Binoette4 has been struggling along with a prehistoric laptop for a few years (poor precious, at 15 years old, I hear you say). Now she works part-time I told her I would contribute X dollars to a new laptop, and she could decide how much she wanted to contribute.
Naturally enough she didn't want to spend much money, and I told her anything would be a huge step up, so we went along and bought an el cheapo Compaq. I was alarmed to see the store (a generic appliance store) selling a Vista equipped machine with 512mb RAM and asked if I could have XP installed. Que??? was the reply.
OK, says I, and explained to B4 that I would purchase and fit an extra 512Mb, though I knew 2Gb RAM is recommended for Vista. I thought perhaps Vista Home Basic might run ok on 1GB with no heavy demands being made on it.
Of course it's as slow as a week of wet Mondays, to the point where I think it's actually slower than her 1.3Gb Acer with 256Mb RAM. How are these people allowed to get away with this?
More importantly, how is the MS virtual monopoly allowed to introduce massively expense new programs which provide no benefit whatsoever to the average user and force older users to upgrade? Yes I know: how else is MS going to increase its earnings and thence its share price? It's a real bummer when they have a system that works for most people. A real cynic might get a vague hint that inbuilt faults are a Good Thing.
Surely not?