Have ditched windows 7

[FarmerPug]

windows has all the fancy graphics stuff and thats what gets blamed for slowing it down, but OSX has fancy graphics stuff and it doesnt slow down. It may be an expensive choice but they are better.

[jasper5]

Apologies for the highjack.....

I have a licence for Vista from my laptop that got destroyed, but no disc....I have XP Home on my PC and would like to use the licence from the Vista to fit Vista on my PC, anyone know how I could do this please?

[FarmerPug]

i think the keys are used once. but a new copy can be picked up on ebay cheaply.

[Gary406]

Apologies for the highjack.....

I have a licence for Vista from my laptop that got destroyed, but no disc....I have XP Home on my PC and would like to use the licence from the Vista to fit Vista on my PC, anyone know how I could do this please?

ye you gotta contact microsoft to transfer keys from hard drive to hard drive..

best thing to do is use a copy , my windows 7 is fully genuine and updatable

if you want a free copy of it just ask, sure i can sort 1 out for you, can get vista genuine if you want as well

no keys required

[FarmerPug]

are you sure you want vista on it, xp i think was better than vista.

[Gary406]

i agree vista was poop

windows 7 for me from now on untill a new 1 comes out, but that wont be for a while yet .

[Gary406]

also, ive never ever paid for my windows software and i never will

have windows 7 ultimate edition on now cost £0 and its genuine, it passes validate on microsoft.com

[FarmerPug]

i awlays went genuime after i got a friend to upgrade a windows 98 to xp great for a week but then the thing kept banging on about the advantage of genuine, so that pc ended up with that friend and i went and got the dell laptop.

[adamr8965]

I have no windows o/s now.

When installing ubuntu i managed to get rid of windows, and the hidden "pq" partition. Which had the old windows vista on.
Whoops, so now have linux mint o/s aswell, which seems to a little better than ubuntu.

All happy, got my iphone to sync on mint with amarok, and t-mobile usb stick now also works. Dont really do a great deal more on the net apart from online gaming on ps3 and watching hd streaming.

[highlander]

Apologies for the highjack.....

I have a licence for Vista from my laptop that got destroyed, but no disc....I have XP Home on my PC and would like to use the licence from the Vista to fit Vista on my PC, anyone know how I could do this please?

The OEM license for Vista which is attached to your laptop by means of a sticker is legally non-transferrable to a new system, unfortunately. The only way to use that license again is on the same type of machine, and you can only install it using the laptop manufacturer's recovery disc.

It's a pain in the ass, unfortunately, but I don't think Microsoft will help you given the fact the Vista license is an OEM copy (PC-specific).

[FarmerPug]

I bought myself a copy of xp off ebay for £16 ish for the bootcamp on my mac, works fine, not too expensive either.
Is the linux os free?

[highlander]

Most Linux distributions are free; Ubuntu is the most popular "Windows-like" Linux distribution at the moment.

[FarmerPug]

and hows it for viruses, and being compatible with software?

[highlander]

Viruses are not commonplace on Linux as most virus-writers write viruses for Windows, as that's the most common platform (and, it's comparatively much easier to do).

Compatibility? It's very compatible with Linux applications There is a project called WINE, which aims to emulate Windows' API, so on x86-powered Linux boxes, you should be able to execute Windows applications. It is fiddly to get it working though, and it's not anything like 100% compatible yet.

I'm quite technically-minded (hell, I did desktop IT support in call-centres for 7.5 years, and have been a network engineer for just over 4 years, and I've been using various kinds of computer pretty much continuously since I was 5 years old) - but I must confess, every time I try to switch to Linux, I get frustrated with it and give up. It's not very intuitive (even the basic stuff, like the folder structures, and getting device drivers to work, is a bit of a bugger). I found the whole shebang to be a bit of an embuggerance, rather than a viable alternative, so I always end up ditching it and going back to Windows.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Microsoft fanboy - in fact, I hate them! It's just that other than OSX, there's nothing as easy to use as Windows at the moment. And Macs are too damned expensive, and still the compatibility issue remains - most software is written for Windows. Sure, now Macs run on x86 hardware, there's always bootcamp - but I don't want to have to switch operating system and reboot my computer any time I want to play a Windows-only game.

[Gary406]

Apologies for the highjack.....

I have a licence for Vista from my laptop that got destroyed, but no disc....I have XP Home on my PC and would like to use the licence from the Vista to fit Vista on my PC, anyone know how I could do this please?

The OEM license for Vista which is attached to your laptop by means of a sticker is legally non-transferrable to a new system, unfortunately. The only way to use that license again is on the same type of machine, and you can only install it using the laptop manufacturer's recovery disc.

It's a pain in the ass, unfortunately, but I don't think Microsoft will help you given the fact the Vista license is an OEM copy (PC-specific).

so what happens when a hard drive busts ?
of course they are transferable to a new system,
all you do is tell microsoft that your hard drive has gone and you have replaced it with another
they dont know that the hard drive is in another computer