is is dead easy to setup the Windows defaults AND the Office ones.
We customize all Explorer, Power and Office settings for everybody - taking out indiviual and "automatic" settings that get in the way and uniformizing the way everything works - this way, when you log into a different machine, everything is ALREADY familiar and works the same way. All we do is to set up a "common user" in a machine, then just copy that User's profile dead onto the "Default User" one. Nifty and time saving. The beauty ofit? All the Office XP settings get copied as well!...
Office XP has also a nice compatibility feature that works quite well with Office 97 documents. This also helps in keeping documents totally useful acroff a changing environment.
Try OfficeXP, it's very good in my opinion.
I used Office 97 happily for long, after staying with 3 and skipping 4.
What is the "logic"? Simple: Skip every "breakthrough" change, until they come up with the 2nd. version. This way I saved us a lot of grief. It's a half-assed way of dealing with innovation... but it works.
Office 2002 is as good as it gets (apply the 2 Service Packs, though
). It has a nice feature - keeping a local backup of the Excel stuff you're working on, in case your contact with the Network is broken. This alone saved hundreds of lost hours in my office when the network went through troubled times. Another good thing going for XP is that is is dead easy to setup the Windows defaults AND the Office ones.We customize all Explorer, Power and Office settings for everybody - taking out indiviual and "automatic" settings that get in the way and uniformizing the way everything works - this way, when you log into a different machine, everything is ALREADY familiar and works the same way. All we do is to set up a "common user" in a machine, then just copy that User's profile dead onto the "Default User" one. Nifty and time saving. The beauty ofit? All the Office XP settings get copied as well!...
Office XP has also a nice compatibility feature that works quite well with Office 97 documents. This also helps in keeping documents totally useful acroff a changing environment.
Try OfficeXP, it's very good in my opinion.
Unfortunately, Office XP (specifically Word 2002), is not compatible with some vendor specific software we use for medical transcription. Worse, the company that sold us their transcrption software also sold us Office XP ~ then they expected us toby Office 2000 which is the last version of office to work with their product.
Somehow the whole concept of buying two copies of office from the same company when their product doesn't work with the software they sold us to begin with just doesn't make much sense.
I have been sticking with Windows 2000 pro for all of the workstations I buy and I think I'll continue doing so for the time being.
There is no feature available with XP that I "need" or any of the users on the network "need" and I'm not one to spend money just to improve the look and feel of the desktop.
Somehow the whole concept of buying two copies of office from the same company when their product doesn't work with the software they sold us to begin with just doesn't make much sense.
I have been sticking with Windows 2000 pro for all of the workstations I buy and I think I'll continue doing so for the time being.
There is no feature available with XP that I "need" or any of the users on the network "need" and I'm not one to spend money just to improve the look and feel of the desktop.
You should try and see if you can apply the Office XP licenses you bought can be used to install Office 2000 on your machines. You might to go through a different vendor though, these guys don't sound like they are looking out for you very well.Good luck,
Mike Simone
Mike Simone
I've no experience of Office 2002 but I do have extensive experience of Office 97 and Office 2000. I'm afraid my considered opinion is that all the half-hearted attempts at "improvements" in Office 97 that don't work particularly well have been muchmore successful in Office 2000. It seems like the original 32-bit Office (97) development wrinkles were finally ironed out for Office 2000.
The one exception to this is Outlook. Outlook 2000 is just as incompatible with the rest of Office 2000 asOutlook 97 was incompatible with the rest of Office 97.
The one exception to this is Outlook. Outlook 2000 is just as incompatible with the rest of Office 2000 asOutlook 97 was incompatible with the rest of Office 97.
I agree. But this is a Microsoft world. I have always likened it to the old "Beta vs. VHS" video tape issue from years ago. Beta was the superior product, but VHS had the market share.
So now, those of us who have followed like sheep to the slaughter, we are reaping what we have sown. When Microsoft emerged as the software company of choice after what I call "The O/S Wars" (remember ZDOS and C/PM?), no one realized what the word "monopoly" really meant. It means rather than having a choice in what we buy for our use, we have no choice (in order to remain compatible with the rest of humanity) but to crawl to ?The Butterfly? for our tools; whether they are for applications or application development.
I, too, don't use Microsoft Office at home. I took the time to download Sun's free office suite, Star Office 5.2. It works just as well for my needs, plus it?s somewhat compatible up to MS Office 2000. Linux isn't a viable option for me right now due to time constraints (i.e. heavy workload). I believe Apple still has "worms," but I agree it's becoming more appealing.
