"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
dennis@home wrote:


I'm quite sure I can find many more duff applications that are
distributed on "linux" disks.

Oh dear. Its been ages since I have seen anyhing Linux distributed on a
'disk'....

I've got a magazine disk with a distro on it from a couple of months ago.
Most distros are done as ISO images which are, guess what, disk images.
So I guess you must use gentoo.

The Natural Philosopher wrote
Richard Russell wrote
Jim Hawkins wrote

When I get a new PC it'll be Windows 7, but what are the pros and cons of the two different bit sizes ?

Pros of 64-bit Windows 7:

1. Can run genuine 64-bit applications (but there are very few of those).

2. Can support a larger amount of physical memory (maximum 4 GB on Win32, up to 192 GB on Win64 depending on
version).

Cons of 64-bit Windows 7:

1. Can't run any 16-bit (DOS) programs - other than using a emulator
like DOSBOX.

2. Poorer support for legacy device drivers: if you have an older
scanner, printer, camera etc. 64-bit drivers may not be available.

3. 32-bit applications run under the WoW64 emulation layer:
compatibility is good but not 100% and a few programs may not run properly.

On balance I generally recommend the 32-bit version, but YMMV.

compare and contrast with Linux/Mac OSX where "on balance I generally
recommend the 32-bit version" became the reverse about three years ago.

Just as true for many with 64bit Win7.

And it has the advantage of a lot more commercial apps available for it too.

Adrian C wrote
george [dicegeorge] wrote

Microsoft support expirys:
xp 8april2014
win7 home 13 april 2015
win7pro 14 april 2020

so get win professional
(if i've researched it right)

However much before then, Apple will have expanded, bought Microsoft,

Not a chance. They have a pathological objection to supporting hardware
that isnt their own design.

and all update support for Windows products will suddenly be ditched?

They aint that stupid even if they did have such a massive
change of mind and tried to buy MS. They wouldnt have a
hope in hell of buying it anyway given who owns MS stock.

Tim Streater wrote
Adrian C wrote
george [dicegeorge] wrote

Microsoft support expirys:
xp 8april2014
win7 home 13 april 2015
win7pro 14 april 2020

so get win professional
(if i've researched it right)

However much before then, Apple will have expanded, bought Microsoft,
and all update support for Windows products will suddenly be ditched?

That's certainly the preferred scenario.

Taint gunna happen. Apple has always had a pathological
objection to supporting anyone's hardware but their own.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote
Huge wrote

Outlook is an optional part of Office.

I've never bought 'office' but have OE as part of all the Windose
operating systems I've ever bought - with the exception of 7, since
they've obviously realised at last it's not worth bothering with anymore.

Sadly, the doddery old **** is right (*). I have an MS Office Professional
Plus CD on the desk in front of me right now, and it has Outlook on it.

Right. I've no need for MS Office.

But if it's only available with a pro set

It isnt.

- when news groups are essentially a hobby or leisure thing

You are again utterly mangling Outlook and Outlook Express.

They are entirely different apps which stupidly share the word Outlook.

- what does that tell you about MS?

Nothing except that they were stupid enough to choose the NAMES that stupidly.

They dont even do that anymore, OE got renamed Windows Mail and then
Windows Live Mail when it got lumped in with their other 'live' stuff like webmail
done with a desktop client.

(* I suppose it had to happen eventually.)

"dennis@home" :


"Adrian C" wrote in message news:9ulvvsFrmkU1@mid.
individual.net...

I've often thought that inside a company, that a local newsgroup
server would be of some use as a collaborative tool, rather than
group emails. I'd readily implement one without a moments thought.

We did have one.
However the idiots that put it in decided that as it was "usenet" it
should be plaintext based.
this is a bit stupid when HTML postings actually work far better with a
modern reader rather than the antiquated stuff real usenet insists on
because of its traditions.

I'm not so sure about that. I correspond with people who use HTML e-mail
and they find it hard to get to grips with the Usenet style of quoting.

It didn't stay plain text for long as it was somewhat difficult to
include diagrams and the such in plain text.

But surely you could have plain text with inline graphics, as in e-mail?

--
Mike Barnes

"Mike Barnes" wrote in message
...
"dennis@home" :


"Adrian C" wrote in message news:9ulvvsFrmkU1@mid.
individual.net...

I've often thought that inside a company, that a local newsgroup
server would be of some use as a collaborative tool, rather than
group emails. I'd readily implement one without a moments thought.

We did have one.
However the idiots that put it in decided that as it was "usenet" it
should be plaintext based.
this is a bit stupid when HTML postings actually work far better with a
modern reader rather than the antiquated stuff real usenet insists on
because of its traditions.

I'm not so sure about that. I correspond with people who use HTML e-mail
and they find it hard to get to grips with the Usenet style of quoting.

