It has been raining so much out side, I wanted a drastic change of things around me, mainly the stuff on my computer. I was using Vista for a long time (right from the day it went to become RTM Nov 2006). I was getting more and more disillusioned with the way Windows is going. Vista had all the Bells and Whistles Bill Gates boasted of when he introduced Vista to us. But I was not satisfied.
Let me tell you I am an out and out Windows person. I started with windows 3.1, graduated to Windows 95, then to 98 , ME and finally plunged to Windows XP. Later I found that Windows 2003 server was a better workstation than XP and shifted to it. Finally reached Vista. 6 months with Vista was spent mainly for finding right driver and finding application to work in the right way, but the period was not exactly productive. The final nail in the coffin was when I wanted to upgrade to 4GB RAM. Vista with all its boasting on the cutting edge technology could not see all my 4GB RAM. I found out that 32 bit version cannot see all of the 4GB, to get that I have to move to the 64Bit version.
So I started installing Vista and other softwares all over again on 64bit environment. Then came the problem with the compatibility of several of my programs. Many (99.9 %) were 32 bit versions. No good 3rd party firewall available which can work fluently in 64 Bit. 64 bit was looking more like an afterthought of an operating system. 2 days into installing I started getting PFN List corrupt error blue screen of death faults. It was either the hardware or the drivers which were playing with me.
Then it stuck me that in Windows environment I use very few basic Windows oriented tools. If I want to list them they are just a handful. These are the few which I use everyday & I am unable to find exact replacement in other OSes.
- Adobe Photoshop
- Microsoft Accesss
- Proxomitron
- Ultraiso
Other than these four I could get things done with any other OS. So which one of those OS will it be? Let us just explore the choices.(to be continued tomorrow)