Episode 87 - Windows 7 RC1, USB Sound Card Picks, Extract Gold From Old Computer Parts!

[chuckles]

Add a DVD Drive to Your Netbook, Find Better Apps Fast, HD Cameras For the Mongol Rally, Windows 7 RC1: Unlmited Free Copies Good For a Year!

Watch and download here. (http://revision3.com/tekzilla/alternative/)

[drunken-bastard]

herb
 Pronunciation [urb or, especially Brit., hurb] Show IPA
–noun
1. a flowering plant whose stem above ground does not become woody.
2. such a plant when valued for its medicinal properties, flavor, scent, or the like.
3. Often, the herb.

Herb
Pronunciation [hurb]
–noun
a male given name, form of Herbert.

source: dictionary.com

[fishtoprecords]

Good show.

I think dust and vibration are going to kill any camera and any laptop that the guy uses in his trek to Mongolia. Hope its not a race, as then it would be hopeless.

Any rotating disk is going to be destroyed quickly if its a race. Hope its a rally, or he can afford some SSD drives.

Riot to listen to Bearonica talk about cars and racing. Clearly a city bear.

[computoman]

This episode was more relevant to me than usual. I use irfanview,but will try XnView. External sound cards seem to work better with podcasting software especially on linux. http://alternativeto.net/ is a great way to get people into open source software even if you are still running MSwindows. As for pc recycling, I would prefer to disect the equipment for individual parts such as motors and reuse them. Monitors have a ton of copper than can be reused for antennas, electromagnets, and etc. Old mother boards make great a base for security systems, servers, and even robots. We still use pentium twos for scientific workstations using linux.Linux makes old stuff new again. No need to chunk that stuff yet. I have been lucky enough to get so much free equpment because mswindows users think think they need to upgrade equipment at a drop of a hat and their old equipment is worthless. \Also there are adapters that will turn an ide into sata. They are real cheap, so there is no need to dump the old stuff quite yet.

Intel has already stopped production of at least one of it i7 core processors. caveat emptor.

Now I may get shot for what I am about to say, but here goes. I may tout linux, but I do try to give all operating systems a fair chance. I will use any operating system of you pay me enough. I tried to dl w7rc but you seem to need to have a mswindows box to do it. I will have to drag out the old xp box to get w7rc. W7 is allegedly vista reworked according to my sources. W7 was supposed to work on p3's without a problem. I guess M$ is allegedly changing their tune again. There have been already published quite a few exploits by hackers for W7rc. I may play with it on a stand alone machine only. it will not be a production machine in our environment. We have no use for operating systems the require virus, spyware, and other protections. We also have no use for phone home operating systems. Microsoft admitted in documents to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) that security issues could eventually the could lead to liabilities for them. We are also going to see how drm encumbered w7rc is. Rumor has it that w7 allegedly has a back doors for media Nazis and the federal government to easily get into your computer. By the way it has already been documented that the xp mode may not work on quite a few machines such as amd based processors.

I am also still miffed at MR. Ballmer (Ceo of Microsoft) for allegedly falsely accusing linux users of IP theft. Which is ironic since they were recently adjudicated themselves of doing that exact thing. http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/04/microsoft-to-fight-388-million-fine-for-its-antipiracy-tech.ars In addtion to that Microsoft is laying off thousands of hard working Americans, they should be boycotted.

[chambler]

Although Big Mike was absolutely right about the Watt vs BTU issue, did anyone else think there might have been something wrong in his example? As far as I'm aware the wattage rating on PC power supplies is related to the maximum output and not their input. A 1000W power supply which runs at 80% efficiency at maximum capacity would therefore draw 1250W to produce the 1000W output, wasting 250W instead of 200W.

[ajzzz]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IzDbNFDdP4

Eddie makes a powerful argument for pronouncing the 'h' in 'herb'.

[kzap]

It is herbs! Nice to know they read the forums though.
My in the US it's erbs. I have alway said herbs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IzDbNFDdP4

Eddie makes a powerful argument for pronouncing the 'h' in 'herb'.

Very good, when was this because 'he' mentions the Deuchmark (probably spelled wrong) not Euro.

[dennismcck]

Do you always throw toast into the toaster? I usually throw bread into the toaster and then take the toast out...

[kzap]

Do you always throw toast into the toaster? I usually throw bread into the toaster and then take the toast out...
It depends, how toasted do you like your toast, when we had a toaster I normally had to put it in twice or it wouldn't be cooked enough for me.
We had one of those toasters with a scale of 1 - 9 where 1 barely cooked your toast and anything above 2 left you with a black chard mess, we never even tried any setting above 3.
Now we just use a grill, it's soo much easier.

[tokenuser]

Very good, when was this because 'he' mentions the Deuchmark (probably spelled wrong) not Euro.
HE made Dressed to Kill in 1999 ... which means the show predates the Euro as a physical currency people would be familiar with by 3 years (despite it being used as a defacto accounting/exchange rate currency in Europe since beginning of 1999).
HE is Eddie Izzard ... who in his words (I think it might even have been this show) said he was a lesbian trapped in a man's body (ie, he is not homosexual, he just happens to like womens clothes).

FWIW - I go to the Herb area at the supermarket, and buy baSil. It goes well with tomato. So does corriander - but I haven't been able to find that in the US, so I use cilantro instead.

[kzap]

HE made Dressed to Kill in 1999 ... which means the show predates the Euro as a physical currency people would be familiar with by 3 years (despite it being used as a defacto accounting/exchange rate currency in Europe since beginning of 1999).
HE is Eddie Izzard ... who in his words (I think it might even have been this show) said he was a lesbian trapped in a man's body (ie, he is not homosexual, he just happens to like womens clothes).

FWIW - I go to the Herb area at the supermarket, and buy baSil. It goes well with tomato. So does corriander - but I haven't been able to find that in the US, so I use cilantro instead.
Thanks I think I had heard of him but never seen anything of his before, very funny.
I just wikipeda'd him and I have seen a few films with him in before:
The Avengers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avengers_%28film%29) (1998) as Bailey
Velvet Goldmine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Goldmine) (1998) as Jerry Devine
Mystery Men (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Men) (1999) as Tony P.
Shadow of the Vampire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Vampire) (2000) as Gustav von Wangenheim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_von_Wangenheim)
Circus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus) (2000) as Troy
The Cat's Meow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat%27s_Meow) (2001) as Charlie Chaplin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin)
All the Queen's Men (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Queen%27s_Men) (2001)
Revengers Tragedy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revengers_Tragedy) (2002) as Lussurioso
Ocean's Twelve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean%27s_Twelve) (2004) as Roman Nagel
My Super Ex-Girlfriend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Super_Ex-Girlfriend) (2006) as Professor Bedlam
Ocean's Thirteen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean%27s_Thirteen) (2007) as Roman Nagel
Across the Universe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Across_the_Universe_%28film%29) (2007) as Mr. Kite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Kite)
Valkyrie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valkyrie_%28film%29) (2008) as General Erich Fellgiebel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Fellgiebel)

[smeerkaas]

Great Episode. Although 2 things I want to mention:

1: please stop people from running up and down the halls when you are taping. If at all possible. It is really audible.