In html each paragraph is tagged and the readers can identify the author.
Even OE could resize them to match its window size and colour them to match
the author.
A bit like quotefix does.


It didn't stay plain text for long as it was somewhat difficult to
include diagrams and the such in plain text.

But surely you could have plain text with inline graphics, as in e-mail?

But by the time you have added tags and mime types, etc. is it really plain
text any more?

On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:26:47 +0100, Steve Firth
wrote:

And compare WoW64 emulation *may* work with WINE does work

Oh, please! The WoW64 emulation is near perfect, whereas Wine is awful by
comparison. BBC BASIC for Windows runs correctly on all versions of
Windows from 95 onwards, but it doesn't run under Wine, primarily because
of this longstanding bug:

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6878

Wine cannot be taken seriously when it doesn't bother to implement a
documented and useful API function that's been present since Windows 3.11.

Richard.
http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/

Tim Streater wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Tim Streater wrote
Adrian C wrote
george [dicegeorge] wrote

Microsoft support expirys:
xp 8april2014
win7 home 13 april 2015
win7pro 14 april 2020

so get win professional
(if i've researched it right)

However much before then, Apple will have expanded, bought Microsoft, and all update support for Windows products
will suddenly be ditched?

That's certainly the preferred scenario.

Taint gunna happen. Apple has always had a pathological
objection to supporting anyone's hardware but their own.

Course it would. Then all these windows clowns will have to go out and buy a Mac.

Nope, everyone shipping Win on what they build hardware
wise would continue to do so and the bought Microsoft would
have to continue to honour the legal agreements they had with
the operations flogging hardware before MS was bought.

Simples.

Fantasy, actually. They dont even all buy ipads, plenty buy android stuff anyway.

And all those trillions of Windows support guys can start doing something productive.

Just another silly little fantasy.

Richard Russell wrote:

BBC BASIC for Windows runs correctly on all versions of
Windows from 95 onwards, but it doesn't run under Wine

Who gives a ****? Only ******* emote about BBC Basic, it's dead, Dave.

In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
this is a bit stupid when HTML postings actually work far better with a
modern reader rather than the antiquated stuff real usenet insists on
because of its traditions.

The idea is it is a low bandwidth system that can be used with simple
computers. To make it a universal free standard. Which of course is why
Gates tries to break it.

--
*I took an IQ test and the results were negative.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In message , Bernard Peek
writes
On 10/04/12 18:20, Jim Hawkins wrote:
When I get a new PC it'll be Windows 7, but what are the pros and cons of
the two differebt bit sizes ?

If you want to use more than about 3.5Gb of memory then you have to use
64-bit. Most new machines have 64-bit pre-installed.

I've heard you can't copy stuff from XP machines to 64 bit Win 7 machines.
Is that true ?

No. You can copy any file either way between the two systems. But some
old programs will not run under 64-bit OS.
Snip
Anything which relies on 32 bit windows explorer will not run on 64 bit
W7. Unfortunately that includes my mail/usenet agent Turnpike which I am
loath to give up.
--
hugh

dennis@home wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
dennis@home wrote:


I'm quite sure I can find many more duff applications that are
distributed on "linux" disks.

Oh dear. Its been ages since I have seen anyhing Linux distributed on
a 'disk'....

I've got a magazine disk with a distro on it from a couple of months ago.
Most distros are done as ISO images which are, guess what, disk images.
So I guess you must use gentoo.

Good grief: you still buy COMPUTER MAGAZINES!!!

Well that explains a lot..


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

In message ], hugh ]
writes
In message , Bernard Peek
writes
On 10/04/12 18:20, Jim Hawkins wrote:
When I get a new PC it'll be Windows 7, but what are the pros and cons of
the two differebt bit sizes ?

If you want to use more than about 3.5Gb of memory then you have to
use 64-bit. Most new machines have 64-bit pre-installed.

I've heard you can't copy stuff from XP machines to 64 bit Win 7 machines.
Is that true ?

No. You can copy any file either way between the two systems. But some
old programs will not run under 64-bit OS.
Snip
Anything which relies on 32 bit windows explorer will not run on 64 bit
W7. Unfortunately that includes my mail/usenet agent Turnpike which I
am loath to give up.

AIUI version 5 is OK if you can find a back copy.

Lots of discussion on the Demon newsgroups.

regards

--
Tim Lamb

"dennis@home" :


"Mike Barnes" wrote in message news:LoqIkEE
...
"dennis@home" :


"Adrian C" wrote in message news:9ulvvsFrmkU1@mid.
individual.net...

I've often thought that inside a company, that a local newsgroup
server would be of some use as a collaborative tool, rather than
group emails. I'd readily implement one without a moments thought.

We did have one.
However the idiots that put it in decided that as it was "usenet" it
should be plaintext based.
this is a bit stupid when HTML postings actually work far better with a
modern reader rather than the antiquated stuff real usenet insists on
because of its traditions.

