missing my Saturn

My previous car was a '98 SL1 4 door, 5 speed, gold. Now I drive a '99
Chevy Venture minivan. I should have bought a Saturn SL1 or SL2 wagon.
Japanese cars like the Civic or Corolla might have better fit/finish but
are a lot more boring than the Saturn. Saturns have character.

When the Venture dies, a new Ion will be in my future.

 

That is the stupidest reason for buying a car I've ever heard.
Ray G.
Using his crummy, expensive, Windows ME PC to send e-mail.

 

you don't get out much, do you? People buy houses because they have a
certain character. People buy cars for all kinds of reasons. Character
is the least of "stupid" reasons. (Think: "Because it matches the color
of my shoes")

"Character" can embrace a variety of aspects of a car, from how you're
treated at the dealership to handling to interior comfort to reliability
and so on.

-rj
98SL2

 

(Ray Greenberg) wrote in @news.mammothnews.net:

What?!?! Most people buy cars that they like. "It's cute", "It's cool"
are phrases you'll hear. To me, cars with personality are what I like. I
guess you're one of these Consumer Reports nerds with their statistical
printouts and such. Give me a Saturn over a dull Corolla, Sentra, Civic
anyday.

 

Ray G.

That must really hurt coming from someone who owns Windows ME........

 

(BANDIT2941) wrote in

ME's about as bad as Windows 98. XP is a lot better and crashes a lot
less. Plus it actually has neat features.

 

If you guys want a good windows operating system the best has to be
windows 2000 pro. Its very stable and looks like the older o/s's and not
like a fisherprice toy. XP has more bloat than I could put up with.

 

I own both a SW2 and an (extended version) of the venture. These
vehicles are made for different purposes. Try to carry 8 people or
even a full sheet of plywood in the SW2, it's not much fun. It's kind
of ironic that the power of the minivan is actually a lot better then
the (somewhat) sporty SW2.

 

I have a truck to haul stuff and only carry maybe 4 people at most in the
Venture and not much cargo. But the Venture's nice for car camping after
taking out the seats and leaving them home. My wife and I sleep on the air
mattress in the back. We might get that new Saturn minivan after we sell
(if we sell it).

 

Using his crummy, expensive, Windows ME PC to send e-mail.

ME's about as bad??? Puhleeze!!! ME is much worse than 98SE.......

 

ME was a dumbed down version of 98 - nothing but problems resulted.
Flame wars aside, I have to run XP (classic mode - not the playskool
mode) because some applications for my job ONLY run on win32s, ie ESRI's
ArcGIS; beyond that I'm running a couple of variants of linux on other
machines. My reasons for choosing linux when possible range from the
philophical to the technical.

-rj
98SL2

 

ME was a dumbed down version of 98 - nothing but problems resulted.

I respect your wanting to go with some other OS than one from Micro$oft.
What's the best flavor of linux for me, a somewhat technically capable
person but new to Linux? Lycoris looks cool. My 2nd PC is a Compaq
Deskpro small form PC, Pentium 2, 450mhz. It has Win98 on it now. My AMD
Athlon system has XP.

 

[Kind of long, mostly antecdotal]

I've never used Lycoris personally, but it appears to be pretty easy to
get started with.

One of the things that you'll find about linux, in general, is that it
doesn't take mammoth hardware to run it. For many distros, a PII/450 is
plenty. Sure, it won't run as fast as a faster machine (duh?), but it
works and works well. In fact, I'm running a stripped down version of
linux in my basement - on a 33MHz 486/DX2 w/ 24MB of RAM, booted from a
floppy.

Distrowatch.com (http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major) is
a good place to start. They have good summaries of the distros
available, and you can see what you think you're comfortable with.
Linux documentation is available all over the place, but I often turn
first to linuxdoc.org when I'm trying to figure something out. I
personally use Redhat, but partly because it is an easy, popular, and
most important to me, *stable* server platform. I've had it running for
over a year without a reboot. Had it not been for unannounced power
outages and a couple of harddisk failures, I'm sure it would have kept
going long beyond that.

I've also used Mandrake and was fairly happy with it, until I did too
many dumb things in a row (by choice, not accidentally) and finally
broke it real good.