2: I weep when hearing this ongoing debate about computers and heat. Every single watt a PC takes from the grid is turned into heat. Every single watt! 100%! That is because all forms of energy that are generated within, or by the PC are eventually turned into heat.

Heat is heat. --> PSU, CPU, Memory, Chipset, Graphics., etc
Motion turns into heat trough friction. --> HDDs, fans, etc.
Light from the monitor gets absorbed by everything in the room. Heating it ever so slightly. --> Monitor, LEDs, etc.
Soundwaves from the speakers dissipate their energy into everything in the room. Also heating it marginally. --> Speakers, etc.

Think about this please. If it did not do this, all light, sound, and motion generated would never die out, even when the PC was turned off. And that is clearly not the case. Kinetic energy, rotational momentum, sound pressure waves, radiation, it all becomes heat when it interacts with the room the PC sits in.

Please wrap your heads around this concept and stop repeating inaccuracies on the show. Thanks ever so much.

[skiplives]

2: I weep when hearing this ongoing debate about computers and heat. Every single watt a PC takes from the grid is turned into heat. Every single watt! 100%! That is because all forms of energy that are generated within, or by the PC are eventually turned into heat.
[snip lots of rantage]

Yes and in the long run we're all dead. It all depends on what you look at and for how long. When all you're talking about is PSU heat, you have to narrow your focus.

I've also seen other people get screwed up with PSUs because they fail to realize that it is a switching power suply and only delivers the power required. So a 1000W and a 200W PSU both deliver the same power at 140W. The amount of heat (at the PSU only) depends on the efficiency of each PSU to deliver the required wattage.

On a completely unrelated note, the guy looking for the external sound card and the Blue mic made me wonder if any of those audio interfaces are any good at live chat situations. I know its overkill, but some of us actually have nice condenser mics and headphones that really need more of an amp than the twenty cent op-amp in my X-Fi. The E-Mu and many of those other interfaces include the phantom power and ADCs necessary to take something like an AKG 414 and plug it in to yell at my friends in a multiplayer game. Has anyone tried it?

[gsbrickner]

Blog post: Testing Windows 7 RC 1 on a Macbook (http://gsbrickner.livejournal.com/29272.html)

The digest version: It works!

Now, I'm not planning to switch back to Windows, but I support several people who use various flavors of Windows and they may want to move to Windows 7 when it goes RTM.

[smeerkaas]

Yes and in the long run we're all dead. It all depends on what you look at and for how long. When all you're talking about is PSU heat, you have to narrow your focus.

You do realize that this conversion of all forms of energy from a PC to heat, is near instant, right? Imagine a piece of fireworks. A bang, a flash. Then nothing. All the energy that a fraction of a second ago was light and sound/shockwave has been dissipated to the environment as heat. That's just how it works. Energy is never used up, just converted to another form. And that form is usually heat.

The concept was to heat a room. It really doesn't matter if 80% of the energy 'consumed' by the PSU is usable energy, and the remaining 20% is heat. That 80% is also being converted to heat by the PC, one way or another. So effectively 100% of the energy taken from the grid becomes heat. When the aim is to heat a space, all the energy is usable. Even that which takes the long way round by first becoming light, sound, movement, etc.

I'm not trying to rant. I'm trying to explain a very simple principle.
I'ts just that I'm baffled to find so many people seemingly not capable of grasping these fundamentals :)

[kzap]

You do realize that this conversion of all forms of energy from a PC to heat, is near instant, right? Imagine a piece of fireworks. A bang, a flash. Then nothing. All the energy that a fraction of a second ago was light and sound/shockwave has been dissipated to the environment as heat. That's just how it works. Energy is never used up, just converted to another form. And that form is usually heat.

The concept was to heat a room. It really doesn't matter if 80% of the energy 'consumed' by the PSU is usable energy, and the remaining 20% is heat. That 80% is also being converted to heat by the PC, one way or another. So effectively 100% of the energy taken from the grid becomes heat. When the aim is to heat a space, all the energy is usable. Even that which takes the long way round by first becoming light, sound, movement, etc.

I'm not trying to rant. I'm trying to explain a very simple principle.
I'ts just that I'm baffled to find so many people seemingly not capable of grasping these fundamentals :)
You are sure because I'm sure a computer uses more energy than a toaster and 99.9% of the energy in a toaster is turned to heat (the rest being light) and it is much hotter than a computer.
I'm dropping A level physics at the end of this year, by the way :)
And I know it's hard not to rant we you are trying to explain something,

[computoman]

Laptops seem to generate more heat than desktops.

http://www.funatiq.com/funny-and-ingenious/funny-usb-electric-stove/
http://www.everythingusb.com/usb_bbq_kit.html
http://www.genmay.com/showthread.php?t=610661&page=5
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&oi=video_result&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.metacafe.com%2Fwatch%2F588327 %2Ffry_an_egg_on_a_cpu%2F&ei=VY4FSpy_H6HqswPxpbnuAQ&rct=j&q=+cpu+fry+egg&usg=AFQjCNEdeCMIHHX7j8P02T699oy-asAuFA
http://g4tv.com/screensavers/features/47934/Fry-an-Egg-on-Your-CPU.html
http://www.phys.ncku.edu.tw/~htsu/humor/fry_egg.html
http://www.rabidhardware.net/index.php?id=4

[artsmart]

All of the energy that flows through a PC power cord ends up as heat, and usually very quickly. I give more details at http://revision3.com/forum/showthread.php?p=518858 .

[artsmart]

You are sure because I'm sure a computer uses more energy than a toaster and 99.9% of the energy in a toaster is turned to heat (the rest being light) and it is much hotter than a computer.

Exactly 100% of the energy going into a toaster ends up as heat, not 99.9%. Even the light that you see from the toaster's heating elements ends up as heat. (See my previous post at http://revision3.com/forum/showthread.php?p=518858 .)

The reason the toaster gets much hotter than your PC is because it's drawing a lot more wattage. But if you had enough PCs in a room to add up to the same number of watts as the one toaster, they would add exactly as much heat to the room as the toaster would.

