Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Waitone on August 19, 2013, 05:49:46 PM
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What says the APS geek trust.
XP support is getting a little ragged in preparation for the 2014 cutoff. I can upgrade to either Windows 7 or 8. W7 has a rep of being pretty close to XP. W8 has the rep of being unlike any other windows product due to its user interface. Evidently MS has figgered out it has a turkey in the oven and is promising W8.1 will be just like the legacy interface.
I have to upgrade. What says the APS geek trust.
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Win 8, that way you are on the curve instead of behind it with Win 7.
Win 8 isn't that hard to use, just start typing what you want to do and it will start giving you program icons.
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I'm still on Xp for my primary desktop computer and my notebook. My wife's notebook is in Win 7, as an upgrade from the Vista that was pre-installed when we bought it. Win 7 is NOT at all like Xp, IMHO. Win 7 is the bug fix release for Vista.
That said, I am just about to order myself a new notebook, because it looks like this is my last chance to buy one with Win 7 rather than Win 8 installed. I haven't yet heard anything good about Win 8 (unless Charby's post above is supposed to be an endorsement).
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Of the two, I like 7 better.
BUT Windows 8 is better than a lot was made out on it initially. And I think they've either made or are planning to make some tweaks to make it suck a little less. Main flaw was the whole "ohhh touch screen clicky, you like yes?!" BS.
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What says the APS geek trust.
XP support is getting a little ragged in preparation for the 2014 cutoff. I can upgrade to either Windows 7 or 8. W7 has a rep of being pretty close to XP. W8 has the rep of being unlike any other windows product due to its user interface. Evidently MS has figgered out it has a turkey in the oven and is promising W8.1 will be just like the legacy interface.
I have to upgrade. What says the APS geek trust.
Using Win 7 is like using a weird version of XP. Everything usually works, stuff is just all over the place and looks different. You get used to it, and it does have a couple of nice features. Sure, XP would be perfectly fine, but hey, Microsoft needs revenue.
Using Win 8 is like hitting yourself in the face with a frying pan. Constantly. Yes, you get used to the pain, mostly. But you're still being hit in the face with a frying pan. It's sorta like Vista. Except Vista looked better and made more sense. It's a good way to get behind the curve, though. A lot of people actually like being hit in the face with a frying pan, so it may actually be your cup of tea. Never know, give it a shot. Screaming rage or sobbing is a sign of an innovative product. On the other hand, there's virtually no productivity gains in the new OS but plenty of productivity losses.
(Some folks will note I'm being unusually positive about Windows 8. I'm not sure why either. I should be writing about it's negative points, but unfortunately my brain segfaults to save itself whenever I bring up that METRO IS THE $*%(# DEFAULT AND ONLY INTERFACE FOR SERVER 2012.)
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Win7 is good. Stable, compatible, and does a fine job at playing nice with multi-processor CPU architectures. Win8 is like setting your head on fire, only a lot less fun.
Brad
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Win 7 until Win 9 comes out. MS always alternates between good and crappy OS releases.
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Since nobody has yet, I'll have to say neither. I switched to Linux about 5 years ago and have no regrets.
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What says the APS geek trust.
XP support is getting a little ragged in preparation for the 2014 cutoff. I can upgrade to either Windows 7 or 8. W7 has a rep of being pretty close to XP. W8 has the rep of being unlike any other windows product due to its user interface. Evidently MS has figgered out it has a turkey in the oven and is promising W8.1 will be just like the legacy interface.
I have to upgrade. What says the APS geek trust.
Windows 8 is of de debbil.
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Windows 8 is the spawn of Satan. Windows 7 is pretty decent, and a hell of a lot better than Vista ever could be.
This laptop I am on started out with Vista, which was pretty sucky. Upgraded to Win7 last year and happy I did. Works quite well, stable, fast, no lockups.
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RevDisk commented,
Using Win 7 is like using a weird version of XP. Everything usually works, stuff is just all over the place and looks different. You get used to it, and it does have a couple of nice features. Sure, XP would be perfectly fine, but hey, Microsoft needs revenue.
Same here. Been batting my head against the wall with that "change for change's sake" marketing strategy, where just changing icons and structure constitutes "NEW!" and "IMPROVED!" I'm dreading loss of support for XP, 'cause I was hoping to get back to my virus-trashed XP machine.
And that internal indexing search function sucks down to 10e-8 Torr.
Yeah, I got a copy of "Windows 7 For Dummies," as well as Pogue's "The Missing Manual," but I'm tired of spending an hour looking crap up just to do a one-minute job.
Well, that's an exaggeration for the sake of illustration. More correctly, I should have said, "I'm tired of spending a half hour looking crap up just to do a thirty-second job."
Terry
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Windows 8 is of de debbil.
I expect more competence from the devil.
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I expect more competence from the devil.
:lol:
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Win8.
Rev is right about the ui suckage. But just add classic shell to your os and you have win7 with longer lifetime support.
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Using Win 7 is like using a weird version of XP. Everything usually works, stuff is just all over the place and looks different. You get used to it, and it does have a couple of nice features. Sure, XP would be perfectly fine, but hey, Microsoft needs revenue.
