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Have you looked on HP's website for your printer driver? I have had better luck with HP than with any other hardware manufacturer finding updated drivers. About 2 years ago, Microsoft sent out XP patches that killed my neighbor's computer. Once we unplugged his printer, we found that it ran OK. The conflict was between the XP update and the HP printer driver.

He checked HPs site, and even though the offending XP patch had been out only a couple of days, HP already had an updated printer driver that worked with the new update.

I've been using Linux since the mid 90s. I watched it slowly taking over. It's in your phone, TV, set top box (tivo/cable box), Kindle and other ebook readers, many of the so called smart appliances, routers, cable modems,dsl modems, firewalls, chrome books, Android tablets and smart appliances. Because its free It's really hard to get a count of how many there are. No sales figures.

Linux practically owns the internet. Google is running on Linux.

Many point of sale systems are running on Linux. You can't tell easily because they just look like a fancy cash register.

It has a few drawbacks but not many. Getting all the multimedia stuff to work can be a challenge but I have it down. There are distributions that are easier to do this with. I believe Ubuntu Mint was designed to work out of the box with all the multimedia.

I'm a big Red Hat fan. Fedora at home. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS at work. Over the years I have become very fond of the rpm/yum package management system. I also like the fact that the upgrades work.

If your interested in learning about what is available I suggest looking at the DistroWatch web site. There is a Linux distribution that will run on just about any hardware you have. Got an old machine sitting in a closet? Drag it out and install Linux.

Can old people and techtards use it. You bet. My wife and I are both in our 60s. My wife knows little or nothing about computers but has been using it for a long time. She gets very little help from me and even manages the to be able to use the new Gnome 3 desktop just fine.

I don't have to deal with viruses and anti virus software. A big plus in my book.

I'm with you on that...

And although I nowhere as advanced as you...I find that it works amazingly well and I love not being blackmailed into paying for upgrades...

And I also love the fact that the older systems can be kept out of the landfills and dumps for more years..

I would love to run Linux but none of the major programs I use runs on it.
Yes I know there is often substitutes but most are reduced function and a make do instead of an actual replacement.

As for the Microsoft IBM debate it all came down to money. IBM's Dos was superior to MS but people didn't want to pay the price. IBM's GUI operating system called originally OS later named WARP was superior but people didn't want to pay the price. Wordperfect was far superior to Word but people didn't want to pay the price. Lotus 123 far exceeded Excel but people didn't want to pay the price. It all came down to doing it as cheap as you could.

Microsoft was giving free copies, allowing pirated copies and super cheap copies of their product to fill the market place. I remember I was faced with buying Wordperfect or getting a free copy of Word. Everyone said use the free stuff. Oh how I long for Wordperfect. In fact if my next computer isn't an Apple I will have Wordperfect on it.

Well they got what they got today and have not one to blame but themselves.

Ed in Tampa wrote:I would love to run Linux but none of the major programs I use runs on it.
Yes I know there is often substitutes but most are reduced function and a make do instead of an actual replacement.

.

I find that most Linux programs are superior to the Windows offerings because open source allows for more options rather than trying to lock you down.

Unless you are running a proprietary special purpose application, there are Linux programs equal or better than what you have now.

But, if you are determined to have the virus ridden Windows software, you can load the Windows emulator WINE onto Linux and run those Windows programs. But, be aware that viruses and spyware will attack the Windows programs running on Linux as fast as they attack them on a Windows computer. The only difference is that under Linux, they viruses can't attack your operating system like it does on Windows.
You can't make an inherently insecure program have good security no matter what you do with it.

As much as I love Linux, when it comes to office software, nothing beats Microsoft Office. Yes, there are other free office suites (for just about any platform - Windows, Linux, Android, etc), that are compatible with MS-Office file types, but none of them are quite as good. And if you move documents back and forth between programs - create a document in Word, open it in OpenOffice and make some changes, then open it back in Word - things just get messed up, particularly with the formatting. It may be Microsoft's fault, but I think that is one of the main reasons my wife just couldn't transition to "The Evil Penguin."

&quot wrote:As for the Microsoft IBM debate it all came down to money. IBM's Dos was superior to MS but people didn't want to pay the price.

Microsoft's MS-DOS and IBM's PC-DOS were both developed by Microsoft. Microsoft took MS-DOS, put in the IBM device drivers, and licensed it to IBM as PC-DOS.

&quot wrote:IBM's GUI operating system called originally OS later named WARP was superior but people didn't want to pay the price.

OS/2 was developed jointly by Microsoft and IBM. They split up and Microsoft's work became Windows 95 while IBM's work became OS/2 Warp. There was some degree of compatibility between the two.