[milnoc]

About USB sound cards. What Steve from GB might really need is a USB audio interface. I use the $30 Behringer U-Control UCA202 which includes stereo RCA input and output jacks. I use it to record the narrations for my videos with the help of a Behringer Xenyx 502 mini mixer, a Shure Sm58 microphone, and an Asus Eee PC 900HA netbook. No drivers are required; just plug it in and go!

My only annoyance with the device is that you can't directly monitor what you're recording on the computer (or I simply haven't found the switch that activates it). But if Steve does all of his work from his audio gear and only uses the computer to record the final result, then he can plug his headphones in the mixer.

[taomyn]

Great show, wanted to say that there's no need to find/build/buy an external optical drive to install a new OS onto your netbook. Both Windows 7 and most Linux distros allow you to create a bootable USB version of the install media.

For Windows 7 you just need the ISO or DVD and on another computer run a few commands then copy the ISO/DVD contents. One of many places showing how to do this is here (http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7vista-from-usb-drive-detailed-100-working-guide/)

For Ubuntu and others I believe you can do it by booting into the LiveCD.

[filip007]

Sure lets all download W7 7100 and install on Vista laptops yes do that and when times comes just buy Windows 7 thats for sure, RC you can use it until March 3 2010...that's what M$ is telling you.

On problem with this is laptop have licence on HDD and if erese that you can't restore recovery CDs do not restore licence !!!

I have run Ubuntu Remix from CD and the stupid thing erase my drive and install over some black screen by it self in minutes.

[kzap]

Sure lets all download W7 7100 and install on Vista laptops yes do that and when times comes just buy Windows 7 thats for sure, RC you can use it until March 3 2010...that's what M$ is telling you.

On problem with this is laptop have licence on HDD and if erese that you can't restore recovery CDs do not restore licence !!!

I have run Ubuntu Remix from CD and the stupid thing erase my drive and install over some black screen by it self in minutes.
YAY! someone else uses the M$ acronym, with Ubuntu did you tell it not to do a full install else of course it will erase all your files.
I have so many friends who I have to remind to have duel partitions for W7RC (one for the OS one for files) some of them didn't even know it would't last forever and it would lock you out of all your files when the full version was reliesed and you would have to pay M$ to buy the full version just to access them.

[davmoo]

I tried to dl w7rc but you seem to need to have a mswindows box to do it.

You were either experiencing a fluke, or you were doing something wrong. I routinely download from Microsoft's servers, including the win7 releases, using a RHEL5 box (because the Redhat box has a hugeass net pipe, that's why...I think it took me 8 minutes to download the RC DVD) and Firefox.

some of them didn't even know it would't last forever and it would lock you out of all your files when the full version was reliesed and you would have to pay M$ to buy the full version just to access them.

Anyone who does not realize and understand that Microsoft betas and release candidates do not last forever have no business running them in the first place. Even Microsoft themselves excessively warns everyone that those releases are not intended for production systems, nor are they intended for people who do not understand the issues involved in running pre-release software. If your friends insist on installing them without understanding what they are doing, that is simply not Microsoft's fault. They'll get what they deserve for not doing their research first.

[kzap]

Anyone who does not realize and understand that Microsoft betas and release candidates do not last forever have no business running them in the first place. Even Microsoft themselves excessively warns everyone that those releases are not intended for production systems, nor are they intended for people who do not understand the issues involved in running pre-release software. If your friends insist on installing them without understanding what they are doing, that is simply not Microsoft's fault. They'll get what they deserve for not doing their research first.
I know but if someone sees they can get the latest not even released version of Windows free, they will download it without even look at the T&Cs and as I'm their friend and know I can't convince them not to install the system and at-least convince them to have the safety net of duel petitions.
As for not installing it on production machines I never would but it appears the welebrities arn't setting a good example; Alex Albrecht installed it on his main laptop, Veronica Belmont installed it on her only netbook and didn't Patrick Norton say he was installing it on his work PC?
I know these people all know what they are doing but my friends also know alot about computer they are just a little dim sometimes.

[filip007]

Vista is just fine...a lot of people that use the P version it can make stuff a bit slow and funky to use.

Now that my licence is broken i can install W7...but it will support Powermizer for my Geforce 9600mGT...with last 185.85 drivers it disable my Graphics power mode under Acer Power managment, i dont wont to burn out GPU or battery?

[davmoo]

Now that my licence is broken

(I also read your earlier post, and this could be a reply to it as well.)

How is your license "broken"? At best, you can reinstall with the recovery disks that either came with your laptop or you made according to the manufacturers instructions, depending on the brand,and not have to enter a thing. At worst, you need to use those recovery disks and enter the Windows key that is on the sticker on the underside of your laptop. If your laptop does not have a license sticker and it is less than 10 years old, then someone ripped you off when they sold it to you.

Putting another operating system on your laptop does not remove your right to reinstall the version of Windows that came with your laptop, and even Microsoft would tell you that. But if there is no license sticker on your laptop, that's not Microsoft's fault, and you need to raise bloody hell with who ever sold you the laptop.

Alex Albrecht installed it on his main laptop, Veronica Belmont installed it on her only netbook and didn't Patrick Norton say he was installing it on his work PC?

These people all have more than one computer. They have alternate machines they can go to if there is a problem.

And I have Windows 7 on my main laptop. But I also have multiple computers, including another laptop, to fall back on if there is a problem.

[kzap]

And I have Windows 7 on my main laptop. But I also have multiple computers, including another laptop, to fall back on if there is a problem.
It would still be a good idea to have all the files on your W7 PC on a separate partition, it is only RC so not under any kind of warranty and if you forget to back up your files before the expiry date then you will lose them.
Just because you have enough PC doesn't mean you can afford to lose all the files on one of them.
Unless you have all your files duplicated on both PCs.

[taomyn]

It would still be a good idea to have all the files on your W7 PC on a separate partition, it is only RC so not under any kind of warranty and if you forget to back up your files before the expiry date then you will lose them.
Just because you have enough PC doesn't mean you can afford to lose all the files on one of them.
Unless you have all your files duplicated on both PCs.

You won't lose them, Microsoft won't deliberately wipe the HDD the moment it expires - the OS may eventually stop working, but the data will be intact and available. Simply connect the drive to another PC.

Most of this bickering is pretty pointless - unless you're "tech savvy" you shouldn't be running Win7-RC, and if you're not backing up then you're not "tech savvy" - QED

[kzap]

You won't lose them, Microsoft won't deliberately wipe the HDD the moment it expires - the OS may eventually stop working, but the data will be intact and available. Simply connect the drive to another PC.

Most of this bickering is pretty pointless - unless you're "tech savvy" you shouldn't be running Win7-RC, and if you're not backing up then you're not "tech savvy" - QED
I don't back up and I'm VERY tech savy, I just can't afford to back up, I need to use all the space I have, I only back up super, super, super important things. I have used over 750GB of space and can't afford that much again just as a back up.
I just make sure I'm super careful.