Win 7 jumps between applications while you are typing - WTH ??? I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation, but I have work to do that doesn't include figuring that out.
Also, it seems like they have done away with a lot of functionality. Maybe they just hid it somewhere. Sure helps productivity to not have so many options I guess ;/
I'm about ready to destroy every computer in sight right now and become a sheepherder =|
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if I even look at a lap top with win 8 on it it turns off and gives all my passwords to my psycho ex girlfriend.
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Win 7 jumps between applications while you are typing - WTH ??? I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation, but I have work to do that doesn't include figuring that out.
Are you using a laptop with integrated touchpad? I've noticed touchpads becoming ridiculously sensitive in the last few years. I had a Dell laptop at work that would register "touch" with my finger hovering over it while typing, causing it to jump around apps and all like you're describing. My Lenovo isn't that bad for me, but is for my coworkers.
My desktops without touchpads don't have this problem. It's hardware, not Windows.
Chris
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Win 7 jumps between applications while you are typing - WTH ???
How'd you get it to do that? I've had W7 for a couple years now and it's never done that. Maybe I'm not using it properly?
Brad
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Are you using a laptop with integrated touchpad? I've noticed touchpads becoming ridiculously sensitive in the last few years. I had a Dell laptop at work that would register "touch" with my finger hovering over it while typing, causing it to jump around apps and all like you're describing. My Lenovo isn't that bad for me, but is for my coworkers.
My desktops without touchpads don't have this problem. It's hardware, not Windows.
Chris
^^ This.
I can't stand laptops nowadays. The "eraser" should have won the portable pointing device war, not the touchpad.
In light of that unrighteous defeat, I tend to disable the touchpad and plug in a proper USB mouse, so I don't experience this phenomenon.
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I can't stand laptops nowadays. The "eraser" should have won the portable pointing device war, not the touchpad.
In light of that unrighteous defeat, I tend to disable the touchpad and plug in a proper USB mouse, so I don't experience this phenomenon.
Quoted for truth.
Touchpads drive me to distraction. Can't use 'em. Won't use 'em.
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My laptop and workstation at work both have Win7 x64 - it took a little getting used to from my XP machine at home, but it's a stable platform and works well.
My new PC at home has Windows 8 Pro x64 - just because it's not quite as awful as some claim, doesn't mean I like it.
I don't. :mad:
I can manage to work with it, but I really don't like the overall setup at all.
As long as we're on the topic of PCs . . . does anyone know of a source for the updates to Office 2000? MS stopped supporting it entirely, and it would seem that service releases 1 and 1a are no longer available from the MS site; I reinstalled it on my older XP box (the old versions of Excel and Word do what I want them to) when I upgraded the HD and while SR3 is seemingly still available, I need the earlier service releases or else the updater won't install SR3. :mad:
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Win7 switches apps while you're typing
Never seen it, myself. Sounds like a touchpad problem.
Win7 == reduced functionality
Not that I can see. Stuff's in different places sometimes. Control panel especially.
The reorganized user files (c:\users\username\...) makes more sense to me than the older way ("C:\documents and settings"). Don't forget that NT put that whole thing under the Windows (well, "c:\NT) directory.
The only real problems I've seen with 7 are subtle privilege related problems. Some programs don't like UAC. There's a problem with mapped drives in a domain environment that I've run into a couple times and haven't solved yet that I think is a privileges related problem. And the "run as administrator" thing is an annoyance. (I am administrator. Says right there....).
8? I've had more than once, a Windows 8 computer decide it wasn't going to boot anymore, and not let me into the recovery environment where I have a small chance of actually fixing the problem.
Server 2012 installs the vague blob interface, but boots to the desktop and pins the file manager to the taskbar. I can live with that. Install Classic Shell, and away I go.
Our customers are very happy that we can get new systems with Windows 7.
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^^ This.
I can't stand laptops nowadays. The "eraser" should have won the portable pointing device war, not the touchpad.
In light of that unrighteous defeat, I tend to disable the touchpad and plug in a proper USB mouse, so I don't experience this phenomenon.
I always use a USB mouse and never the touchpad, but apparently that doesn't prevent the touchpad from randomly interfering. Never have this problem on XP.
I have one W7 laptop and two XP laptops (three if you count the one with the farked video).
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Your laptop is too new. You should stick with the same strategy that works for your trucks, older is better.
Chris
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I always use a USB mouse and never the touchpad, but apparently that doesn't prevent the touchpad from randomly interfering. Never have this problem on XP.
I have one W7 laptop and two XP laptops (three if you count the one with the farked video).
My laptops (both ASUS), if I push Fn+F9 it disables the touchpad.
I can also go into control panel and adjust mouse settings to that if I plug in an external mouse device the touchpad is automatically disabled.
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Since nobody has yet, I'll have to say neither. I switched to Linux about 5 years ago and have no regrets.
Yup. 15 (holy crap!) years here.
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Your laptop is too new. You should stick with the same strategy that works for your trucks, older is better.
Chris
It's the latest one provided by my employer. Apparently they want me to move into the 20th century. Thing doesn't neck rein worth a darn :lol:
My laptops (both ASUS), if I push Fn+F9 it disables the touchpad.
