Zoom, zoom.... Intel Core 2 Quad
LoopyByteloose
Posts: 12,537
·I have been avoiding 64 bit processors until I could get a Quad with 2Gbytes of ram for a reasonable price. This is at least one silver lining of all the recent economic fallout.· The Duo's are begining to be heavily discounted and the Quads are entering the mainstream in pricing.So I am now shifting over to a new Lemel at 2.4Ghz. It came with NVidia G8400 card, 320Gb hdisk, and a few other goodies.·That's the good news.
The not so good news is that the bundled Vista is only in Chinese. As if computers are not complicated enough, this is a bit of a challange to my language skills. Actually, I can handle it surprisingly well for the basic OS. If push comes to shove, I will add Ubuntu Linux in dual boot.· I am stuck having to pay full retail for an English version of Vista as a second license·if I want to convert the language over.
Right now I am stopping in to load the Parallax PBasic, SX/B, and Spin IDEs.· Already have Open Office and Evolution email, etc.
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It's sunny and warm here. It is always sunny and warm here.... (unless a typhoon blows through).
Tropically, G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse] 黃鶴 ] in Taiwan
Comments
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Timothy D. Swieter, E.I.
www.brilldea.com·- Prop Blade, LED Painter, RGB LEDs, uOLED-IOC, eProto fo SunSPOT, BitScope
www.sxmicro.com - a blog·exploring the SX micro
www.tdswieter.com
I had the same exact problem when I was in the Netherlands. I bought a computer, and it had a Dutch version of winblows on it. Luckily, I bought it from (probably the best computer store I've ever seen, ever) Paradigit, and the guy just gave me an English version of the software. He said they don't get many requests for the English version, so they didn't have a problem parting with the CD. You might be able to try that line on whomever you bought the computer from, since you are in Taiwan! They even installed it there, on the spot.
-Parsko
Unicode requires each character to be two bytes long; whereas, the western languages are using one byte for each character. If you were to attempt to load or install an Asian software in the Western Windows, you see the file system characters are garbled.
So, in the Asian Windows the directory searches and file management is adapted to handle both the two-byte Asian languages and the one-byte Western languages via unicode. I suspect that means everything using the file system searches runs at 50% of the speed of the western version of Windows.
And of course, there is the issue of menus and screens being different. English is not offered.
Finally, the Asian version is not provided with the level of security and encryption that is available in the U.S.A. So, you see there is a significant double standard between the western Microsoft products and the Asian ones.
One might wonder in the NSA or the CIA actually had a role to play in this. I think you begin to see why mainland China prefers Linux for governmental operations. Last time, I purchased a full copy of WindowsXP Pro in English and found they don't even allow it to be held in inventory in Taiwan. I had to wait two weeks for a copy to be sent from Singapore and registration had to be finalized through Singapore. This new version of Chinese Visa doesn't even seem to care if I ever register it.
Logically, I can install anything in an Asian Windows, but not anything in a Western Windows. But, the Western Windows is likely to run data sorts faster and to offer higher security services.
Linux doesn't have this somewhat hidden double standard. If you want to switch between languages or have one user have Chinese screens while another has Dutch and another had English, no problem. All file lables follow the same system, but it may not support Asian character sets.
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It's sunny and warm here. It is always sunny and warm here.... (unless a typhoon blows through).
Tropically, G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse] 黃鶴 ] in Taiwan
Post Edited (Kramer) : 10/9/2008 10:44:14 AM GMT
No, they just handle Unicode. All the legacy western encodings are converted to Unicode, as are the legacy asian encodings such as Shift-JIS.
Unicode is just a set of characters that can be encoded in a number of formats; the most common of which are UTF-8 and UTF-16. UTF-8 takes 1 to 6 bytes per character, UTF-16 takes 2 to 4 bytes per character.
NTFS uses UTF-8 (IIRC; this could be UTF-16) on the disk. All modern Windows applications use UTF-16 (Those which don't have ALL of their method calls translated to use UTF-16 and then converted back on return).