[filip007]

Yes i have that key sticker but recovery CDs are made from Recovery software preloaded i did that...i get black screen if i install from recovery. (recovery its just file copy)

I will contact Acer if they can help me my licence back...

i have install recovery over Dell oem Vista to get system working but this is not it...Boot sector is the licence

[davmoo]

Unless you have all your files duplicated on both PCs.

Anything I care about is backed up on multiple systems and in multiple locations. Plus my main laptop running Windows 7 is actually a triple-boot system with Win7, Vista, and Mandriva 2009.1, all in their own partitions. There is a 4th partition that is for my data, and is accessible from all three.

And for the person who says its too expensive to back up his data, I'm sorry but I just can't accept that one. When 1.5TB drives can be had for $125 with careful shopping, and 80GB drives are a peanut part, I find that excuse hard to accept. I look at it from the opposite direction...how expensive would it be for me to lose all my data. And for me, the answer is far more expensive than a couple or three 1.5TB drives.

[kzap]

Anything I care about is backed up on multiple systems and in multiple locations. Plus my main laptop running Windows 7 is actually a triple-boot system with Win7, Vista, and Mandriva 2009.1, all in their own partitions. There is a 4th partition that is for my data, and is accessible from all three.

And for the person who says its too expensive to back up his data, I'm sorry but I just can't accept that one. When 1.5TB drives can be had for $125 with careful shopping, and 80GB drives are a peanut part, I find that excuse hard to accept
WHY WOULD I NOW WANT TO BACK UP!!!!
I want to but I just can't afford it, a 1TB drive would cost me £70 + shipping (say over $150) and I don't have that money to spare right now and when I do I will need that space for original files not back ups.

[taomyn]

And for the person who says its too expensive to back up his data, I'm sorry but I just can't accept that one. When 1.5TB drives can be had for $125 with careful shopping, and 80GB drives are a peanut part, I find that excuse hard to accept. I look at it from the opposite direction...how expensive would it be for me to lose all my data. And for me, the answer is far more expensive than a couple or three 1.5TB drives.

I totally agree - plenty of bargains out there to use as storage.

[kzap]

I totally agree - plenty of bargains out there to use as storage.
Like I said I need all the space I can get for orginal files, I'm not rich enough to have all my files stored twice that would mean 1TB of files would cost me over £100 ($250) that's the totally amount I spent building my sisters computer, I'm not poor I just need all the space I can get for original files. I know the importance of backing up and I do so with all my work files but I can't with my home stuff.
Anyway if I lost a movie I had purchased a digital copy of I would just download a torrent of it, I've paid for the film so it's not stealing.

[jdr5]

Exactly 100% of the energy going into a toaster ends up as heat, not 99.9%. Even the light that you see from the toaster's heating elements ends up as heat. ...

You are not including some forms of energy in your balance. Not _exactly_ 100% ends up as heat.

When you make toast you will vaporize some of the water content of the bread. Some of the input energy will be consumed by this phase change and give you more humidity in the room, and the smell of bread toasting as some of the other volatile components are vaporized. Also you are chemically modifying the toast. The tasty toasted surface is the carbonization of some of the organic matter. That chemical change consumes some of the energy. Oh, and a toaster sure does make crumbs. This mechanical change of the bread consumes some energy. And one last flaw in your energy balance, is about the light. Maybe you don't have any, but I've got windows. Unless you have blackout window shades, some of the light will escape. You've seen the pictures of earth from space at night? A little of that light is your glowing toaster. On a clear night, the little glowing toaster light will travel out into space for a journey into eternity.

For the computer energy balance, don't forget that you are creating persistent information. Surely that requires energy? When you write to the disk drive, some electric energy is converted to magnetic fields stored on the disk surface ( the first time you write, subsequent writes just change the field ). When you write to the flash chips on your MP3 player, the electric energy is being converted to charge stored on the chips. When you burn a CD, the energy is being converted to a phase change or chemical change in the disc material.

And what about this? Some of the light that leaves the computer monitor enters your eye. If your brain is paying attention, that chain of neurochemical signals results in a permanent chemical change, and a little P. Yep, when you read a Wiki page, the photons leaving the monitor are programming yar brain. When you play a game, they're probably just heating it :)

You need to be careful with energy balances. These sorts of omissions are why people constantly claim to invent perpetual motion machines.

[ArmpitOfDeath]

I stuck RC1 onto my least-powered system, a Sony UX390N. On something this underpowered I thought I had the best chance of evaluating the improvements. I picked up great W7 tips before on the Micro PC Forums, including a driver pack that worked without a hitch. Installation was very straightforward.

Boot time is significantly reduced - but I don't reboot often as Vista is stable (unless you own something fundamentally incompatible with Windows, such as a Mac running Boot Camp or some really crappy home build) in sleep / hibernate.

The UX still launches Excel and Word 2007 faster than my 1.8 SSD Crudbook Air running Excel and Word 2008 for Mac used to - this on the SSD'd UX with a Core Solo 1.33 and 1Gb of RAM - but not any faster than it did.

The Start menu is snappier. Nice. And they've tidied up many things in Vista that were out of place. The memory footprint is now slightly less. Also good - with the exception that my UX's are the only machines I have which could remotely benefit from this.


But in general I'm still not particularly feeling blown away by anything. And I have to say the speed increase on this underpowered system (which is nevertheless probably faster than an N270-based machine) is not eye-opening. I happen to like Vista - it's as solid as Leopard on comparable, supported hardware and more versatile - and it doesn't feel like a new OS as many have said. It just feels like Vista 2.0, as it actually is. Most of the even visible improvements strike me as incremental improvements to the current release of Vista, but I'm not seeing extremely significant changes in other areas.

The conclusion this leads me to in terms of people's perceptions is that most people didn't actually use Vista on a reasonably current system and in the intervening two years have upgraded to something else which is actually capable of running Vista - or didn't use Vista altogether.

My feeling is even more that the negative hype started ~2 years ago by many prominent members of the tech press - who have that combination of below-average reasoning capability, above-average self-presentation, sky-high ego and therefore a susceptibility to skillful marketing so as to gravitate to Apple - depressed Vista's perceived utility to the public who bought into the opinions of these guys, so that when faced with a new release nominally untainted by the Vista 'debacle', they actually enter reality - that it's a decent OS. But because of that initially excessively negative opinion of the predecessor, the superiority of the current release is magnified beyond reason.

I felt that Vista had a ways to go in terms of the radical driver changes back in early '07, so while dabbling with the OS during the year I decided to hold off for my major systems until compatibility was assured, as I did for Win 2000 > XP. I fully transitioned my systems in early 08 when Vista support was fully available for everything I did, and I haven't regretted the decision at all.