As a developer, I have always preferred Borland products (primarily Delphi) because of their simple superiority to anything Microsoft has released to date? yes, even "dotNet." But with the IT job market in a bit of a tight spot, I'm working in a Microsoft shop. So no matter how much I may snivel about dealing with inferior development products, I have to admit one very important thing: it's paying my bills.
Bill Gates isn?t stupid. He is a marketing genius. But I wouldn?t be surprised if one day we found out he was a beta video user.
Thanks for letting me rant.
So now, those of us who have followed like sheep to the slaughter, we are reaping what we have sown. When Microsoft emerged as the software company of choice after what I call "The O/S Wars" (remember ZDOS and C/PM?), no one realized what the word "monopoly" really meant. It means rather than having a choice in what we buy for our use, we have no choice (in order to remain compatible with the rest of humanity) but to crawl to ?The Butterfly? for our tools; whether they are for applications or application development.
I, too, don't use Microsoft Office at home. I took the time to download Sun's free office suite, Star Office 5.2. It works just as well for my needs, plus it?s somewhat compatible up to MS Office 2000. Linux isn't a viable option for me right now due to time constraints (i.e. heavy workload). I believe Apple still has "worms," but I agree it's becoming more appealing.
As a developer, I have always preferred Borland products (primarily Delphi) because of their simple superiority to anything Microsoft has released to date? yes, even "dotNet." But with the IT job market in a bit of a tight spot, I'm working in a Microsoft shop. So no matter how much I may snivel about dealing with inferior development products, I have to admit one very important thing: it's paying my bills.
Bill Gates isn?t stupid. He is a marketing genius. But I wouldn?t be surprised if one day we found out he was a beta video user.
Thanks for letting me rant.
As a developer, I have always preferred Borland products (primarily Delphi) because of their simple superiority to anything Microsoft has released to date? yes, even "dotNet." But with the IT job market in a bit of a tight spot, I'm working in a Microsoft shop. So no matter how much I may snivel about dealing with inferior development products, I have to admit one very important thing: it's paying my bills.
I'm not fond of everything MS does, but their apps (SQL server) and .NET are strating to outdo their competitors in many ways in terms of features and yes even speed. Are you aware that Borland will being converting Delphi and their products over to C# on .NET and not java.
I'm not fond of everything MS does, but their apps (SQL server) and .NET are strating to outdo their competitors in many ways in terms of features and yes even speed. Are you aware that Borland will being converting Delphi and their products over to C# on .NET and not java.
Borland have actually converted Delphi to the .NET format for their most recent release. It is one reason that I wouldn't consider software development using that release. (If I want to use C#, I'd use the Visual Studio .NET version.)
I agree, that MS is doing the upgrade thing too often and too fast for consumers or business alike to appreciate. Secondly, what does peeve me is the incompatibility that they build in purposely between Office suites. If you have Office 97, you maynot be able to open a doc written in office XP etc.
On the other hand, I cannot honestly say that Koffice , Staroffice etc are as refined as Office, they just arent, but they do provide the basic essential of what you need.
If your looking at Linux, its good, but you will have frustrations, especially if your use to windows or Apple computers. Its still rough around the edges, and it is sorely missing the apps which are its biggest weakness. Dont go look in your local Computer Store for a linux version of your favorite app, you wont find it because it probaly doesnt exist. Linux is a good server OS, not a good workstation OS.
Apple is probaly your best bet for an alternative. OSX is definitely a smooth elegant OS. Easy to use,and for those with bad file, directory management skills, Apple is great because you can drag and drop junk all over the place (no shorcuts) I wouldnt say this is good to do, but most Apple users I know have junk scattered all over the place, but itdoesnt have an affect on the application. Office is available for Apple, I think, and there are far more apps available for Apple, than there are for Linux. Plus Apple will have good commercial driver, software support like windows. Can't say thesame for linux. My only Gripe with Apple, is that both Explorer and Netscape browsers tend not to perform, display or handle scripting like javascript in web pages very well and its networking features are WEAK. For surfing the web and networking, I still think windows, and Linux are the best, but OSX is a vast improvement over OS9 in terms of networking and TCP/IP and should change that.
On the other hand, I cannot honestly say that Koffice , Staroffice etc are as refined as Office, they just arent, but they do provide the basic essential of what you need.
