Application: Classic Shell

Been around since DARPA connected a couple computers one in Connecticut to another in California and called it ARPANET in the mi60s.
The world wide web came quite a bit later, hypertext in 1991 and the Mosaic graphical browser in 1993 and this relatively new Google thing which you should feel free to use to gather this information for yourself.

Right on Trouble. I am not old enough to have used some of the technology that has been discussed. Never the less, I do have my basic computer knowledge of it. Andrea...You have a lot to learn about computers. I guess the reason that I even care to show or teach you anything, is because you remind me of me. Like 10 years ago. This is not necessarily a bad thing or an insult. Trouble pointed out that I was being harsh. That renewed me to the out look of this and any other conversation that we are or will have. Given time all of this will make way more since.

In 1985,I was 22 years old. And while some people did work work with computers. Or at least I met some people that said they did. They still used typewriters in offices. They never had the Internet in 1985. And they did not have it in 1991 no way. It came in in around I think around the late 1990's 1997 maybe. But nobody I know used the Internet. But I do remember the Internet cafe in the London shopping centre,giving Internet classes. You had to pay for them of course. And they had computers in Libraries in 1999.

But I did not learn how to use a computer until July-august 2006. When the person sitting next to me at the Internet cafe showed me how to use the computer.Before that I could not even use a mouse. But it was not until 2008 that I was able to do email. when some one gave me an email address to set up my first Hotmail account. As they ask for an alternative email address and I did not have one. So I used the email address the person gave me to set up my first email account. And from then on I set up more email accounts and then I created my first blog. And then it went on from there. Then last April in 2010 after spending most of my time in Internet cafes.I got my first computer. A Windows 7 netbook.And I now have four Windows 7 netbooks and two windows XP netbooks. So I have got six netbooks.

But before I got my own laptop,I did not know anything about Windows XP or Windows 7.And I did not even know which version of Windows the Internet cafes ran. But now I do because you can see it on the boot screen-they run Windows XP. But Windows 7 is so much like Windows XP. That is it has a start menu and a normal Windows desktop. So you don't notice the change in operating systems. And Internet cafes put their own desktop themes on their computers anyway. So they don't make it look like the traditional windows XP desktop.

But my typing is not very good. I can only do two finger typing and looking at the keyboard.Like I am typing this now. That is I am typing slowly with one or two fingers. So my typing would not pass in an office.

But if my first computer had been Windows 8,I would have been lost.The way it looks and is. But Windows 7 made me feel right at home. It is very user friendly. And if you know Windows 7,you will find Windows XP easy. But Windows 7's Windows Search is better than Windows XP's, as it brings up any result. But Windows XP's Windows Search does not find everything. But both Windows XP and Windows 7 are user friendly and easy to use. But Windows 8 does not seem user friendly at all.Andrea Borman.

To be blatantly honest, you have little to no idea what you are talking about. There is a desktop, I showed you a screen shot of it. The control panel, computer manager, administrator tools, explorer and most any other software is still in Windows. Other than the start menu being so different, there is little to no difference in how things are done in 8 as apposed to 7. So in reality what you are saying is that 8 is so user unfriendly, so that makes 7 unfriendly and Vista unfriendly as well as XP unfriendly. You need to use something before you start saying how bad something is. This is a Mojave situation all over again. Please take one of those netbooks and install 8 on it. Run it. I mean really run it. No half assing it. I would suggest installing classic shell, just the start menu part, not any of the rest of it. This is still technically an Alpha Windows, so it may cause you to have to reinstall. Run it and see what you think. Give some real feed back about what you ran across and not every one else's opinion. Start thinking for yourself, and get out of that box of ignorance.

No,Windows 7,Windows XP and Windows Vista are very user friendly. They are not like Windows 8. As for installing Windows 8 on one of my netbooks. First there is no CD drive. But I could install it the same way I installed Linux Mint. Mount the ISO file on virtual clone drive. but the catch is you have to first partition the hard disk. So I read but with Linux Mint you don't.Because you can install it inside Windows. But Windows is different.

Also I do not know how to partition the hard disk. And it is likely that if I tried I would mess up my computer. Also I could wipe out my Windows 7 operating system altogether, if I did not know what I was doing.

I would love to install Windows 2000 alongside my Windows 7. some people do it. But I have read many tutorials and it is too complicated. I cannot even install it in virtual box or virtual machine. That does not work either. I think it is because I don't know how to use Virtual Box.

So Windows 8 will not be going on my netbook because I don't have the skill to install it anyway. Not without messing something up.

But if I could install operating systems,sure,I would have Windows XP and Windows 2000 running side by side in duel boot on my Windows 7 netbook. But as it is, I have got two Windows XP netbooks. So I have both Windows XP and Windows 7,just on different netbooks. Andrea Borman.

So let me get this right. You can't install an OS of any kind from scratch. Your first experience with a personally owned computer was on the Windows 7 OS. You don't have the basic understanding of the internet/web or even networking. You believe that if you can't do it then it is imposable to do. Now you want to start telling us, with over 50+ years of experience, that you know more than us. How dose that work?