I can also go into control panel and adjust mouse settings to that if I plug in an external mouse device the touchpad is automatically disabled.
Thanks! =) Now I can bill for fokking around with my laptop settings (the other option was a sledgehammer).
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Your laptop is too new. You should stick with the same strategy that works for your trucks, older is better.
Chris
Dang. Should-a grabbed the old Compaq Win98 laptop I saw at a garage sale a couple weeks back.
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Dang. Should-a grabbed the old Compaq Win98 laptop I saw at a garage sale a couple weeks back.
I've got a Win95 laptop with an internal dial up modem sitting on a shelf in the closet :P
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I've got a Win95 laptop with an internal dial up modem sitting on a shelf in the closet :P
Is it still horse-pulled or has it been converted to coal?
Brad
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I read somewhere that you can use the i386 folders somehow to restore one's Win 2000 operating system (as well as XP), but never tried it. Apparently, there are two sets of i386 folders, one for the system, and one for the drivers. But the i386 folders are sitting there on both my beloved Compaq Armada (W2000) and my delectable Dell (XP).
I decided I'd HAVE to learn W7 on my detestable HP 64-bit, which is why I never tried it on either of the older machines. I believe I recollect reading that using the i386 folders will also eliminate any malware but in my old age and dotage, this may not be correct.
Now, where'd I put my keys?
Terry
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I just went looking through my MSDN subscription.
I can get Office 95, and 2003, but 2000 is gone. Sorry. Normally they'll have all sorts of old OS and app downloads on there.
I also checked my archives here, and I'm kind of surprised I don't have any Office2K installation media and service packs.
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Is it still horse-pulled or has it been converted to coal?
Brad
Must be coal. It runs pretty hot. Like it burns your legs hot =(
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I just went looking through my MSDN subscription.
I can get Office 95, and 2003, but 2000 is gone. Sorry. Normally they'll have all sorts of old OS and app downloads on there.
I also checked my archives here, and I'm kind of surprised I don't have any Office2K installation media and service packs.
Looked through my stuff at work and eureka!, found an old CD I made some years ago with the earlier service paks and a host of updates. =D
Did a little research, and while various patches and O2k SP3 are still available from MS, they've discontinued availability of earlier service paks at their website - and SP3 requires the earlier paks be installed. It seems MS would much rather have people spend $$$ installing their newest bloatware than reinstall an old program that is more than adequate for 99% of home users.
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Looked through my stuff at work and eureka!, found an old CD I made some years ago with the earlier service paks and a host of updates. =D
Did a little research, and while various patches and O2k SP3 are still available from MS, they've discontinued availability of earlier service paks at their website - and SP3 requires the earlier paks be installed. It seems MS would much rather have people spend $$$ installing their newest bloatware than reinstall an old program that is more than adequate for 99% of home users.
Didn't the dot gov do something similar with cars ? :mad:
I still use Office 2K on my own laptop.
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I've got a Win95 laptop with an internal dial up modem sitting on a shelf in the closet :P
Maybe I should have kept my 300 baud accoustic coupler/modem with the RS-232 cable.....
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I have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft. I have a bunch of certs and have made my living using Microsoft technologies for 16 years. Even so, every couple of years or more I say that I am dropping MS for Linux and LAMPS. Then I go to Linux and figure out how much the latest desktops are very poor clones of Microsoft desktops, installation packages a pain in the tail compared to clicking "setup.exe", and so on. As bad as MS is, it's better than most options - except a Mac and even then I am not certain.
I really hate Windows 8 but I agree with Darby. If you go MS, go with Windows 8. You'll get a free or cheap upgrade to W8.1 and, eventually, you have to get what's new anyway.
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I have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft. I have a bunch of certs and have made my living using Microsoft technologies for 16 years. Even so, every couple of years or more I say that I am dropping MS for Linux and LAMPS. Then I go to Linux and figure out how much the latest desktops are very poor clones of Microsoft desktops, installation packages a pain in the tail compared to clicking "setup.exe", and so on. As bad as MS is, it's better than most options - except a Mac and even then I am not certain.
I really hate Windows 8 but I agree with Darby. If you go MS, go with Windows 8. You'll get a free or cheap upgrade to W8.1 and, eventually, you have to get what's new anyway.
All of this.
I'm a mac user, and prefer them for my personal computers. Of course my work machines are windows boxes.
Lot easier to configure basic networking services on the windows side of the house as well, versus leeee-nucks
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Looked through my stuff at work and eureka!, found an old CD I made some years ago with the earlier service paks and a host of updates. =D
Did a little research, and while various patches and O2k SP3 are still available from MS, they've discontinued availability of earlier service paks at their website - and SP3 requires the earlier paks be installed. It seems MS would much rather have people spend $$$ installing their newest bloatware than reinstall an old program that is more than adequate for 99% of home users.
I've got the o2k service packs, if needed.
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All of this.
I'm a mac user, and prefer them for my personal computers. Of course my work machines are windows boxes.
Lot easier to configure basic networking services on the windows side of the house as well, versus leeee-nucks
My next laptop will be a mac. Everyone knows that a Mac is the best hardware on which to run Windows.