I'm not so sure about that. I correspond with people who use HTML e-mail
and they find it hard to get to grips with the Usenet style of quoting.

In html each paragraph is tagged and the readers can identify the author.
Even OE could resize them to match its window size and colour them to
match the author.
A bit like quotefix does.

I can see the possibilities now that you mention them, but obviously not
with this plain text newsreader. Does any client software actually do
what you describe? Which product did you have in mind for your local
newsgroups?

It didn't stay plain text for long as it was somewhat difficult to
include diagrams and the such in plain text.

But surely you could have plain text with inline graphics, as in e-mail?

But by the time you have added tags and mime types, etc. is it really
plain text any more?

What I was meaning was, you don't need to go down the HTML route if you
want inline graphics. There are perfectly good standards for inline
graphics in plain text messages, and they've been working in this
newsreader for many a year. It's important not to be misled by the fact
that the authors of OE have never shown any interest in making it work
for their users.

--
Mike Barnes

On 10/04/2012 18:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Only COMPILED programs may not copy. Data is - just data. I mean I copy
those freely between a 32bit XP virtual machine and a 64 bit Linux..

Indeed. My experience is as follows.

My old laptop started having problems last year and I found that it was
hard to avoid getting 64-bit Win7 on any reasonable replacement, so I
gave in and did that. I found that the only *program* that didn't work
was something called Turnpike (a very good reader for Usenet News).
This used some features of 32-bit windows which weren't in the 64-bit
version, and was also a "mature product" i.e. no longer being developed
for new operating systems. All the possible work-arounds turned out to
be dead ends. There is a Win XP mode in Windows 7 but it can't be used
in Win7 Home Premium; you have to pay Microsoft an extortionate fee to
upgrade it. Eventually I switched to using Thunderbird for news reading
(it isn't as good, but I can live with it).

But printer drivers are also executable code, and I found that my new HP
laptop would not work with my existing HP laser printer, because HP
could not be bothered to create a 64-bit printer driver for it. It
won't even drive it over the home network when the old printer is
connected to the old Win XP computer which surprised me. Obviously HP
are trying very hard to get me to buy a new printer. Again I eventually
found a work-around, but it's clunky. As a result of my HP experience,
when I do get another printer, it certainly won't be from Hewlett Packard.

So: if you use any programs which are no longer supported (in the sense
of new versions still being developed), or device drivers for old
devices, you might have problems. Other than that, everything is
compatible.

By the way, the user interface for Windows 7 is substantially different,
and in my view worse, but it's easy to find instructions on the web to
get it all looking and behaving like Win XP. I see that Windows 8 has
even done away with the "Start" button - so it's a good idea to get Win
7 before Microsoft messes things up even more.

--
Clive Page

hugh ]:
Anything which relies on 32 bit windows explorer will not run on 64 bit
W7. Unfortunately that includes my mail/usenet agent Turnpike which I
am loath to give up.

That's the one and only reason I've standardised on W7 32-bit.
Fortunately 4 GB is plenty for my (not exactly modest) needs.

--
Mike Barnes

In article ,
Clive Page wrote:
On 10/04/2012 18:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Only COMPILED programs may not copy. Data is - just data. I mean I copy
those freely between a 32bit XP virtual machine and a 64 bit Linux..

Indeed. My experience is as follows.

My old laptop started having problems last year and I found that it was
hard to avoid getting 64-bit Win7 on any reasonable replacement, so I
gave in and did that. I found that the only *program* that didn't work
was something called Turnpike (a very good reader for Usenet News).
This used some features of 32-bit windows which weren't in the 64-bit
version, and was also a "mature product" i.e. no longer being developed
for new operating systems. All the possible work-arounds turned out to
be dead ends. There is a Win XP mode in Windows 7 but it can't be used
in Win7 Home Premium; you have to pay Microsoft an extortionate fee to
upgrade it. Eventually I switched to using Thunderbird for news reading
(it isn't as good, but I can live with it).

But printer drivers are also executable code, and I found that my new HP
laptop would not work with my existing HP laser printer, because HP
could not be bothered to create a 64-bit printer driver for it. It
won't even drive it over the home network when the old printer is
connected to the old Win XP computer which surprised me. Obviously HP
are trying very hard to get me to buy a new printer. Again I eventually
found a work-around, but it's clunky. As a result of my HP experience,
when I do get another printer, it certainly won't be from Hewlett Packard.

HP have a "universal printer driver" which I am using, rather than one
dedicted to a particular printer. It seems to have all the facilities that
I need.

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.18

"Clive Page" wrote in message
...
On 10/04/2012 18:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Only COMPILED programs may not copy. Data is - just data. I mean I copy
those freely between a 32bit XP virtual machine and a 64 bit Linux..

Indeed. My experience is as follows.