Windows many different legacy encodings just ends up incredibly confusing; everyone should switch to Unicode and be done with it (Like Linux uses UTF-8 everywhere by now)
I've had the opportunity to run several of these and always got into trouble, even though I can read some Chinese. The layout menu system does not match the English version, the thinking is entirely different and the settings menu is something else, especially for the net settings. I was fortunate to have opportunity compare a Chinese Language version pc, same manufacturer and model, side by side, with the English Windows version.
Keep us posted on your Linux adventures...
humanoido
What exactly do you mean by 'internally'? In theory, all Microsoft XP and Vista OS software fully supports Unicode. But that is only within the data internal to a program and inside document files. The operating system and naming of files is a separate issue that Microsoft seems to avoid fully documenting.
Thus, unless things have recently changed -- the illusion is that there is one system when there are indeed two versions of Microsoft products; one is occidental and the other is oriental.
Earlier this year, the difference was quite obvious when Microsoft said they would be immediately issuing a Service Pack 1 on for the occidental Vista, but had no time line for issuing an SP1 the oriental. I see that I have an SP1 now installed on the oriental Vista, but I've not been assured by anyone that the two systems approach has been abandoned.
Humanoido,
Yes, I could have demanded an installed English version at no extra cost before picking up the computer. Many people do and they get one. But, what do they get? Unless things have radically changed, they get an unlicensed, bootleg copy of the English system which is forever doomed to intrigues from Microsoft and a lack of future updates or Service Packs.
Asia runs on about 95% of the Windows XP and 98 being illegal copies and people trying to use free or bootleg anti-virus protection. Such users are constantly suffering wholesale data losses and rebuilding their systems. I'd rather not go there. I tried it in the past and found it to be a huge waste of time and effort.
What do I have now?
These days I have three computers - two desktops and one Asus EEEpc. I am mostly using Ubuntu Linux on my old desktop and really enjoy the stability and ease of use over both WindowsXP and Windows Vista. The EEEpc runs another distrobution of Linux, called Xandros, but I intend to eventually have it use Ubuntu.
The new desktop has Windows Vista, but is already suffering a conflict with Iolo's System Mechanic Pro 8.0 that doesn't bode well. The System Mechanic Pro now refuses to load for system scans, but the AV and firewall are working.
I have given up on Symantec/Norton products as they are both too expensive and constantly bully the user with paranoid messages and pop ups. Additionally, I found Norton AV extremely unfriendly and difficult to remove from my XP and I could not install another AV program without its complete removal. This appeared to be an intentional ploy by Norton to block changing to another product and I had to turn to a 3rd party website called 'Kill Norton' to find the real method to remove.
As you can see, even with fully licensed copies of Windows Vista and XP, I still have significant problems with getting appropriate add on software to keep the Registry in good order, the security intact, and the system from accumulating a lot of clutter. I've read that debugging the .ddl files is far more complex than managing code in the various modular methods and systems that Linux uses and that may forever doom Windows to moving from one development disaster to another.
On the other hand, the top 50 computer systems in the world are supposedly all Unix and many big corporate enterprises that use Windows for thousands of workstations turn to Linux for all their servers. After all Samba file servers don't care if you are using an Apple OS, a Microsoft OS, a Sun OS, or whatever. And the software is both well supported and free.
I retain Windows in a dual boot so that I can use products like Parallax's IDEs. But I am now fully convinced that anyone that really wants to fully learn computers has to use a Linux system as well.
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It's sunny and warm here. It is always sunny and warm here.... (unless a typhoon blows through).
Tropically, G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse] 黃鶴 ] in Taiwan
However, the Windows English version installed in Taiwan is a completely new version with the original factory seal, original certifications, and it has authorized updates directly from Microsoft. I have already received and installed updates directly from Microsoft and don't have any of the problems you speak of. This is not a bootlegged copy. I simply went to the largest reputable authorized dealer, and not a fake one.
If your computer is new enough and the mfg sells directly to the USA, by dealing directly the mfg. company and not the dealer, you should be able to get the English Version of Windows. I hope this helps.
humanoido