As a base OS, Vista has been as good to me as Leopard has also been after it's (Leopard that is) much less reported, and sometimes quite serious teething hiccups - and as an application platform, Vista has been superior to me.

The more I use W7, the more I don't feel I need to upgrade straight away as everyone is saying. It's an improvement for sure and a welcome one, but I think I might just stick to my usual schedule - i.e. have the new OS come with new machines, and hold off mass upgrade of my longer-lived systems for a year or more. The reasons for upgrading on current hardware running Vista doesn't actually strike me as definitively compelling, unless I definitely need one of the new-for-W7 features.

[davmoo]

The reasons for upgrading on current hardware running Vista doesn't actually strike me as definitively compelling, unless I definitely need one of the new-for-W7 features.

That's pretty much what I tell friends and clients when they ask if I think they should upgrade. If there's not something specifically in Win7 that they need, there is no need to upgrade. My feeling is that Windows 7 is basically Vista with a big service pack and a mess of tweaks.

I would also agree with your comments about press leading up to the release of Vista. I've run Vista since its early beta releases and have never had a problem. And I ran it on a real machine, not granpappy's Packard Bell 486. I usually only reboot about once a month, and even then its mainly because I went on and installed updates that require a reboot. Most people that were running down Vista were simply parroting others..."My sister's boyfriend's mother's doctor's lawyer's daughter's best friend had problems running Vista on her Pentium II, it sucks!" And since it was on the internet, it had to be true.

[taomyn]

That's pretty much what I tell friends and clients when they ask if I think they should upgrade. If there's not something specifically in Win7 that they need, there is no need to upgrade. My feeling is that Windows 7 is basically Vista with a big service pack and a mess of tweaks.

I would also agree with your comments about press leading up to the release of Vista. I've run Vista since its early beta releases and have never had a problem. And I ran it on a real machine, not granpappy's Packard Bell 486. I usually only reboot about once a month, and even then its mainly because I went on and installed updates that require a reboot. Most people that were running down Vista were simply parroting others..."My sister's boyfriend's mother's doctor's lawyer's daughter's best friend had problems running Vista on her Pentium II, it sucks!" And since it was on the internet, it had to be true.

Sorry, can't personally agree with this. I have an Intel quad-core duo system as my HTPC now triple booting between Vista x32/x64 (mainly used x64) and Win7 x64, and the difference is startling. Reboots are not an issue as they are fast, almost too fast I think it didn't do it - it even upgraded the Intel graphics driver without a restart. Applications load up more snappily and the hard drive is far quieter than under Vista (something you really notice with an HTPC). Network access is finally back up to XP speeds (I never believed MS fixed the slow copy issue properly, maybe they will with SP2). Didn't need to find any drivers during installation and everything works as it should (running Boxee, VLC and Miro for the main part, connected via HDMI at 1080p and 7.1 sound).

I've also upgraded my old work horse a 4 year-old Dell Inspiron 9200, which also had Vista, and it's never run so fast. My new Samsung N120 netbook is great with Win7.

I'm telling everyone I know that if they are looking for a new system, to wait until Win7 is released (I am doing so when replacing my Dell, though I might wait for i7 to be available), and if not and they can afford it, to get an upgrade (I also think MS should heavily discount Vista to Win7 upgrades for all the pain they caused).

Rather like the campaign to purge IE-6 from the web, there should be another to do likewise for Vista ;)

[ArmpitOfDeath]

That's interesting to know, especially regarding the HDD issue. The HDD access - looking at the lights on the UX - seem to be more efficient, i.e. no more meandering accesses. However CPU utilisation seems to be higher. In terms of battery life, I'm wondering how that pans out, and should know when I do the runtime testing.

I'll stick W7 on the RAID SSD'd HTPC and an HDD'd laptop to see what the improvements are as well. With either desktop or (especially) laptop, boot time isn't an issue for the abovementioned reason. App startup is, but the time to the app actually becoming available as opposed to when it's frame springs up on the screen seems to be no different.

[ArmpitOfDeath]

That's interesting to know, especially regarding the HDD issue. The HDD access - looking at the lights on the UX - seem to be more efficient, i.e. no more meandering accesses. However CPU utilisation seems to be higher. In terms of battery life, I'm wondering how that pans out, and should know when I do the runtime testing.

I'll stick W7 on the RAID SSD'd HTPC and an HDD'd laptop and see what the improvements are as well. With either desktop or (especially) laptop, boot time isn't an issue. App startup is, but the time to the app actually becoming available as opposed to when it's frame springs up on the screen seems to be no different.

In general though, with the test system - which is prehistoric by my usual ~9-month-laptop-replacement schedule, but no-one else has released a truly comparable machine to the UX that I want to upgrade to yet - I am not feeling the 'turbo boost' that many such as Taomyn have remarked in comparison to Vista SP1.

Maybe the short boot time - which as I've said before is not really an issue for people who (hybrid in case of desktop) sleep their machines instead of switching off - is having an effect in their opinions.

[boywithaxe]

Yep, that's right, even though the h should not be silent, as it's an aspirated vowel. Nevertheless, it's acceptable in the US variation of English to omit it, while it's considered pretentious to do so in the Irish or British variations.

[mcdaddy]

As someone who has had to wrestle with Vista for quite sometime, I find one of the best upgrade features to be the new handling of readyboost. I currently have a laptop with 3 gig of RAM, and 2 gig of Turbo memory. Thanks to Intel's new driver, my turbo memory now supports readydrive and readyboost together.

In addition, with Windows7 support for additional readyboost devices, and larger memory footprints, allows my machine to use my high speed 8 gig USB drive as well. I'm seeing great performance times across the board with this setup. Faster than even the default Windows7 config, which is pretty snappy to begin with.

While the new eye candy, and smaller features, are nice. It's great to see Microsoft finally support the technology they initiated. It's also great to finally utilize some of these USB drives lying around my desk.

gmac.

[computoman]

They say you will eventually have to pay for W7 in one way or another.. If at the end of this year Microsoft says to keep using it, you will have to pay $500, Would you or would you not still be happy?

[davmoo]

They say you will eventually have to pay for W7 in one way or another.

That's true. Only an idiot would expect Microsoft to give away a version of its operating system for free that will run forever.

[computoman]

Rumor has it that m$ is allegedly borrowing money in the billions to purchase something. That debt will have to be serviced in some way. I wonder how?