My old laptop started having problems last year and I found that it was
hard to avoid getting 64-bit Win7 on any reasonable replacement, so I gave
in and did that. I found that the only *program* that didn't work was
something called Turnpike (a very good reader for Usenet News). This used
some features of 32-bit windows which weren't in the 64-bit version, and
was also a "mature product" i.e. no longer being developed for new
operating systems. All the possible work-arounds turned out to be dead
ends. There is a Win XP mode in Windows 7 but it can't be used in Win7
Home Premium; you have to pay Microsoft an extortionate fee to upgrade it.

Nope, it doesnt cost that much for a version that supports it.

Eventually I switched to using Thunderbird for news reading (it isn't as
good, but I can live with it).

But printer drivers are also executable code, and I found that my new HP
laptop would not work with my existing HP laser printer, because HP could
not be bothered to create a 64-bit printer driver for it. It won't even
drive it over the home network when the old printer is connected to the
old Win XP computer which surprised me. Obviously HP are trying very hard
to get me to buy a new printer. Again I eventually found a work-around,
but it's clunky. As a result of my HP experience, when I do get another
printer, it certainly won't be from Hewlett Packard.

So: if you use any programs which are no longer supported (in the sense of
new versions still being developed), or device drivers for old devices,
you might have problems. Other than that, everything is compatible.

By the way, the user interface for Windows 7 is substantially different,
and in my view worse, but it's easy to find instructions on the web to get
it all looking and behaving like Win XP. I see that Windows 8 has even
done away with the "Start" button - so it's a good idea to get Win 7
before Microsoft messes things up even more.

--
Clive Page

On 12/04/2012 08:39, Clive Page wrote:
On 10/04/2012 18:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Only COMPILED programs may not copy. Data is - just data. I mean I copy
those freely between a 32bit XP virtual machine and a 64 bit Linux..

Indeed. My experience is as follows.

[snip]

be dead ends. There is a Win XP mode in Windows 7 but it can't be used
in Win7 Home Premium; you have to pay Microsoft an extortionate fee to
upgrade it. Eventually I switched to using Thunderbird for news reading

A few have mentioned XP compatibility mode, so some comments are
probably worthwhile.

Its true that you need Pro (or better) to use this out of the box.

However, XP mode is in reality a complete virtual machine running a real
copy of WinXP. There is nothing to stop you using any other virtual PC
hypervisor (including Microsoft's own Virtual PC) and installing your
own real copy of XP on that.

However the confusion is added to, if you go to MS' web page for Virtual
PC, where it will tell you you are not eligible to run XP mode on Win 7
Home for example. While this is true, its misleading, since its
referring to the bundled XP mode, and not talking about installing
Virtual PC and your own XP, which is kind of what you expect the web
page about Virtual PC would be all about!

Running Virtual PC on Win 7 Home *is* a supported platform. However the
difference is that with XP mode in Win 7 pro, it automatically includes
the Win XP license required to run XP in this way. If you have the Home
version (or Basic etc), you will need a separate fully licensed version
of XP to install under Virtual PC to make it work.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

John Rumm :
On 12/04/2012 08:39, Clive Page wrote:
On 10/04/2012 18:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Only COMPILED programs may not copy. Data is - just data. I mean I copy
those freely between a 32bit XP virtual machine and a 64 bit Linux..

Indeed. My experience is as follows.

[snip]

be dead ends. There is a Win XP mode in Windows 7 but it can't be used
in Win7 Home Premium; you have to pay Microsoft an extortionate fee to
upgrade it. Eventually I switched to using Thunderbird for news reading

A few have mentioned XP compatibility mode, so some comments are
probably worthwhile.

Its true that you need Pro (or better) to use this out of the box.

However, XP mode is in reality a complete virtual machine running a
real copy of WinXP. There is nothing to stop you using any other
virtual PC hypervisor (including Microsoft's own Virtual PC) and
installing your own real copy of XP on that.

However the confusion is added to, if you go to MS' web page for
Virtual PC, where it will tell you you are not eligible to run XP mode
on Win 7 Home for example. While this is true, its misleading, since
its referring to the bundled XP mode, and not talking about installing
Virtual PC and your own XP, which is kind of what you expect the web
page about Virtual PC would be all about!

Running Virtual PC on Win 7 Home *is* a supported platform. However the
difference is that with XP mode in Win 7 pro, it automatically includes
the Win XP license required to run XP in this way. If you have the Home
version (or Basic etc), you will need a separate fully licensed version
of XP to install under Virtual PC to make it work.

That's all useful stuff, thanks.

I've no personal experience but I've heard of some difficulties with the
apparently simple Virtual Machine approach. AIUI the virtual machine
does not automatically get access to all the resources on the host PC.
So you won't see your network drives, installed printers, etc, in the
applications running in the VM. I'd hope that you can install them in
the VM but even so it seems a bit of a faff.