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I've got a Win95 laptop with an internal dial up modem sitting on a shelf in the closet :P
I've got two of them around. :neener:
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Maybe I should have kept my 300 baud accoustic coupler/modem with the RS-232 cable.....
Got one o' them, too, that I used on the road to download rawinsonde data from the NWS in my storm chasing days.
Fed it into one of my Win95 laptops with wx modeling software.
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Windows 95 was the best PC operating system ever made. I ran it on 4MB of RAM and 20MB hard drive. Of course I couldn't multitask until I got 8MB of RAM. Once I did that, it was totally awesome. HOw did we get from something that lean to an operating system that adds little more value but requires a bare minimum of 500 times as much hard drive space to install, and 500 times as much memory to run reasonably.
- All of your disk drive are belong to us.
- All of your RAM are belong to us.
- All of your CPU are belong to us.
- All of your Internet bandwidth are belong to us.
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Your laptop is too new. You should stick with the same strategy that works for your trucks, older is better.
Mtnbkr speak true.
How are you supposed to project the rugged Longmire image with something that newfangled?
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Mtnbkr speak true.
How are you supposed to project the rugged Longmire image with something that newfangled?
A bunch of little 4MB Win95 virtuals, squirming like maggots.
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Windows 95 was the best PC operating system ever made. I ran it on 4MB of RAM and 20MB hard drive. Of course I couldn't multitask until I got 8MB of RAM. Once I did that, it was totally awesome. HOw did we get from something that lean to an operating system that adds little more value but requires a bare minimum of 500 times as much hard drive space to install, and 500 times as much memory to run reasonably.
You weren't multitasking with any amount of RAM in Win95. Win95 was still task switching like Win3.1x. At that time, NT, OSX, and Linux were the only multitasking desktop OSes available. Mac maybe, I'm not sure if it was multitasking or task-switching before the BSD integration.
I was supporting a Win95/Win98 LAN with 200+ users and a half dozen NT4.0 servers back in the late 90s. Win95 had many shortfalls in networking, security, stability, etc. I migrated my power users onto NT4 Workstation so they could get work done.
No offense, but all of the Win9x flavors (including ME) were crap. Hardware is cheap, it bothers me not at all that Win7 requires 4gig of RAM and a 300gb+ hard drive to run. It's so much better than anything that came before, it is well worth the price.
Chris
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Yep.
Lol... Windows95 the best. Haha
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Hardware is cheap, it bothers me not at all that Win7 requires 4gig of RAM and a 300gb+ hard drive to run.
You're joking about the 300 gb, right? ???
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You're joking about the 300 gb, right? ???
I didn't have the spec right in front of me, but I know from experience that 4gb RAM and a 300gb HD are more than adequate for Win7 (my first build was 8gb RAM and a 500gb drive, my work laptop is closer to what I posted above). You can barely find <500gb drives these days (recently saw 2TB drives for $80) and RAM is cheap, so it's a moot point.
Chris
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I didn't have the spec right in front of me, but I know from experience that 4gb RAM and a 300gb HD are more than adequate for Win7 (my first build was 8gb RAM and a 500gb drive, my work laptop is closer to what I posted above). You can barely find <500gb drives these days (recently saw 2TB drives for $80) and RAM is cheap, so it's a moot point.
Chris
My latest Win 7 build has 16GB of Ram with a 240GB SSD. Southbridge chipset.
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I haven't had a need for more than 8gb so far, but my home machine doesn't get tasked hard. I need more storage than anything. My 2tb drive is 75% full and my 1tb drive is 80% full. I could compress them for more space, but I prefer not to. I still have my original 500gb drive, but I use it for my VMs.
Chris
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You weren't multitasking with any amount of RAM in Win95. Win95 was still task switching like Win3.1x. At that time, NT, OSX, and Linux were the only multitasking desktop OSes available. Mac maybe, I'm not sure if it was multitasking or task-switching before the BSD integration.
I was supporting a Win95/Win98 LAN with 200+ users and a half dozen NT4.0 servers back in the late 90s. Win95 had many shortfalls in networking, security, stability, etc. I migrated my power users onto NT4 Workstation so they could get work done.
No offense, but all of the Win9x flavors (including ME) were crap. Hardware is cheap, it bothers me not at all that Win7 requires 4gig of RAM and a 300gb+ hard drive to run. It's so much better than anything that came before, it is well worth the price.
Chris
I started out as a PC tech for a school district in 2000, and we had a 50/50 mix of PC's running Win9x and MacOS (pre-X).
Depends on your definition of "multitasking" but no matter what the PC's were better at it than the Macs. Even under Win9x. Maybe you don't have a simultaneous multiuser environment like a *nix, but at least with a Win9x machine you could share clock cycles on the CPU with more than one task. I could install software and minimize the installation app while running a different app, or I could print a large document such as a term paper and switch to my web browser while waiting for the 50 pages to finish printing.
Mac OS 8.x puts up a modal window (with no user interaction possible other than cancelling the print job) that blocks all user interaction with the rest of the OS when printing. Srsly. I guess it needed to monopolize 100% of the CPU to freaking print. ;/
All of them have come a long way since then, but I still think the *nixes are far more memory efficient and forgiving to aging hardware. I believe you can still compile a 2.6.x linux kernel against a 486 processor if you want. Try installing Win7 on that, or an original 75mhz Pentium chip.