[kzap]

They say you will eventually have to pay for W7 in one way or another.. If at the end of this year Microsoft says to keep using it, you will have to pay $500, Would you or would you not still be happy?We all know they are not giving the beta away to be nice or because they want to get anything out of it, it's one big marketing ploy.
Like a big free trail.
And of course they will over charge to cover their costs, M$ operating systems are expensive, most people don't know as they get them 'free' (and by that I mean included in the price) on 97.5% of computers.

That's true. Only an idiot would expect Microsoft to give away a version of its operating system for free that will run forever.That doesn't mean there aren't other (better operating systems) given away completely 100% free.

[computoman]

I doubt this will happen, but just a word of caution.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/11/159207

[darknessgp]

...
That doesn't mean there aren't other (better operating systems) given away completely 100% free.

True, but no other company is giving away their OS for free, so why would anyone think that MS would?

[trunolimit]

Rumor has it that m$ is allegedly borrowing money in the billions to purchase something. That debt will have to be serviced in some way. I wonder how?

Orally :p

[computoman]

True, but no other company is giving away their OS for free, so why would anyone think that MS would?


Who do you think Canonical is?

[ha1f]

Who do you think Canonical is?

hahahahahahahahahahaha


not the same thing. at all.

[computoman]

An os is an os is an os. Just because you do not have to pay for it does not mean it is not real. After I left my last job as a windows admin, it took me a while to get off the microsoft crutch, Not long after that we completely dumped both Microsoft and Apple server/desktop operating systems for linux and bsd. Best thing we ever did. A Microsoft employee allegedly once said that linux must not be good because it is free. Following that logic, I guess MSW7 nagware is no good then either. Actually you can pay for Ubuntu as well as any linux distro to get priority support. Major linux companies do that and are doing quite well by it (excepting Microsoft Novell Suse). At least they did not have a major drop in revenues like Microsoft did.

[ha1f]

...

It has nothing to do with what an os is or does or who said what about anything. The business models are completely different.

[davmoo]

I guess MSW7 nagware is no good then either.

The RC is not the final product, Microsoft has never stated it was, they have clearly stated *up front* that it is time limited. Thus calling it "nagware" makes you sound like a Linux or Apple fanboi.

And you may think its silly that anyone would use the theory that "if its free, it must not be any good". But that theory is *very* prevalent in the business world. That's why companies like Red Hat are successful.

[trunolimit]

I would love to use linux but the support is just not there. I cant load it up and expect all my devices and software to work properly. and i don't care what you say Linux is not user friendly at all. it took me forever to learn how to install a program on fedora. I didn't even know what a Su: command was and for me to have to know that just to install something is what will keep linux in the hardcore geek closet for a long time. I dub apples osx as the most user friendly. and windows just falls in between.

[computoman]

I will use any os if you pay me enough. A business model has nothing to do with the viability of an os. that being said, MS is the one currently losing money (last I heard) yet companies tht give away linux are making money. The real bottom line, is it making money? no matter how it is done the results have to be positive. Forgive me for being tongue in cheek about free not being good. I well know that an rc is not the best. I have used enough operating systems over many years that I feel free to take potshots at all of them including linux and bsd. I do take potshots at linux, but they are usually more disguised, I certainly did not like the poor excuse of linux that was on one of the hp netbooks. I can see why Veronica got a bad taste in her mouth for linux. To be honest it took me several years before I would even use linux on a production computer. I had to get over the Microsoft crutch. I can do so much more with linux and do it easier than I could ever do with Microsoft Windows. Even if I had to pay for linux, I still would choose linux. With all due respect everything does not just work with Microsoft windows. After using Microsoft products since the beginning, I have built enough images for microsoft windows machines for desktops and servers as a pro over the years to sink a battle ship. To put it nicely, I bloody well know better that microsoft is no panacea. At least now with w7 users do not have to pay to be beta testers for Microsoft.

With all the complaints and problems that people takk about on this site about their mswindows machines that is eveidence alone that Microsoft products are no holy grail. Linux is not perfect either, but at least I do not have to pay a premium price for substandard products no matter who makes it.. My brother is an MS fanboy with a masters in CS that teaches Microsoft products at a local college. Even he will not allow msvista to be used on his personal computes and is leary about w7. He does teach vista and W& os the advanced os classes. The college will still only allow ms windows xp to be used on staff and student desktops except the journalism, art, and music classes where they use osx. He is using linux more and more in the curriculum. Ironically he uses linux to fix microsoft product issues. One ironic thing is that linux will run on almost anything with a real cpu. I easily run linux on arrm based , x86 based, and PPC based systems, for thin clients, desktops, laptops, game machines, servers, routers and imbedded devices. I can not do that with Microsoft anywhere near as easily or as cost effectively. It is a shame that w7 will not run on our linksys router.......

[kzap]

True, but no other company is giving away their OS for free,
Yes they are, Canonical! They give away their OS for free!

[trunolimit]

I will use any os if you pay me enough. A business model has nothing to do with the viability of an os. that being said, MS is the one currently losing money (last I heard) yet companies tht give away linux are making money. The real bottom line, is it making money? no matter how it is done the results have to be positive. Forgive me for being tongue in cheek about free not being good. I well know that an rc is not the best. I have used enough operating systems over many years that I feel free to take potshots at all of them including linux and bsd. I do take potshots at linux, but they are usually more disguised, I certainly did not like the poor excuse of linux that was on one of the hp netbooks. I can see why Veronica got a bad taste in her mouth for linux. To be honest it took me several years before I would even use linux on a production computer. I had to get over the Microsoft crutch. I can do so much more with linux and do it easier than I could ever do with Microsoft Windows. Even if I had to pay for linux, I still would choose linux. With all due respect everything does not just work with Microsoft windows. After using Microsoft products since the beginning, I have built enough images for microsoft windows machines for desktops and servers as a pro over the years to sink a battle ship. To put it nicely, I bloody well know better that microsoft is no panacea. At least now with w7 users do not have to pay to be beta testers for Microsoft.

With all the complaints and problems that people takk about on this site about their mswindows machines that is eveidence alone that Microsoft products are no holy grail. Linux is not perfect either, but at least I do not have to pay a premium price for substandard products no matter who makes it.. My brother is an MS fanboy with a masters in CS that teaches Microsoft products at a local college. Even he will not allow msvista to be used on his personal computes and is leary about w7. He does teach vista and W& os the advanced os classes. The college will still only allow ms windows xp to be used on staff and student desktops except the journalism, art, and music classes where they use osx. He is using linux more and more in the curriculum. Ironically he uses linux to fix microsoft product issues. One ironic thing is that linux will run on almost anything with a real cpu. I easily run linux on arrm based , x86 based, and PPC based systems, for thin clients, desktops, laptops, game machines, servers, routers and imbedded devices. I can not do that with Microsoft anywhere near as easily or as cost effectively. It is a shame that w7 will not run on our linksys router.......

apples to oranges my friend. windows is not built as an all around OS. the reason why linux can run on your linksys is that you can customize the source code to do so. if you where aloud to get under the hood of MS win you could do the same but its not built to be that. I think when comparing OS's you have to Take into account what exactly they are built for.