--
Mike Barnes

In article ,
Mike Barnes wrote:
John Rumm :
On 12/04/2012 08:39, Clive Page wrote:
On 10/04/2012 18:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Only COMPILED programs may not copy. Data is - just data. I mean I copy
those freely between a 32bit XP virtual machine and a 64 bit Linux..

Indeed. My experience is as follows.

[snip]

be dead ends. There is a Win XP mode in Windows 7 but it can't be used
in Win7 Home Premium; you have to pay Microsoft an extortionate fee to
upgrade it. Eventually I switched to using Thunderbird for news reading

A few have mentioned XP compatibility mode, so some comments are
probably worthwhile.

Its true that you need Pro (or better) to use this out of the box.

However, XP mode is in reality a complete virtual machine running a
real copy of WinXP. There is nothing to stop you using any other
virtual PC hypervisor (including Microsoft's own Virtual PC) and
installing your own real copy of XP on that.

However the confusion is added to, if you go to MS' web page for
Virtual PC, where it will tell you you are not eligible to run XP mode
on Win 7 Home for example. While this is true, its misleading, since
its referring to the bundled XP mode, and not talking about installing
Virtual PC and your own XP, which is kind of what you expect the web
page about Virtual PC would be all about!

Running Virtual PC on Win 7 Home *is* a supported platform. However the
difference is that with XP mode in Win 7 pro, it automatically includes
the Win XP license required to run XP in this way. If you have the Home
version (or Basic etc), you will need a separate fully licensed version
of XP to install under Virtual PC to make it work.

That's all useful stuff, thanks.

I've no personal experience but I've heard of some difficulties with the
apparently simple Virtual Machine approach. AIUI the virtual machine
does not automatically get access to all the resources on the host PC.
So you won't see your network drives, installed printers, etc, in the
applications running in the VM. I'd hope that you can install them in
the VM but even so it seems a bit of a faff.

I was certainly able to access my scanner and printer when I had to use the
virtual machine on first getting Win7. After a few months the right
drivers were avavilable, so i don't use it any more.

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.18

In message , Tim Lamb
writes
In message ], hugh ]
writes
In message , Bernard Peek
writes
On 10/04/12 18:20, Jim Hawkins wrote:
When I get a new PC it'll be Windows 7, but what are the pros and cons of
the two differebt bit sizes ?

If you want to use more than about 3.5Gb of memory then you have to
use 64-bit. Most new machines have 64-bit pre-installed.

I've heard you can't copy stuff from XP machines to 64 bit Win 7 machines.
Is that true ?

No. You can copy any file either way between the two systems. But
some old programs will not run under 64-bit OS.
Snip
Anything which relies on 32 bit windows explorer will not run on 64
bit W7. Unfortunately that includes my mail/usenet agent Turnpike
which I am loath to give up.

AIUI version 5 is OK if you can find a back copy.

Lots of discussion on the Demon newsgroups.

regards

Yes, I'm plugged in to the Demon newsgroups. I may well go down the V5
route eventually. Of course our modus operandi is now geared to all the
facilities of V6 and unlearning it might prove a bit tricky esp for
SWMBO
--
hugh

In message , Mike Barnes
writes
hugh ]:
Anything which relies on 32 bit windows explorer will not run on 64 bit
W7. Unfortunately that includes my mail/usenet agent Turnpike which I
am loath to give up.

That's the one and only reason I've standardised on W7 32-bit.
Fortunately 4 GB is plenty for my (not exactly modest) needs.

It's probably plenty for the vast majority of people, but the "more is
better" brigade are running the show.
I run XP on 2 gb and it's enough most of the time.
--
hugh

In article ],
hugh ] wrote:
In message , Mike Barnes
writes
hugh ]:
Anything which relies on 32 bit windows explorer will not run on 64 bit
W7. Unfortunately that includes my mail/usenet agent Turnpike which I
am loath to give up.

That's the one and only reason I've standardised on W7 32-bit.
Fortunately 4 GB is plenty for my (not exactly modest) needs.

It's probably plenty for the vast majority of people, but the "more is
better" brigade are running the show.
I run XP on 2 gb and it's enough most of the time.

It depends on what you are doing. I've got sound files well over 1GB in
length. If I want to edit them it would be a much slower process with only
2GB memory

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.18

On 12/04/2012 13:42, Mike Barnes wrote:
John :
On 12/04/2012 08:39, Clive Page wrote:
On 10/04/2012 18:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Only COMPILED programs may not copy. Data is - just data. I mean I copy
those freely between a 32bit XP virtual machine and a 64 bit Linux..

Indeed. My experience is as follows.

[snip]

be dead ends. There is a Win XP mode in Windows 7 but it can't be used
in Win7 Home Premium; you have to pay Microsoft an extortionate fee to
upgrade it. Eventually I switched to using Thunderbird for news reading

A few have mentioned XP compatibility mode, so some comments are
probably worthwhile.