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Try installing Win7 on that, or an original 75mhz Pentium chip.
Why would I want to? Considering the hardware that contained that 75mhz Pentium chip (my first new PC, BTW), it would be an exercise in frustration getting replacements for anything that failed.
I don't want to run old hardware. My desktop system is an appliance. I use it for email, web surfing, some games, some light office tasks, etc. In the era of $300 PCs, the ability to run my OS on a 5yo (or older!) computer is of little value to me.
Chris
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I didn't have the spec right in front of me, but I know from experience that 4gb RAM and a 300gb HD are more than adequate for Win7 (my first build was 8gb RAM and a 500gb drive, my work laptop is closer to what I posted above). You can barely find <500gb drives these days (recently saw 2TB drives for $80) and RAM is cheap, so it's a moot point.
Chris
Far from moot, really. There are scads of 40 and 80, and other sub-500 GB drives still in use. A lot of those are going to be, or have already been, used for post-XP Windows OSes. I have 4 PCs, myself, and none of them have a drive as large as 500 GB.
Besides, I think smaller drives are still readily available at retail, though I'd have to check on that.
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I haven't had a need for more than 8gb so far, but my home machine doesn't get tasked hard.
Chris
I have a data collector at work built on a FitPC running Win7 with 2gig RAM. It has two programs running 24/7 and actually handles them pretty well. I have more of an access lag on that computer from the remote VNC connection than I do from the small amount of RAM.
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Maybe, but why bother? If I can buy a 2tb drive for $100, why would I pay $50+ for a 500gb drive? Last time I saw a sub 500gb drive, it was more expensive than a 1tb drive that was on sale.
Not including my VMs, I have nearly 3tb of files, applications, and OS on my main home PC right now. My backup USB thumbdrive for work is 32gb by itself and is 3/4 full. A 40gb or 80gb is next to useless for me.
Chris
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I have a data collector at work built on a FitPC running Win7 with 2gig RAM. It has two programs running 24/7 and actually handles them pretty well. I have more of an access lag on that computer from the remote VNC connection than I do from the small amount of RAM.
I've heard Win7 manages memory quite well, but haven't run it on that little RAM.
Chris
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I've heard Win7 manages memory quite well, but haven't run it on that little RAM.
Chris
I wouldn't want to do it on a home or regular work machine, at least for me. But it does show that Win7 works fine with little RAM for many applications. I'm typing this on a netbook with 4gig RAM and shared video, and it handles regular web stuff, including watching all the WTF Japan videos posted here, just fine. My main machine has 12gig RAM, but most of that is for VMs. What little work related modeling stuff I run at home is more dependent on having a big, heat freaking generating GPU than on MB RAM.
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I've heard Win7 manages memory quite well, but haven't run it on that little RAM.
Three years ago, in anticipation of a somewhat extended trip of unknown duration for which I wanted to travel as light as possible, I went to Wal-Mart and bought an Acer Aspire One netbook. It came with the Atom processor, Windows 7 Starter Edition (which I have never seen even mentioned in any other context -- I don't think an end user can even buy the Starter Edition), and one (1) GB or RAM.
I know netbooks are intended to be used much the same as tablets, as portable platforms for light web surfing, checking e-mail, etc. Nonetheless, I installed the complete MS Office 2003 Professional suite on it, along with an older version of AutoCAD LT. It all ran just fine. I've never been much into multi-tasking so I'm sure I didn't tax it as heavily as some of you younger power user types would have, but I was favorably surprised that it would run those programs at all in 1 GB.
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Hawkmoon, I completely forgot about the Acer Aspire One, and later a very similar Dell netbook we owned for a while, both with 1gig of RAM. I think the Acer had a different flavor of Windows, but the Dell certainly had Win7 Starter.
I recall it ran things reasonably well for such a small amount of RAM. It was a bit slow, but that was as much the processor as the memory.
Chris
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I remember when I bought my first IBM 8088 clone, a Leading Edge Model D. It came with two 5.25" floppies. I paid something like $ 400 for a 20 MB hard drive on a card, and thought I was living large with a hard drive.
My previous computer, a Texas Instruments 99/4A, used a tape recorder with cassettes as the data storage.
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Grandpa MillCreek, tell us more tales of the olden days! :D
Chris
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Grandpa MillCreek, tell us more tales of the olden days! :D
Chris
"My" first computer required an entire room and cost several million dollars =D
The memory was a separate room full of tapes.
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I remember in high school dropping my stack of a few hundred punch cards on my way to load them into the punch card reader. It was then that I learned to number them all by hand, and this saved me a lot of time on a couple of subsequent occasions. We used to try and make each other drop our stacks for the lulz.
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I never worked with a mainframe or punch cards, but do remember desktops with cassette tapes for storage. The first PC I owned, a used Tandy, had a 20mb drive on a card and two low density 3.5" floppy drives. It ran DOS, but had decent sound and graphics.
I upgraded from that to a shiny new Quantex P75 with 8mb of RAM and a harddrive of some capacity I can't recall. That machine cost me $2000 in 1995 and was a good deal at the time. It wasn't top of the line though. Top of the line back then would have cost $2500+.