Yes,it is true. I cannot install another Windows operating system on my netbook. The first problem is that the netbooks have no CD drive. I was able to install Linux Mint by mounting the ISO file on virtual clone drive and Ubuntu the same way. Then the Mint 4 Windows installer finished the installation. So Linux was installed inside Windows and can be removed the same way you uninstall Firefox,in uninstall a program.

With Windows it seems you cannot install it the same way. I have seen videos on You Tube about installing Windows XP on a Windows 7 netbook,using a USB stick. But you need a copy of the Windows XP operating system and then you have to activate Windows. Also you need a Windows CD. But because I have netbooks,I did not get one with my netbooks,it never came with them.So the only way I could reinstall Windows is to do a factory restore to factory settings. And this is on the recovery partition on my netbooks. And is the only way I could restore my system,should I get a serious problem.

So you see the problem. I don't even have a Windows 7 CD. But on the recovery partition,there is where the factory image is stored,put on there by the makers of my netbook. So I can do a system recovery to restore my computer to factory settings. That is put it back to the way it was when it was bought,the out of the box condition. Andrea Borman.

I have not used a CD/DVD to install an OS in about 3 or more years. That lame excuse just went out the Windows. Pun intended. It is true that you need a valid license for installing Windows. The media that it is installed from is irrelevant. Download an ISO from the internet. As long as your COA says Windows 7 and the image is for Windows 7, not Windows 7 with Service Pack 1, and you use the key that is on your machine, then you are legal. The disks that you buy anywhere are all the same, exact clones of each other. The only thing that matters is the COA (Certificate of Authentication) and the key code.

Well,I already have Windows 7 on my four Windows 7 netbooks. They are all HP Mini 210 and 2 have a hard drive of 250 and I have got 200GB free disk space on the C drive. The other two HP netbooks have 120GB free space on C on the C drive out of 130GB. And the recovery is on the D drive and all four are 1GB ram.

The Windows XP 1GB ram netbooks,the first one is-Acer Aspire One,that only has a C drive and I have 129GB free space out of 139GB. The MSI WIND netbook which is also Windows XP-well get this-the D drive is 145GB and has 144GB free space. But the C drive is only 39GB and has 28GB free space. But it should have been made the other way around-C drive 145GB hard drive and D drive 39GB. But they made C drive 39GB and D drive 145GB. Why is that? And although you can get round this problem by installing some programs on D drive,some other programs will only install or work on C drive.

But a few weeks ago when I was in a shop that sold laptops with Windows XP and Windows Vista. I was surprised to see several big laptops,not netbooks but big laptops. But they only had a 80GB hard drive. yet my HP netbooks have a 250GB C drive. I don't understand this one either. Except that I am better off with my small 250GB hard drive netbook,than a big laptop that only has an 80GB hard drive on C drive. as I have more space.

But I would love to put windows XP on one of my HP netbooks but I don't know how I could. I don't think I could just take the image that is on my Windows XP netbook,put it on a CD or USB stick in back up your system.That they have on system restore and just transfer it onto my Windows 7 netbook,in system restore. Where it says replace everything on your computer with an image you created earlier.Could I do that? Andrea Borman.

Now that is a really good question. I like where you where going with that transfer the restore partition. It is possible, and you can get your computer to boot form the flash drive, that should be no problem. As long as 1) the restore is not an encrypted partition that only runs as a CD/DVD 2) the restore is not encrypted into a single file on the partition 3) the restore is not specifically designed to run on one set hardware profile. If all three of those are no, then you should be good to go on that. On the other hand I would suggest that, since you have multiple computers, I would make one a testing grounds. Get the Windows Developer Preview of Windows 8. I say Windows 8 because it is free. If you mess up your partitioning then it doesn't matter, try again. I have little to no concept of what it is like to not know how to do these things. I have done them for so long, that it is just second nature to me. I on the other hand have no hard feelings about answering questions when it comes to what to do with this or that. I will give you any help I can. The only real way to learn this stuff in a efficient manner is to do it and screw up, and do it again. Trial by fire is the best way to learn computers. You are going to make mistakes, and break stuff. If you don't you are a lamer, and just pretending to work on computers. No one is immune to things going wrong. It happens to me all the time. Though I stand tall and get back on the horse and keep going. I never let the little crap slow me down. Any way the other thing I was going to say is that with any computer it all a matter of what the person working on it dose to it. The amount of RAM, under the maximum for the motherboard, and hard drive size is subject to what the shop wants to put in it. As long as the connections are the same, then the limit to the size of the hard drive is what ever is available for laptop drives. My 3 to 5 year old laptop has a 1 TB in it. It was the best at the time for $245, a year ago. With ram it is a little different. The type has to match and the motherboard has a limit on how much it will hold. My Laptop has an 8 Gig limit. That is 2 - 4 Gig stick. Where my desktop has a 24 Gig limit, that is 6 - 4 Gig sticks. It is running DDR 3 and there are 6 and 8 Gig sticks, but my chipset will only accept a 4 Gig stick, for what ever reason. That is one thing I have never understood. I know that you can change that with a BIOS upgrade, if there is one. But I am getting off subject here. Sorry. Again though, I really liked that question.