Its true that you need Pro (or better) to use this out of the box.

However, XP mode is in reality a complete virtual machine running a
real copy of WinXP. There is nothing to stop you using any other
virtual PC hypervisor (including Microsoft's own Virtual PC) and
installing your own real copy of XP on that.

However the confusion is added to, if you go to MS' web page for
Virtual PC, where it will tell you you are not eligible to run XP mode
on Win 7 Home for example. While this is true, its misleading, since
its referring to the bundled XP mode, and not talking about installing
Virtual PC and your own XP, which is kind of what you expect the web
page about Virtual PC would be all about!

Running Virtual PC on Win 7 Home *is* a supported platform. However the
difference is that with XP mode in Win 7 pro, it automatically includes
the Win XP license required to run XP in this way. If you have the Home
version (or Basic etc), you will need a separate fully licensed version
of XP to install under Virtual PC to make it work.

That's all useful stuff, thanks.

I've no personal experience but I've heard of some difficulties with the
apparently simple Virtual Machine approach. AIUI the virtual machine
does not automatically get access to all the resources on the host PC.

You need to chose which ones it gets by default when you configure it.
Once running it can also see network shared resources just like any
other PC. So in some cases you could for example give it access to a
drive that the host machine has already shared, and to it, it looks like
a native drive. Alternatively, it can share it itself (even when its the
virtual machines host that is doing the sharing!)

So in short, its not trivial to configure, and if you can run software
natively without needing to jump through these hoops, then usually so
much the better. However if there is something that you really must run
that can't hack the native environment, its an option.

So you won't see your network drives, installed printers, etc, in the
applications running in the VM. I'd hope that you can install them in
the VM but even so it seems a bit of a faff.



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
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On 12/04/2012 14:07, hugh wrote:
In message , Mike Barnes
writes
hugh ]:
Anything which relies on 32 bit windows explorer will not run on 64 bit
W7. Unfortunately that includes my mail/usenet agent Turnpike which I
am loath to give up.

That's the one and only reason I've standardised on W7 32-bit.
Fortunately 4 GB is plenty for my (not exactly modest) needs.

It's probably plenty for the vast majority of people, but the "more is
better" brigade are running the show.
I run XP on 2 gb and it's enough most of the time.

Remember the OS base requirements are higher for Vista and Win7. So If
you are just ok with 2 on XP, you will need more on later OSs.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

"Mike Barnes" wrote in message
...
John Rumm :
On 12/04/2012 08:39, Clive Page wrote:
On 10/04/2012 18:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Only COMPILED programs may not copy. Data is - just data. I mean I copy
those freely between a 32bit XP virtual machine and a 64 bit Linux..

Indeed. My experience is as follows.

[snip]

be dead ends. There is a Win XP mode in Windows 7 but it can't be used
in Win7 Home Premium; you have to pay Microsoft an extortionate fee to
upgrade it. Eventually I switched to using Thunderbird for news reading

A few have mentioned XP compatibility mode, so some comments are
probably worthwhile.

Its true that you need Pro (or better) to use this out of the box.

However, XP mode is in reality a complete virtual machine running a
real copy of WinXP. There is nothing to stop you using any other
virtual PC hypervisor (including Microsoft's own Virtual PC) and
installing your own real copy of XP on that.

However the confusion is added to, if you go to MS' web page for
Virtual PC, where it will tell you you are not eligible to run XP mode
on Win 7 Home for example. While this is true, its misleading, since
its referring to the bundled XP mode, and not talking about installing
Virtual PC and your own XP, which is kind of what you expect the web
page about Virtual PC would be all about!

Running Virtual PC on Win 7 Home *is* a supported platform. However the
difference is that with XP mode in Win 7 pro, it automatically includes
the Win XP license required to run XP in this way. If you have the Home
version (or Basic etc), you will need a separate fully licensed version
of XP to install under Virtual PC to make it work.

That's all useful stuff, thanks.

I've no personal experience but I've heard of some difficulties with the
apparently simple Virtual Machine approach. AIUI the virtual machine
does not automatically get access to all the resources on the host PC.
So you won't see your network drives, installed printers, etc, in the
applications running in the VM. I'd hope that you can install them in
the VM but even so it seems a bit of a faff.

You don't necessarily need the printer if you are just running OE in it tho.

One significant downside is that you no longer can set the screen
format so the letters can be quite small and hard to read.

On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 23:48:29 +0100, Steve Firth
wrote:

Only ******* emote about BBC Basic, it's dead, Dave.