Chris
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Maybe, but why bother? If I can buy a 2tb drive for $100, why would I pay $50+ for a 500gb drive? Last time I saw a sub 500gb drive, it was more expensive than a 1tb drive that was on sale.
Not including my VMs, I have nearly 3tb of files, applications, and OS on my main home PC right now. My backup USB thumbdrive for work is 32gb by itself and is 3/4 full. A 40gb or 80gb is next to useless for me.
Chris
I'm not saying anyone should buy the smaller drives. I'm just saying they're still very much in play, because people already have them, and there's not a lot of money going around, these days. (That the smaller hard drives are available for sale is more of an academic point.)
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If money's so tight they can't buy a larger hard drive, then they probably aren't buying a new copy of Windows (hint, a full install CD for Windows costs more than a new hard drive). They're probably sticking to XP (or 95, I hear it's teh bomb).
Chris
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People get pretty bent out of shape when a new OS has requirements greater than the hardware they currently posses.
BRB, going to complain to nintendo about how their new Metroid game coming out isn't playable on my game cube.
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That's it. If we're playing "old guy" I'm in.
10th grade computer class in High School, punch cards and rolled paper teletype style terminals. I played a lot of "Hunt the Wumpus". By the time I had graduated, they moved to actual video terminals.
My first computer was a Timex.
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That's it. If we're playing "old guy" I'm in.
10th grade computer class in High School, punch cards and rolled paper teletype style terminals. I played a lot of "Hunt the Wumpus". By the time I had graduated, they moved to actual video terminals.
My first computer was a Timex.
And your first modem was a couple rocks you banged together? :rofl:
Brad
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And your first modem was a couple rocks you banged together? :rofl:
Brad
I'm not THAT old. It was a modified telegraph key.
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I never worked with a mainframe or punch cards, but do remember desktops with cassette tapes for storage. The first PC I owned, a used Tandy, had a 20mb drive on a card and two low density 3.5" floppy drives. It ran DOS, but had decent sound and graphics.
I upgraded from that to a shiny new Quantex P75 with 8mb of RAM and a harddrive of some capacity I can't recall. That machine cost me $2000 in 1995 and was a good deal at the time. It wasn't top of the line though. Top of the line back then would have cost $2500+.
Chris
My first computer
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Foldcomputers.net%2Fpics%2Fti-994a.jpg&hash=ea20d83801afb83edb42faa575706b37ad3594e0)
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^^^ The TI 99/4A! My first computer, too!
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I'm not THAT old. It was a modified telegraph key.
-.-- --- ..- / .- .-. . / ... --- / ..-. ..- .-.. .-.. / --- ..-. / ... .... .. - .-.-.- / .-.. --- .-.. .-.-.-
Brad
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My first computer
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Foldcomputers.net%2Fpics%2Fti-994a.jpg&hash=ea20d83801afb83edb42faa575706b37ad3594e0)
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.trs-80.com%2Fimages%2Fcomputer-model3x300.gif&hash=0469cb3759e1d82dc8e70e7dceb24986d54253e2)
I'm glad those days are past.
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IIRC, I was in the DP dept 1973/1974 and then I left that and went "native" for a few decades.
Didn't really mess about with computers again until 1991++ when I went to college.
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I've had a Commodore Vic 20, a TI 99, a Radio Shack TRS-80, and whatever Radio Shack's first IBM-PC clone was, with MS-DOS 2.10. Those were the days. The first computer I bought new was a CompuAdd AT clone, with 512K of RAM and a whopping 20 MB hard drive. When I bought it, I was sure I'd never live long enough to fill up a 20 MB hard drive.
Hah!
CompuAdd was based in Texas and was pretty much a direct competitor of Dell. I never quite understood how it was that Dell succeeded where CompuAdd managed to implode within a very few years.
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If money's so tight they can't buy a larger hard drive, then they probably aren't buying a new copy of Windows (hint, a full install CD for Windows costs more than a new hard drive). They're probably sticking to XP (or 95, I hear it's teh bomb).
Chris
I got my Windows for cheap. Some student deal. I'd still pay for the OS, and cheap out on the hard drive. I like Win 7 that much. Some of us don't need that large of a drive. I've been using the same 250 GB HHD as a media drive for the past two builds. I'm not even using half of it. If I bought a drive, I'd get a small SSD, as a system drive, just for better performance.
I don't know. Maybe there really aren't that many like me out there. Probably not enough for Microsoft to care about.
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Maybe there really aren't that many like me out there.
Good thing :P
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My latest Win 7 build has 16GB of Ram with a 240GB SSD. Southbridge chipset.
Somebody asked me in 1991 how much RAM they should put in their computer. I told them $200 worth. Someone asked me last week how much RAM they should put in their computer. I told them $200 worth. And I was asked dozens of times in between and the answer has always been the same.
Sure you can operate with less; I started with 4MB in my first W95 machine. Sure, you can run Vista on 2GB or W7 on 4GB but why would you?
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I put this machine together in 2011, I think. I bought 8 G for it, and I'm pretty sure it was a whole let less than $200. Maybe mid-double-digits?