I will agree with you that windows isn't all that but what I'm saying is that for some of us its a necessity. I am about to graduate next year and I am about to dive into the networking industry so I will soon enough have to dive into the Unix world. I read somewhere that Microsoft posted positive earnings for the first time in years.

[davmoo]

I read somewhere that Microsoft posted positive earnings for the first time in years.

You've got that backwards. Microsoft posted a loss for the first time in many years. The recession hits everyone.

I'm sure the Linux and Apple (who also posted a loss, by the way) fanbois are proclaming "This is the end of Microsoft!!!!!1111oneoneone"...just like it's been "The year that Linux takes over on the desktop" for 12 years now.

[computoman]

http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/23/microsoft-profits-sink-for-the-first-time-in-23-years

Microsoft has promised to be more open source friendly. Yeah right...... their so called open source code has "all rights reserved" printed at the top of the code I saw. That is not open source.

Unix and linux are more alike than any Microsoft products have ever been to my knowledge. I have used them all. In fact, even Cisco is now starting to use linux in it's commercial routers and other networking equipment.


will agree with you that windows isn't all that but what I'm saying is that for some of us its a necessity. I am about to graduate next year and I am about to dive into the networking industry so I will soon enough have to dive into the Unix world.


My brother who is a certified Cisco instructor cracked up laughing reading your last comment. Bsd, linux, and probably unix are required knowledges in addition to Microsoft windows before you get out of school. Vyatta uses linux based on Debian. So on and so forth. Besides most networking management is done in a command line environment and not in a mouse jockey world.

Just out of curiosity, have you made a patch cable, made a crossover cable, setup a patch panel, or installed fiber while in school? if you are trained in networking, You surely have used a terminal program to set up a router and or a switch.

[kzap]

just like it's been "The year that Linux takes over on the desktop" for 12 years now.
Unfortunately, even being a Linux user I have to agree with you there, when my dad was 16 he had a duel boot of Dos and Linux (yes he had a computer back then) and thought that soon Micro$oft would be over, then when I was 14 I was in the position with duel boot of XP and Linux, I know use 100% Linux.
However Linux have now finally got a 1% market share, that is a LOT for a free OS, that's a higher market share than the Iphone has.
The day will come, although maybe not for a while, I actually couldn't care less, I've given up on promoting Linux, I use it and I'm happy with it if you don't use it or don't know about it, your loss.

[computoman]

Unfortunately, even being a Linux user I have to agree with you there, when my dad was 16 he had a duel boot of Dos and Linux (yes he had a computer back then) and thought that soon Micro$oft would be over, then when I was 14 I was in the position with duel boot of XP and Linux, I know use 100% Linux.
However Linux have now finally got a 1% market share, that is a LOT for a free OS, that's a higher market share than the Iphone has.
The day will come, although maybe not for a while, I actually couldn't care less, I've given up on promoting Linux, I use it and I'm happy with it if you don't use it or don't know about it, your loss.

That one percent amount has already been proven to be bogus. it is probably a lot higher than that. I set up my first linux desktop with slackware and fvwm, back in 199x. Back then you did not have all the fancy easy installers like you do now. That was real linux.

[trunolimit]

http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/23/microsoft-profits-sink-for-the-first-time-in-23-years

Microsoft has promised to be more open source friendly. Yeah right...... their so called open source code has "all rights reserved" printed at the top of the code I saw. That is not open source.

Unix and linux are more alike than any Microsoft products have ever been to my knowledge. I have used them all. In fact, even Cisco is now starting to use linux in it's commercial routers and other networking equipment.



My brother who is a certified Cisco instructor cracked up laughing reading your last comment. Bsd, linux, and probably unix are required knowledges in addition to Microsoft windows before you get out of school. Vyatta uses linux based on Debian. So on and so forth. Besides most networking management is done in a command line environment and not in a mouse jockey world.

Just out of curiosity, have you made a patch cable, made a crossover cable, setup a patch panel, or installed fiber while in school? if you are trained in networking, You surely have used a terminal program to set up a router and or a switch.

I'm good with the cisco IOS. I am aware that it has its roots in linux. I know I've got a lot to learn before I get out there and hanging on to windows is only hurting me but I'm looking at the job market and most of these places want an MSCE certification sooooooo yeah.

my mistake if I got that profit loss thing backwards

Yeah I actually started making crossovers and straight through when I was an electrician and I had to run wire for the low volt guys. I've only ran fiber I've never got to play with hooking it up. my school blows ass all my hands on experience has come from my time as an electrician. everything else I do on packet tracer and opnet. I'm trying to get an internship soon so I can get my hands dirty but I've been putting off getting my CCNA for to long. and I've been using the terminal program in windows to hack my little linksys for years. I don't need no mouse to survive.

correct me if I'm wrong but didn't linksys have some trouble when it was acquired by cisco due to linux being open source? Linksys built its OS on linux which is open source so they had to comply with that an release the source code which is what gave birth to dd-wrt and such. then cisco switched it to make it harder to hack its routers. again my bad if my info is construed.

[davmoo]

Unfortunately, even being a Linux user I have to agree with you there

I am an avid supporter of Linux, including giving money and serious server bandwidth to Mandriva. I lease and admin several Red Hat servers. I still have the first set of Slackware CDs I bought back in 1994. I want Linux to grow.

But I'll also be the first to say that any death of Microsoft is at least a decade or two away, and in all honesty I don't think it will ever die. The only company that has reinvented itself more times than Microsoft is IBM. And everyone said they were gonna die back in the 70s...and then again in the 80s...and then again in the 90s...you get the idea. Any company that has $25 Billion just in its cash reserves doesn't even have a mild cough, much less a terminal disease.

Here's the perfect example, and I may have said this in the forum before, of what I think Linux's biggest problem is. For the first 9 years of its existence, what was the biggest issue within the Linux community that consumed the most man hours...was it pronounced "li-nucks", "lie-nucks", or "lee-nucks". Now the big time waster is which distro is best. And don't even get me started on how bad the documentation sucks for most of it.

Like I say, I love Linux. I spend money on it and because of it. But its got a long Long LONG way to go to supplant Microsoft and Windows.

[computoman]

Cisco does not have it's roots in linux. Cisco is now adopting inux. Cisco as I understand it modified busybox and did not contribute source code back to the community. Therefore they had their hand slapped.