Knoppix seems like a good way to just play without actually changing
anything on your harddrive - just boot from the CD and away you go.

One of the things I really like about linux it being free: Free as in
speech, and free as in beer. You don't have to fret about sinking 300$
into something you might hate. If there is something about the distro
you don't like, you have a plethora of options, ie: don't like KSpread
(the KDE spreadsheet program)? go fetch Gnumeric or OpenOffice. If you
really get adept, and you find something that really just bugs you,
there is probably an option to change that setting. If not, you have
the freedom to change the code to make it work like you want it to.
I've done this on several occasions. Recently I was trying to generate
700 single-page PDFs for a report - each one the same except about a
different area of Ohio. Can you imagine trying to do this with Word? I
downloaded a perl tool called 'PDF::Reuse' and tied it into my database.
There was a problem and the author of PDF::Reuse helped me get around
it. Another problem I had I was able to fix myself by editing the
PDF::Reuse source code.

I've always felt like Windows is sort of like those cars at Disney World
which follow the track. You can kind of steer them, but they're going
to go where the track goes. Linux is more like off-roading - you can go
wherever the hell you want. You might get lost, but at least you have
the freedom to get lost.

-rj
98SL2

 

XP only has bloat if you let it, my XP Pro install looks, feels and acts the
exact same way as my old 98 install, runs almost as fast (98 had squat for
overhead) and it hasnt crashed in over a year. Win2K was a pretty good OS
when it came out, and light years ahead of that piece of crap NT, but it
doesnt hold a candle to XP in terms of stability, performance, and hardware
support.

Wurm

 

Last time I checked, Mandrake was supposed to be the easiest for a Windows
user to try to get into Linux with. I've also used SuSe in the past with no
complaints although redhat annoyed me for some reason but it is very popular
and you should find plenty of resources if you need help with it. And of
course they are all free which is kinda sweet (but who the hell has every
payed for an MS OS at home eh?)

 

Last time I checked, Mandrake was supposed to be the easiest for a

LOL. My ex-gf's mother brought her Win98 CD over and installed win98 on
my ex gf's PC. Irony is that my ex gf's mother was worth 5 million
dollars (inherited from her grandparents)! If the rich won't pay for
their OS, who will?

I have a legit XP on my Athlon XP system (came with the system). I put
it on my second system, a Compaq Deskpro sff 450 mhz P2, but it only
stays on the HD for 30 days before deactivating itself and telling you
to call a Microsoft rep. to activate it. Will Windows allow you to have
XP on 2 systems? I think probably not, so I didn't even bother to call.
I just installed a legit Win98SE on it (have it on CD). But I'd much
rather have XP on the Compaq also. I think I'll install a flavor of
Linux on the Compaq and learn about linux.

 

There is to much bloat in xp. For example There is no mplayer version
6.4 on xp. You can make the new versions look like the old versions but
it still takes longer to load mplayer than before. You can make xp look
like the old versions of windows but it still slow on bring up programs
etc because their is so much more packed into the encoding. Besides
every new release by microsoft is always full of holes. Win2k is nearly
patched up by now xp has 2 more years before I would trust it.
Nt was never intended for the average home users but Win2k supports
everything i've thrown at it so far. And besides that you have more
freedom with installing it on the pc's in your home. Who the hell is
going to buy a copy of xp for every pc they own as Bill Gates wants
everyone to do? He's made of money, we're not. Why should I have to call
someone to get permission to install software? If I have hardware
troubles I dont need to be calling microsoft ontop of replacing pc parts
in troubleshooting a problem. I'm already stressed enough as it is then.

I say avoid XP and tell Gates to shove it.

My 2¢

Now back to Saturns! or the like...

 

hehehe, another option is that if you happen to use any Windows on your PC
at work (if you work in an office environment of course!) you are actually
legally entitled to make a copy for personal use at home free of charge. The
only technical stipulation is that only one of the two PCs is allowed to be
running at one time (although I dont believe they track this).

 

Two Windows PC's, both up at the same time? Only if they're both
showing the Blue Screen of Death, and most will agree that's not running

Tim.

 

ya know, that would have been funny 5 years ago......... now its just kind
of ignorant