The philosophy of Microsoft and IBM is what lead to their respective success and failure with both of the above products. Microsoft wanted to be more open. Not in the Linux "open source" sense, but regarding compatibility with a multitude of hardware options. They were able to bundle their software "free" with computers shipping from a variety of manufacturers. IBM was still focused on being a "hardware" company and wanted to use the OS to drive sales of their particular hardware. So the OS was less compatible with other less expensive systems from other manufacturers.

&quot wrote:Wordperfect was far superior to Word but people didn't want to pay the price.

In the early days, that was certainly true. WordPerfect was an incredible piece of software in it's day. And it was available for almost every platform - DOS, Atari ST, AmigaOS, Apple II, etc. But Microsoft eventually eclipsed it with Word - both in functionality and marketing - and I think Word is much superior now.

&quot wrote:Lotus 123 far exceeded Excel but people didn't want to pay the price. It all came down to doing it as cheap as you could.

I never used Lotus 123, but I've tried a lot of other alternatives to Excel and I haven't found anything that can touch it. Of course, that may be because my brain is programmed to the Excel way of doing things and this old dog just can't learn new tricks.

Visicalc - Loptus 123 - Symphony - Qpro - Excel

I prefer Qpro of them all.

I am continually frustrated by excel.

Cut/paste point click point click bleeeech!!!


Yes I use the mouse in Qpro, but can get by with not using a mouse.

As for 'editor', I prefer an old IBMPC program called PC-EDIT. I do not typically do 'word processing'. For programming editing all those frills are not in the way.

An advantage is the ability to edit more than one file at a time and copy stuff from one file to the other while editing. All running under early versions of DOS. Of course there is the DOS memory limit, but it also does spooling when that becomes a problem.

Annnnnd it has a control file that is plain text and controls key functions by way of an intuitive shorthand command language.

heathicus wrote:As much as I love Linux, when it comes to office software, nothing beats Microsoft Office. Yes, there are other free office suites (for just about any platform - Windows, Linux, Android, etc), that are compatible with MS-Office file types, but none of them are quite as good. And if you move documents back and forth between programs - create a document in Word, open it in OpenOffice and make some changes, then open it back in Word - things just get messed up, particularly with the formatting. It may be Microsoft's fault, but I think that is one of the main reasons my wife just couldn't transition to "The Evil Penguin."



Microsoft's MS-DOS and IBM's PC-DOS were both developed by Microsoft. Microsoft took MS-DOS, put in the IBM device drivers, and licensed it to IBM as PC-DOS.

Not totally correct. IBM's Dos had special hooks in it that triggered bios instructions that used faster instructions sets.

OS/2 was developed jointly by Microsoft and IBM. They split up and Microsoft's work became Windows 95 while IBM's work became OS/2 Warp. There was some degree of compatibility between the two.

Actually the split was long before warp and IBM OS was out about 2-4 years before WARP

The philosophy of Microsoft and IBM is what lead to their respective success and failure with both of the above products. Microsoft wanted to be more open. Not in the Linux "open source" sense, but regarding compatibility with a multitude of hardware options. They were able to bundle their software "free" with computers shipping from a variety of manufacturers. IBM was still focused on being a "hardware" company and wanted to use the OS to drive sales of their particular hardware. So the OS was less compatible with other less expensive systems from other manufacturers.

That may have been a part of the success or failure but I know IBM got bogged down making OS and then later WARP bulletproof, redundancy and some other things caused the IBM code to grow too large.

In the early days, that was certainly true. WordPerfect was an incredible piece of software in it's day. And it was available for almost every platform - DOS, Atari ST, AmigaOS, Apple II, etc. But Microsoft eventually eclipsed it with Word - both in functionality and marketing - and I think Word is much superior now.

Matter of opinion but as a user of both I know why I switched, it was because everyone else did. And most of those users got Word for free so they were using it.

I never used Lotus 123, but I've tried a lot of other alternatives to Excel and I haven't found anything that can touch it. Of course, that may be because my brain is programmed to the Excel way of doing things and this old dog just can't learn new tricks.

Lotus was the industry standard. I used it for years 8-12 hours a day 5-6 days a week. Last update I had was around 1990 and I believe that product then was still superior to excel which I use today. Lotus got bought out and lost in the shuffle. At one time IBM owned or controlled a part of the company. Great product and it was the basis of Excel.

beeg wrote:GONE for support on 04\08\2014

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/still-on-win ... 45810.html

We use XP at work. Gotta love it.

We finally completely purged our campus of XP last week.