It's OT for this thread, but for your information BBC BASIC is currently
one of the most popular languages for teaching programming in UK schools.
For example it is recommended by the OCR examining board:

http://www.gcsecomputing.org.uk/support/index.html
http://social.ocr.org.uk/files/ocr/G...eet_180112.doc

Richard.
http://www.rtrussell.co.uk/

On 12/04/2012 08:50, charles wrote:

HP have a "universal printer driver" which I am using, rather than one
dedicted to a particular printer. It seems to have all the facilities that
I need.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I tried that. My printer (HP1100) was a
cheap and simple one which depends upon the computer for its
rasterisation, and that's what prevents a generic driver from working.


--
Clive Page

On 12/04/2012 10:53, Rod Speed wrote:
Nope, it doesnt cost that much for a version that supports it.

I guess that depends on what you call "that much". From what I
remember, it was nearly £100 to upgrade from Home Premium to the
Professional version, which is more than it would cost to replace the
printer. Also I resent giving any more than absolutely essential to
Micro$oft.


--
Clive Page

Clive Page wrote:
On 10/04/2012 18:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Only COMPILED programs may not copy. Data is - just data. I mean I copy
those freely between a 32bit XP virtual machine and a 64 bit Linux..

Indeed. My experience is as follows.

My old laptop started having problems last year and I found that it was
hard to avoid getting 64-bit Win7 on any reasonable replacement, so I
gave in and did that. I found that the only *program* that didn't work
was something called Turnpike (a very good reader for Usenet News). This
used some features of 32-bit windows which weren't in the 64-bit
version, and was also a "mature product" i.e. no longer being developed
for new operating systems. All the possible work-arounds turned out to
be dead ends. There is a Win XP mode in Windows 7 but it can't be used
in Win7 Home Premium; you have to pay Microsoft an extortionate fee to
upgrade it. Eventually I switched to using Thunderbird for news reading
(it isn't as good, but I can live with it).

But printer drivers are also executable code, and I found that my new HP
laptop would not work with my existing HP laser printer, because HP
could not be bothered to create a 64-bit printer driver for it. It
won't even drive it over the home network when the old printer is
connected to the old Win XP computer which surprised me. Obviously HP
are trying very hard to get me to buy a new printer. Again I eventually
found a work-around, but it's clunky. As a result of my HP experience,
when I do get another printer, it certainly won't be from Hewlett Packard.

So: if you use any programs which are no longer supported (in the sense
of new versions still being developed), or device drivers for old
devices, you might have problems. Other than that, everything is
compatible.

By the way, the user interface for Windows 7 is substantially different,
and in my view worse, but it's easy to find instructions on the web to
get it all looking and behaving like Win XP. I see that Windows 8 has
even done away with the "Start" button - so it's a good idea to get Win
7 before Microsoft messes things up even more.


that ws te one blot on an otherwise beautiful 64 bit landscape when I
moved to 64 bit linux|: no scanner drivers for the HP scanner.

So I gave it to my wife for her mac and bought a ten year old heap of
**** from ebay.

I use it solely for scanning scale drawings for tracing: If I want
actual color rendition I use an anglepoise lamp and a DLSR. Its actually
better quality - but you cant rely on it for exact dimensions due to
the inevitable barrel and pincushion and perspective issues.


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

On 12 Apr 2012 16:40:57 GMT, Huge wrote:

On 2012-04-12, Richard Russell wrote:
On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 23:48:29 +0100, Steve Firth
wrote:

Only ******* emote about BBC Basic, it's dead, Dave.

It's OT for this thread, but for your information BBC BASIC is currently
one of the most popular languages for teaching programming in UK schools.

Good grief. Are they doing it on punched cards, too?

Yep, 3 holes including parity.

It's good for the soul (but bad for the digestion).

DerekG

Mike Barnes wrote:
John Rumm :
On 12/04/2012 08:39, Clive Page wrote:
On 10/04/2012 18:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Only COMPILED programs may not copy. Data is - just data. I mean I copy
those freely between a 32bit XP virtual machine and a 64 bit Linux..
Indeed. My experience is as follows.
[snip]

be dead ends. There is a Win XP mode in Windows 7 but it can't be used
in Win7 Home Premium; you have to pay Microsoft an extortionate fee to
upgrade it. Eventually I switched to using Thunderbird for news reading
A few have mentioned XP compatibility mode, so some comments are
probably worthwhile.

Its true that you need Pro (or better) to use this out of the box.

However, XP mode is in reality a complete virtual machine running a
real copy of WinXP. There is nothing to stop you using any other
virtual PC hypervisor (including Microsoft's own Virtual PC) and
installing your own real copy of XP on that.

However the confusion is added to, if you go to MS' web page for
Virtual PC, where it will tell you you are not eligible to run XP mode
on Win 7 Home for example. While this is true, its misleading, since
its referring to the bundled XP mode, and not talking about installing
Virtual PC and your own XP, which is kind of what you expect the web
page about Virtual PC would be all about!