If your looking at Linux, its good, but you will have frustrations, especially if your use to windows or Apple computers. Its still rough around the edges, and it is sorely missing the apps which are its biggest weakness. Dont go look in your local Computer Store for a linux version of your favorite app, you wont find it because it probaly doesnt exist. Linux is a good server OS, not a good workstation OS.
Apple is probaly your best bet for an alternative. OSX is definitely a smooth elegant OS. Easy to use,and for those with bad file, directory management skills, Apple is great because you can drag and drop junk all over the place (no shorcuts) I wouldnt say this is good to do, but most Apple users I know have junk scattered all over the place, but itdoesnt have an affect on the application. Office is available for Apple, I think, and there are far more apps available for Apple, than there are for Linux. Plus Apple will have good commercial driver, software support like windows. Can't say thesame for linux. My only Gripe with Apple, is that both Explorer and Netscape browsers tend not to perform, display or handle scripting like javascript in web pages very well and its networking features are WEAK. For surfing the web and networking, I still think windows, and Linux are the best, but OSX is a vast improvement over OS9 in terms of networking and TCP/IP and should change that.
FYI, the organization I'm working at is using DLC (SNA) and microsoft has stopped her support for this protocol.
This caused us to downgrade any new PC from XP to 98 .
This caused us to downgrade any new PC from XP to 98 .
Well, we used the DLC protocol to access the AS/400. But every emulation package for AS/400 and IBM mainframes were also bringing either a SNA gateway or Direct TCP/IP option, so we set up the AS/400 for TCP/IP (piece of cake 
) and we went on to use Direct TCP/IP - that was great, it gave us better flexiblility and fred us from having to keep track of MAC addresses for good!... DLC has this bad thing of forcing you to keep tabs of network boards MAC Address - once you forget what name it had, it becomes basicaly unusable in the Host, until you erase host records, which is not always easy to do.
Going all TCP was great for us, so maybe you COULD evaluate this alternative.
) and we went on to use Direct TCP/IP - that was great, it gave us better flexiblility and fred us from having to keep track of MAC addresses for good!... DLC has this bad thing of forcing you to keep tabs of network boards MAC Address - once you forget what name it had, it becomes basicaly unusable in the Host, until you erase host records, which is not always easy to do.Going all TCP was great for us, so maybe you COULD evaluate this alternative.
Changing from XP to Win98 is an upgrade.
It made the system work, where it could not work with XP.
We work with several organizations that have a policy of prohibiting changing the OS to XP before these bugs are worked out.
The IT budgets are tootight to allow enough technician time to work out the problems.
Let somebody else pay for it.
Consensus: wait for the third major update of XP, before allowing widespread use.
It made the system work, where it could not work with XP.
We work with several organizations that have a policy of prohibiting changing the OS to XP before these bugs are worked out.
The IT budgets are tootight to allow enough technician time to work out the problems.
Let somebody else pay for it.
Consensus: wait for the third major update of XP, before allowing widespread use.
Please let me know what phone system you went with as I am in a similar position.
Thanks!
Greg
Thanks!
Greg
I have more of a problem with hardware than software. I've replaced two motherboards, and I've had to reinstall XP Pro on each one because the system won't load when it detected this new piece of hardware. Only Microsoft could design something like this! Simplicity is not in Microsoft's character. Big bloated programs that do a lot of things...but not that well. I tell my friends to buy MACs.
i had three priners when i loaded xp,2-cannon and an epson laser, none would work and the companies had no updates, and still dont,i dont know who to be mad at. i like xp, but not the trouble it brought
The MAC has a long history of app software not working with an OS up grade. The supposed superiority is a matter of BS and FUD in most cases. None of the ego manics (gates and job) will change anything until we the IT community put our foot down and quit buying the crap ware.
Yes I've spent a lot of time repairing MAC's for the local school board and several priviate schools in the area.
Yes I've spent a lot of time repairing MAC's for the local school board and several priviate schools in the area.
ActionTec's PCI call-waiting modems are not XP compatable and their tech support has had no fix for well over a year now. I'm not alone in this problem: http://www.sysopt.com/userreviews/modems/reviewhtml/ActionTec_Call_Waiting_PCI_modem.html
Has MS addressed driver incompatabilities as seperate from application incompatibilities?
Has MS addressed driver incompatabilities as seperate from application incompatibilities?
No. I will have to plan some other way.
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