Opera

[claidheamhmor]

So I'm back to Opera as my primary web browser. For some reason, after I upgraded my work machine to Windows 7, Maxthon's screen no longer refreshed properly; I couldn't find a solution. Next best option is Opera. I found a workaround for Maxthon's most missed feature, the "Open all links as background tabs", by mapping mouse middle-button to one of the side buttons; now I can click on the side button to open a link in the background.

I do miss some of Maxthon's other features, like the Ctrl-Click to instantly save an image, and IE compatibility, but Opera is a lot quicker, and I love the instant "back" reload. Still, it's good to be using a totally rock-solid browser.

Comments

[filialucis]

Sounds interesting. So I would, in effect, then end up running Windows on Linux on Windows, a virtual machine within a virtual machine?

OK, how much space/memory am I likely to need for this caper? And will it provide conclusive findings about driver compatibility and suchlike? I seem to remember that programs are still going to need to talk to things like the printer and the CD/DVD drive, and all that...

[claidheamhmor]

If you're running virtual machines, you don't need Crossover - just run the application from whatever OS is the best for it.

Basically, the virtual machine is a machine using standard drivers (it comes with the basics already). To connect to other stuff, there are several ways - like for printing, you can print to a "network printer" on the host machine, and for CD, use the host machine's CD directly. There are some limitations with virtual machines, primary being that you can forget about 3D acceleration (for games) in a virtual machine, and also direct hardware access can't happen, for things that have reliance on very specific hardware.

It's ideal for playing around with a new operating system in an environment where you don't have to reinstall your primary machine.

At work, I run a few VMs: I have my host machine for websurfing, Office, and email; it runs Windows 7 My Windows XP VM is for testing network settings etc., since most PCs in the office are XP. My Windows 2003 Server VM is loaded with all the configuration tools I need to manage servers, email servers, and other network stuff.

At home, I have a copy of that same Windows 2003 Server VM to connect to work with, so that work's VPN software, antivirus, etc. don't have any effect on my own home machine.

For running virtual machines, you do need a decent amount of memory (you can assign however much RAM to each VM you want, but less means it's slower), and a dual-core CPU will help a lot.

[filialucis]

OK, 3D acceleration isn't an issue for me. Essentially, if I ended up running Ubuntu with XP in a VM for Office and The Bat, I'd mostly need to be able to print from MS Office.

I take it that, installing XP on the VM, I'd have to register it with Microsoft just as though I were installing it on a PC in the normal way? How often can one do that with the same copy of XP, anyway?

And how much RAM is a decent amount? I have a dual-core CPU, but only 1GB to play with on this machine, and as it's about two years old I'm not sure whether it'd be worth it to invest in hardware upgrades. Especially as I'm also running low on hard disk space on it...

[claidheamhmor]

Yeah, installing XP would require you to reactivate it; with something like that that might be seen as a major hardware change, it may even require telephonic activation, but I've never had an issue with it (one would need to answer the questions correctly - only one copy installed).

1GB may be OK with a VM set up with 256MB RAM. Personally, I'd want more, as more RAM does help (heck, my base-level customers get 4GB nowadays, seeing as that only costs 70 Euros). Hard disk space may be an issue - depending what the VM runs, theVM file can run to 4GB and more. Mine are around 8 at the moment.

[filialucis]

The reactivation thing is the only reason I'd quite like to be able to go with something like Crossover Linux, actually. Though the small amount of research I did this afternoon suggests that Office 2007 can be dicey on Wine, and who knows about the commercial equivalents.

OK, perhaps I should go for a RAM upgrade, given that the laptop still seems to be going strong even though I'm running it all day, every day, and have been for two years. Hard disk space won't be a problem in the way you describe; I currently have 28GB free on the system partition. It's the data partition that's going to be overflowing any day now unless I do some serious housecleaning and move most of my photos to the USB drive! :)

[claidheamhmor]

The space thing is the no. 1 reason I prefer a single partition per drive, rather than multiple partitions; you don't end up with space free on the parition where your data is not being stored.

Though, I might add, Windows Vista and 7 make it one heck of a lot easier to decide where to store data, and move it around.

[filialucis]

The separate data partition is a holdover from Win98/2k days, actually; I got into the habit of having it that way because Win98 in particular was unstable enough that I had to reinstall the entire thing from scratch on several occasions. Win2k was better, but when it broke, it broke hard, and there were at least two occasions that I remember being VERY grateful for the separate data partition when the OS needed reinstalling and insisted that it was NOT going to be reinstalled without formatting the data partition.

XP seems to be safer... but I'm paranoid, and I'm still a shade more comfortable having my data and my OS in separate locations.

[claidheamhmor]

Yeah, I remember your fun from then.

Something I *really* like about Windows 7 is that when you install it as a new install (rather than upgrade) on a drive that already has another version of Windows installed (e.g. XP, 2000, Vista, even Windows 7), it very politely backs up the Windows, Program Files, Program Data (for Vista & up) and Docs and Settings or Users folders into a Windows.old folder, so that it's all there safe and sound for later retrieva.