Vector 5.8 SOHO (Standard Office/Home Office)

[Whizbang]

I am not totally sure that the SOHO is not "Small" Office and Home Office but I did not want to reveal my ignorance on the Vector Forum; since I was obviously supposed to know and did not and could not find the answer there; although I know I have seen it.  This latest stable version installed without a hitch on a single drive.  I am still queasy about double booting with a system that I know is working.  Total time for installation was less than 20 minutes, and that may be a bit long.  Only agony was having to tap the Enter key about 15 times (really grueling) while accepting the default choices.  All standard internal hardware was detected correctly and option was given to choose the setting for the monitor or have Vector do it.  After my marathon losing battles with Ubuntu on all fronts, I chose to enter setting manually and was immediately rewarded with the proper desktop candy.

I have found no problems yet and am very happy with the camera detection and subsequent image retrieval.  Gimp is the standard advanced graphics editor, but I chose the open source version of Paint and was pleased with the program which has more options than Windows paint but has some of the dumbest looking icons for tools around.  OK, that is my opinion; I just prefer regimented order, which is also why I must avoid panic whenever I fiddle with the controls in order to get rid of the kindergarten desktop after having installed XP (I never remember how to get there fast enough to dump the crayola-looking screen).

If all you need to do is almost anything you can do with XP (except Windows gaming) including office work, listen to music on Internet Radio (current mixed repertoire of Brenda Lee, Jerry Vale, Robert Goulet, Nat King Cole, Olivia Newton John, and Mickey Gilley), do virtually any Internet work, and avoid virus attacks, this one is definitely a go.  My one complaint that I intend to register is the lack of directions for installing a CUPS printer driver or another printer driver option.  I believe I remember seeing that Vector uses an automated system on the CUPS site, but I intend to confirm or find the procedure.  The following image degraded when I had to reduce the size from its original 2550 width to 640.

[Bill]

Whiz,
SOHO is small office/home office.  Given all the Vista 'stuff', Vector seems like a possibility.

Bill