A reasonable amount of RAM is going to depend a whole lot on the intended use, isn't it?
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I'm sure it does. But the point remains the same.
A quick check at Newegg shows 16GB from 122 to 150 - go with the 150. The next step, 32GB, would be twice that. Since there's not a reasonable memory at 200 I suppose you could round down or up. The point is that the right amount of memory remains about the same price.
You probably should not have taken my comment to mean that it was to the penny.
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Having survived the migration from Windows 7 to Windows 8 relatively intact, I'd have to echo going with the latter now.
Windows 8.1 is out this fall as a free upgrade, and it's really no big deal to make Windows 8 act like Windows 7. I particularly like how it handles virtualization.
As much as I liked Windows 7, the successor is actually growing on me. If you have a Windows 7 machine, I'd leave it for now.
If you're building or buying a new one, you should consider Windows 8.
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I'm sure it does. But the point remains the same.
A quick check at Newegg shows 16GB from 122 to 150 - go with the 150. The next step, 32GB, would be twice that. Since there's not a reasonable memory at 200 I suppose you could round down or up. The point is that the right amount of memory remains about the same price.
You probably should not have taken my comment to mean that it was to the penny.
Disagree, unless you're a damned-hard-using power user.
Most apps out there are still 32 bit apps. Yes, the OS is 64 bit. But each app will mostly have a memory limit of 2GB per instance.
Microsoft STRONGLY recommends that users stick to 32 bit office even in the 2013 product line unless they have a specific need for the 64 bit edition of Office. Even if the only version of Windows 8 out there is a 64 bit edition.
Not sure if the Adobe photo/video suite is up to 64 bit computing yet. That's probably one of the few areas that support 64 bit as an alternate edition. Visual Studio. Database engines. Entire Virtual Machines (OS within an OS). Things like that. That's major power user territory.
Your games? Pretty much all 32 bit. They gotta cater to Win XP, Win Vista, Win 7 and Win8. Too many 32 bit editions out there.
That means that even though your OS can use all that RAM... it's gotta be able to assign it to either I/O buffers (in the case of file/print/database services) or to actual applications. And 32-bit apps on 64 bit platforms still only use 2GB RAM max.
So, you can have 3 major sumbitch apps consuming 2GB RAM simultaneously on an 8GB system, and still have 2GB left over for the OS to retain stability.
I've yet to see the desktop user that merits more than 5-6GB. Most get by wonderfully with 4GB. Unskilled users are unimpaired with 2GB on a Win7 system and a lowly i3 processor.
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I put this machine together in 2011, I think. I bought 8 G for it, and I'm pretty sure it was a whole let less than $200. Maybe mid-double-digits?
A reasonable amount of RAM is going to depend a whole lot on the intended use, isn't it?
If I wasn't so into photography, I could be you.
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Sure you can operate with less; I started with 4MB in my first W95 machine. Sure, you can run Vista on 2GB or W7 on 4GB but why would you?
While I wouldn't *choose* 4gb for a fresh Win7 build, I've run multiple Win7 installs on 4gb. Three laptops (two for work) and a desktop. They all work fine. As long as you're just doing normal desktop-type work, there's no issue. Now, on my own desktop, I have 8gb, but I rarely get close to using it. I mainly went with 8 "just because" and because I do run VMs from time to time and sometimes set up virtual lab environments. The extra RAM is useful at those times. Otherwise, I never need more than 4.
Chris
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If I were to SWAG it, in the current personal computing (including most business applications) environment, I would say 50% of computer users can run fine on 4gig, and 80% will have more than they need with 8gig. There's probably 20% that need more RAM for specialized and scientific / engineering applications, modeling, VMs, etc.
I'd say a good portion of computers out there with 16 or more gigs of RAM are people who bought a Ferrari to drive to the grocery store.
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A reasonable amount of RAM is going to depend a whole lot on the intended use, isn't it?
ROFL. I hate to agree with Fistful on anything, but you guys are talking about spending almost as much for memory as I'm considering for most of a PC. System Monitor in Ubuntu 10.04 says I don't even use half the 2 gig I have now.
I'm looking at getting something like this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1241779) soon and re-purposing my current AMD64X2/2gig as a dedicated CNC mill controller, and I'm seriously questioning the need for that much CPU, I may stick with one of the 65W models.
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Ben/Bedlamite: I've got an AMD triple core phenom processor in my "big" machine at home, with 8GB RAM, along with a pair of Radeon 3900 series cards. The only thing I have to wait for is HDD access speeds on it. This box is now 5-6 years old, and I still cannot justify the funds to upgrade or replace it.
I never really even use it anymore, though. I do my day to day work on an Asus i5 system with 6GB RAM and a 256GB SSD drive (as well as a smallish datacenter loaded up with several VM servers and SQL hardiron boxes), and most of my personal computing on a different Asus i5 laptop with 4GB RAM and a 700GB conventional HDD.
I'm in the process of repurposing that "big" box as a dedicated machine for my guitar room. I'll probably remove 1 of the GPU's and do some judicious fan replacement to bring the noise level down. It'll run some recording software, Rocksmith, and give me access to other net resources inside my little hobby cave.
