A Tale of Two Operating Systems

I remember back in the 80's when I was working in an engineering firm, and the powers-that-be decided they were going to change the entire computer system over to Windows. I saw nothing wrong with DOS and it worked fine for me, but I was dragged kicking and screaming into Microsoft's clutches.

Over the years I have adapted, and have learned to like having a GUI (although I still like to brush up on my DOS commands now and again), and begrudgingly have admitted to liking quite a few Windows features (the real ones, not the bugs-they-call-features!). I've dabbled just a bit in Unix in the 90's, but not enough to be of any real use to me, and looked at Linux a couple of times.

Then a couple of years ago I got my much-coveted Internet Tablet, and it was run on a Linux version called maemo. Thankfully it came with a nice user-friendly GUI which was of great help until I learned just enough coding to get by. I loved it. Still do as a matter of fact, and use my husband's N810 since mine met with an unfortunate accident a couple of weeks ago, daily.

Now it is 2010. My main machine is a netbook running on Windows 7 Starter Edition. My husband is messing around with another Linux version, this one called Ubuntu. After hearing him rave about it and its ease of use, and seeing all of the games that were available simply for the downloading, I installed it and gave it a shot.

Now mind you, there were things about Win7 that I really loved, such as its intuitiveness and its zip compared to earlier versions. There were also things I hated such as the disappearance of Outlook Express and the pastel colors which made things harder to decipher with my poor vision. It crashed, yes, but it also recovered itself which to me was a huge improvement! But after a couple of months it slowed way down, as Windows does. I doubled the RAM Kingston KHX4200S2LL/2G HyperX 2 GB 533 MHz DDR2 Notebook or Netbook Memory and got a bit of an improvement in performance, but really suspected in my heart of hearts that Windows was to blame.

So I started using Ubuntu more and more. I still used Windows during work hours but switched over to Ubuntu in the evenings and weekends. I got used to it more and more, added more apps, spent lots of time on the web, and still it never slowed down...

For my job - a phone answerer/scheduler for a pest control company - I use a Google Voice number that I then send to Skype and/or my cell phone. Skype is great, GV is great...but about a week ago I started getting dropped calls and error messages. Not happy that I had to start using my cell phone full-time (I love the headset and call quality using Skype with the netbook) I tried making all sorts of adjustments to both Windows and Skype settings. Nothing worked.

Jump to today. I put all of my files on a memory stick Kingston DataTraveler I - 8 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive DTI/8GB and shut down Windows for good. Well, I'd like to say for good...in reality I will have to use it when traveling, since my USB internet access stick will only work with Windows.

But, since switching over, I haven't had a single dropped call, or even distortion in a call. My YouTube videos aren't choppy anymore. I have a half-dozen apps running and nothing is slowed down. My favorite game isn't jerky. Same machine, same memory - different o/s.

Buh-bye windows...you'll go on trips with me, but the honeymoon-that-never-really-happened is now over.