Running Virtual PC on Win 7 Home *is* a supported platform. However the
difference is that with XP mode in Win 7 pro, it automatically includes
the Win XP license required to run XP in this way. If you have the Home
version (or Basic etc), you will need a separate fully licensed version
of XP to install under Virtual PC to make it work.

That's all useful stuff, thanks.

I've no personal experience but I've heard of some difficulties with the
apparently simple Virtual Machine approach. AIUI the virtual machine
does not automatically get access to all the resources on the host PC.
So you won't see your network drives, installed printers, etc, in the
applications running in the VM. I'd hope that you can install them in
the VM but even so it seems a bit of a faff.



You can if the host is Linux up to a point.

I have one 'mapped' drive which is the linux machines home directory
that is there by default. Since everything else up to and including the
local server, and drives a 150 miles way is NFS mounted on that, they
simply appear as as subdirs of that drive.

Networked printers* simply have their own windows drivers to the network.

The sound works flawlessly from host or guest or indeed both together...

USB devices are somewhat trickier, as is the CD ROM. You have to decide
who 'owns' it....

*including a parallel connected printer connected to a linux server.

I cant answer for how crap a windows hosted virtual box is but a linux
hosted one is way way better than you might expect.

I am not proposing that the OP goes this route, but a 64 bit linux with
a legacy 32 bit XP in a virtual box is what runs here. Don't ask where
the XP came from...

--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

hugh wrote:
In message , Mike Barnes
writes
hugh ]:
Anything which relies on 32 bit windows explorer will not run on 64 bit
W7. Unfortunately that includes my mail/usenet agent Turnpike which I
am loath to give up.

That's the one and only reason I've standardised on W7 32-bit.
Fortunately 4 GB is plenty for my (not exactly modest) needs.

It's probably plenty for the vast majority of people, but the "more is
better" brigade are running the show.
I run XP on 2 gb and it's enough most of the time.

so do I because it went funny on more.. but boy I need 8GB because that
2GN is stolen irrevocably from Linux when XP is running and I have seen
the host go into major thrash when a lot of windows are open on it.

Howver I dont often use windows any more.

Only if I have some serious graphics work to do and then its my chief
task so I can shut down almost everything else beyond a web browser and
mail.

The other use fr XP is to test web sites against IE6. If it works with
IE6 it generally works with anything...


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

charles wrote:
In article ],
hugh ] wrote:
In message , Mike Barnes
writes
hugh ]:
Anything which relies on 32 bit windows explorer will not run on 64 bit
W7. Unfortunately that includes my mail/usenet agent Turnpike which I
am loath to give up.
That's the one and only reason I've standardised on W7 32-bit.
Fortunately 4 GB is plenty for my (not exactly modest) needs.

It's probably plenty for the vast majority of people, but the "more is
better" brigade are running the show.
I run XP on 2 gb and it's enough most of the time.

It depends on what you are doing. I've got sound files well over 1GB in
length. If I want to edit them it would be a much slower process with only
2GB memory

that's true but you probably wouldn't choose a legacy 32 bit OS for
handling that sort of data.

I do big graphics sometimes: that's where I run out of RAM.


--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.

In message , John
Rumm writes
On 12/04/2012 14:07, hugh wrote:
In message , Mike Barnes
writes
hugh ]:
Anything which relies on 32 bit windows explorer will not run on 64 bit
W7. Unfortunately that includes my mail/usenet agent Turnpike which I
am loath to give up.

That's the one and only reason I've standardised on W7 32-bit.
Fortunately 4 GB is plenty for my (not exactly modest) needs.

It's probably plenty for the vast majority of people, but the "more is
better" brigade are running the show.
I run XP on 2 gb and it's enough most of the time.

Remember the OS base requirements are higher for Vista and Win7. So If
you are just ok with 2 on XP, you will need more on later OSs.


I'm not planning on going to Vista anytime soon :-)
--
hugh

In message , Huge
writes
On 2012-04-12, Richard Russell wrote:
On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 23:48:29 +0100, Steve Firth
wrote:

Only ******* emote about BBC Basic, it's dead, Dave.

It's OT for this thread, but for your information BBC BASIC is currently
one of the most popular languages for teaching programming in UK schools.

Good grief. Are they doing it on punched cards, too?


Well they still vote on them in the US - pregnant chads and all that.
--
hugh

Richard Russell wrote:

It's OT for this thread, but for your information BBC BASIC is currently
one of the most popular languages for teaching programming in UK schools.

Excellent, good to see schools keeping up their track record of not
having a clue about IT.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
this is a bit stupid when HTML postings actually work far better with a
modern reader rather than the antiquated stuff real usenet insists on
because of its traditions.

The idea is it is a low bandwidth system that can be used with simple
computers. To make it a universal free standard. Which of course is why
Gates tries to break it.

We are no longer living in the dark ages.
There are very few people using shared 300 baud modems these days.
Or computers that can't handle some simple mark up languages.