[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by NowhereMan 1966

This box I'm using now, a Pentium II, 400 MHz is running XP Pro right now but if it goes, I'm back to Windows 98 I think 98 Second Edition was fine although they could stop at XP and I'd be happy with that too.

I have an IBM Aptiva 595 (600 MHz processor, 128mb RAM), bought new eight years ago, running Windows 98SE; it works extremely well for what I need it to do (word processing, Internet, email, music [Winamp 5.3] and video), so I have no intention of upgrading anytime soon. I have a program that skins the Windows taskbar, etc. so it looks like Windows XP, but only I know that the machine is running 98SE--anyone else who looks at my desktop would swear I was running XP.

The only problem I'm having with this computer at the moment is it is so darn slow it is incredible--sometimes. The computer takes perhaps three minutes to boot from a cold start. I think I may know why this is happening; I have only a 20GB hard drive and many programs on it, some of which run at system start. I will not disable some of these programs (such as my firewall, antivirus, Invisible! [a program that removes the solid color box behind the captions on Windows icons on the desktop], and of course the yellow speaker icon that tells me my system's sound card is operating normally and allows me to adjust sound volume), but I have gotten busy and uninstalled a lot of programs from my system that I no longer use. That helps somewhat, but I downloaded a rather large video file last night that takes up all but 3.5 or so GB of what was free space on my hard drive.

I intend to use my computer quite a bit to watch online video; in fact, I do that a lot now, from sites such as www.hulu.com (classic TV shows from the '50s through the '70s and even some from the eighties), ABCNEWS.com for news, and even several online radio services such as Pandora Radio (www.pandora.com), AOL Radio through my Winamp player, and so forth. I've ripped many of my CDs onto my system's hard drive as well, and am adding more all the time. I have about 50 CDs in my collection to date, so it will take a while to rip them all into the system; but again, I am in no rush to complete the project.

I have digital cable (Time-Warner), but it does not yet carry RTN (the RetroTV cable network) in my area. I wish it did, as that network seems to have all my favorite shows from the '70s including the crime drama Quincy, starring Jack Klugman, and others. Oh well. That's why I have a subscription to Netflix and a DVD player; I can get the entire Quincy series, all eight seasons, from them three disks at a time (I've already seen the first two seasons on two disks and will be waiting for the next ones, but it will be good to have these episodes on my own disks when I get the ones I ordered from Amazon.com, as I mention below).

I've also ordered the entire 1st and second seasons of Quincy on DVD from Amazon.com; these should arrive in my mail next week some time. Over time, I hope to have all eight seasons of the program on DVD (I may order a season a month from Amazon.com), but I am in no hurry.

The so-called "death" of analog television doesn't bother me in the least. I was reading somewhere (may have been a post in this forum) that the "death" of analog is very greatly exaggerated, not unlike the panic that was started eight years ago over Y2K. As it happened, however, little actually went wrong when the clock struck midnight on December 31, 1999; a few computers crashed and/or malfunctioned, but for the most part the world survived--there was no interruption of electric power, gas, water, etc. which may well have happened if the computers controlling these utilities had gone haywire as a result of Y2K, otherwise known as the "millennium bug."

As far as the transition from analog to digital TV is concerned, however, I honestly do not think any of us have a darn thing to worry about. As long as our televisions are connected to cable or satellite, we won't lose our favorite shows or channels; Time Warner has assured its subscribers that this will be the case, as I think most other cable operators have as well. They cannot afford not to, as people will not stand for their cable television service being compromised or limited; after all, a large percentage of U.S. households have cable or satellite service and have done away with their over-the-air antennas, but not their old reliable analog TVs (there are still millions of the latter in use and nowhere near ready for the dump). Those people who still get their TV over an antenna will still be able to use the latter after the transition, if they put a digital-to-analog converter box on their TV sets between the antenna and the antenna terminals or coax connector on the back of the set, so no one should be without TV after February 17, 2009.

Digital TV is not the end of television; it is, rather, the end of one era (analog NTSC TV broadcasting) and the beginning of a fresh, new, exciting digital era. DTV will allow TV stations to carry more programming on one channel (a process known as multicasting) than is possible under the NTSC analog system with its 6-MHz wide channels. Who knows, maybe DTV and multicasting will eventually mean RTN, and other networks not yet carried here, will be added to Time-Warner's northeastern Ohio cable systems. I will be waiting.