And that box is still overkill for that purpose. The only reason I'm going with it, is I want a larger screen than my 17" laptop provides.
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Latest computer build for the office:
32GB RAM 1600 ECC
4 core Xeon E5-1620 3.6GHz 10M
2GB AMD FirePro V5900
3 - 256GB SSD drives in a RAID 5 using a PERC H310 card
This configuration now lets our engineers move through AutoDesk Revite with ease.
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32 bit apps on 64 bit Windows 7/8 isn't really much of a problem, because of the WoW (Windows on Windows) interface.
I've not seen any Microsoft warnings to install 32 bit Office on 64 bit Windows. I'm running 64-bit Office 2013 on 64-bit Windows 8, no problems whatsoever.
The memory requirements for a given user do indeed vary on what the user intends to do with their machine.
I'm upgrading from 16Gb to 32Gb here, because Adobe Creative Suite 6 eats it up, as does 1080 video encoding.
On a side note, Adobe CS also makes good use of the graphics processing power in your video card(s), a nice boost.
I want to bump each of my CPU cores to 4Gb each from the 2Gb they have now so I can do all the above moar faster.
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32 bit apps on 64 bit Windows 7/8 isn't really much of a problem, because of the WoW (Windows on Windows) interface.
I've not seen any Microsoft warnings to install 32 bit Office on 64 bit Windows. I'm running 64-bit Office 2013 on 64-bit Windows 8, no problems whatsoever.
If you have apps that provide plug-ins to Microsoft Office, those plug-ins have to be written differently to interface with Office. This is a challenge my company faces since we author several Office plug-ins (both Outlook and Word) for our application.
From MS:
http://technet.microsoft.com/library/ee681792%28v=office.15%29
Summary: Explains the benefits and drawbacks of deploying 64-bit Office, and why we recommend the 32-bit version of Office 2013 for most users.
I'm upgrading from 16Gb to 32Gb here, because Adobe Creative Suite 6 eats it up, as does 1080 video encoding.
Do you happen to know if those apps are running in WoW as 32-bit, or as a true 64-bit app? I'm wondering if the benefits you are seeing video encoding is just IO buffering.
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My Adobe CS6 is running in true 64 bit mode for those particular apps written for that wide a bus.
When you install the suite uneder a 64 bit OS, and there's a 32 bit app in the suite, it'll install both versions automatically.
Case in point, I can select either 32 or 64 bit Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator from my program menu to run.
From what I can tell, Windows Media Encoder is running a full 64 bits wide when I produce videos.
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techsupportforum.com is where I go for geek help. The forum routinely fields questions regarding ram needs. Advice is consistent. Unless you are gaming, cad-ing or editing video 4 gig is sufficient. My desktop XP unit runs 4 gig (2.8 gig in reality) and never came close of using it all.
Follow on question. Does W7 or W8 allow full use of the first 4 gig. I assume the answer is yes for 64 bit but not so much for 32 bit.
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Waitone, you're correct. 32-bit windows can't see past 4Gb, and more often than not barely gets past 3.25-3.5 Gb because of reserved memory issues.
That's a limitation of the 32-bit architecture, but it's not exclusive.
This Dell Latitude D820 I'm using right now is running 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium (good up to 16Gb), but due to the stupid Intel 945 Express chipset it can only utilize 3.25Gb of the 4Gb I have installed. =(
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(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sheep101.info%2FImages%2FBreeds%2Fkivirram.jpg&hash=1af74d90a1e444965bb26c0299440e1f8cc70b97)
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(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sheep101.info%2FImages%2FBreeds%2Fkivirram.jpg&hash=1af74d90a1e444965bb26c0299440e1f8cc70b97)
Is that supposed to be a Baaaaaad joke?
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Waitone, you're correct. 32-bit windows can't see past 4Gb, and more often than not barely gets past 3.25-3.5 Gb because of reserved memory issues.
That's a limitation of the 32-bit architecture, but it's not exclusive.
This Dell Latitude D820 I'm using right now is running 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium (good up to 16Gb), but due to the stupid Intel 945 Express chipset it can only utilize 3.25Gb of the 4Gb I have installed. =(
Sort-of correct, but not quite.
Win 7 32-bit is actually in certain circumstances a 36-bit OS.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/gg487503.aspx
http://superuser.com/questions/52275/how-can-i-enable-pae-on-windows-7-32-bit-to-support-more-than-3-5-gb-of-ram
I've only ever configured 32-bit servers to use Phyiscal Address Extensions (/PAE switch) and not done it to desktops... but the switch does work on WinXP through Win7 32-bit OS environments.
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AZRH44, I knew about PAE.
It requires a kernel patch if you're running 32 bit Win 7 SP1.
I have a few IBM workstations around the house that are running Windows 7 Professional 32 bit.
I may sacrifice one machine to that kernel patch to see if it'll allow the full 4Gb to be utilized, vs. 3.25Gb.
And whether Microsoft Security Essentials will detect the patch as malware... =(
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lemme know if it works out.
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No bueno. I'm thinking it's the 1Gb video card that's sitting squarely in the 3-4Gb memory address area of this particular 32 bit Win 7 machine. =(