I never expected M$ to collapse till recently. They are reinventing themselves already. They are making a big investment into online game playing especially for the xbox360. Also if you watch the SEC filings you will see that Mr. Gates is slowly and consistantly unloading his M$ Stock. Microsoft just unloaded the crew that worked on M$ flight simulator as part of the employee reduction as well as other dead projects. With a company that supposedly has twenty five billion in cash, just floated 3 billion in low interest bonds. to raise some cash.

Something that is not talked about much is the fate of fiaSCO. looks like they may have a small chance to win their appeal. If they do I am sure that M$ will start to try to hold that over the open source community again. Hopefully bankruptcy for SCO will happen before that issue is resolved.

MSCE's are a dime a dozen. Even CCNA is not what it used to be. I took training for the LP exam and have 6 semester college hours in linux, but never took the exam. At this point in my life, certifications are not that big a deal. I touted Microsoft Windows for years as a tech, programmer, and admin, but now the software just does not cut the mustard with me anymore. I do have licenses for everything from Workgroups for M$Windows to M$Windows xp plus Win2kx. I aslo have licenses for quite a bit of M$ software I have bought over the years. I used to get the MSDN stuff when I was a developer.. Most of it goes unused now excpt for tax prep software.

One of the things that drove me to linux was that people would give me their old equipment when they upgraded hardware for new versions of M$wndows. I usually gave them free help in doing the upgrade. I just did not want to spend so much money on licenses. In some ways greed drove me to linux. When I was a tech for a two year college, I had to install Rehat linux (before Fedora) in the student labs for the learning unix using linux classes. Whule playing with the images I set up, I found there was a tremendous amount of freedom software available. Not only in office type apps but for networking that was not freely available for M$windows. I used linux quite a bit of it to diagnose network issues. Then knoppix live cd came along. That was an indispensible tool for me. I could use a machine even with a dead hard drive. I was able to rescue data from foobared hard disks and send it to windows server via a samba client in addition to all the networking tools. I was hooked. I kept using xp at home for a while after I left the college, I was fed up with the security problems with Microsoft. (M$ management testified to these issues before the SEC and that M$ could become liable because of it.) I was going to get involved in setiing up servers using Microsoft to keep my skills up, but that would cost up to $1000 plus a pop. That was the final straw. I started wiping all the systems I had with Microsoft for linux. I have not looked back. As for the distro wars, that is not a big deal for me. I have used so many operating systems, one more will not hurt. I am kind of worried about Ubuntu though. They seem to have a few developers who do not have a clue. Underneath linux desktop, linux is pretty much the same. Linux documentation could use a lot of help. I end up going to the internet to get more info when I need it. BSD probably has the best man pages. Then that is another can of worms. The only area where linux may have a snag is where ip licensing in the US makes it a challenge to use certain hardware and software. That is not the fault of linux. Unfortunately the media industry kisses M$ dairyair. You have to be smart and check out which hardware will work for our system. That is true of any os. I know a lot of equipment that will not work under Apple OSX. W7 and Vista have their problems also. One thing I really like about linuix is that I have not had to purchase a new computer in years now. I am able to repurpose old equipment readily. My old Dell gx1 I think I bought it for $20 and it sill is used for a cloud (lamp (web)) and media services. For under $300, I had a terminal server plus 5 thin clients for under $300 for the original setup for our student lab. I just upgraded my desktop to a p4. the used motherboard was $2 and the cpu was $10 and the ram upgrade was under $50 dollars. That I did have to buy new. I reused everything else from the old amd system. In these hard times that is a blessing. Software wise, I have not been limited in any way software wise under linux. I have found enough freedom software to sink a battleship. I still even use my old pentium 1 laptop when I travel. if something happens to it, it will not be the end of the world./Linux makes old hardware new again. I could go on forever, but I have talked too long already. No longer do I have the security issues I had with Microsoft. You would have to pay me to use M$windows again./

Linux (and Bsd) rules....

[davmoo]

Also if you watch the SEC filings you will see that Mr. Gates is slowly and consistantly unloading his M$ Stock.

Bill Gates has been doing that for some time. He is slowly taking his money out of other things and putting it back in to his charitable foundation. He announced those intentions several years ago. And that's not surprising since he left the company a year or more ago.


Something that is not talked about much is the fate of fiaSCO. looks like they may have a small chance to win their appeal.

Dude, you're way out of the loop on this one. The reason its not talked about any more is because its a non-issue. SCO is in bankruptcy and all but dead and buried. Their stock is worthless, they owe Novel a ton of money, and the government trustee overseeing their Chapter 11 reorganization has recommended that it be converted to Chapter 7 and the company's remaining few assets be liquidated. If you listen closely on a clear night, you can hear The Fat Lady warming up to sing.

[computoman]

True money has been continually slowly withdrawn for a while, but people need to be reminded of it.


I agree that Sco was in chapter 11 (reorganization), but Novell and Ibm plus the trustee are all trying to force chapter 7 (liquidation) but that is NOT FiNAL yet. I do agree and that it pretty much over, but I do not want to count my chickens before they hatch. The attorneys for Sco are probably working pretty much for free anyway at this point, So being penniless will not affect that. From what I have read of the appeals court transcript, Sco's attorneys could pull a rabbit out of the hat. We will have to wait and see. I do keep an eye on groklaw. I wish the DOJ would investigate M$ part in all this. So far they seem too wimpy to do that. may sco rest in pieces.

[kzap]

That one percent amount has already been proven to be bogus.
Thanks I did't know that, I wondered how they counted the users.
I set up my first linux desktop with slackware and fvwm, back in 199x. Back then you did not have all the fancy easy installers like you do now. That was real linux.
You sound like my dad! When I moved to 100% Linux and convinced my mum and dad to as well, I went over with the Ubuntu LiveCD and booted it up, he did know what a liveCD was (he gave me Knoppix when I was 11) but he said "okay so now you are going to patition the hard drive and then go to a command line"
And I said, "No you just double click this Install icon here" He did look a bit sad that it was that easy, he knows way more about Linux then me but my knollage is way more upto date. I was installing stuff from the command line a few days ago, but WPA didn't work so I gave up, see my tweet (http://twitter.com/kzap333/status/1786963755). That was the only one I did after I gave up.
We have an old DOS/Linux machine in our shed that we get out ocinally it had DOS with the GEM GUI on last time I check (well by on I mean those were the floppies we could find). I want to see if I can run LXDE on there just for a luagh, this PC doesn't even run DooM though so I doubt it.
I need to find the newer dos machine we have in the loft.

Ah, computers are fun :D

[computoman]

At a little store, I used to work we sold the Amstrad computer with Drdos and Gem. I think it is still being worked on and you can get it from the somewhere on the net. Gary Kildall was one of my heroes. I still think he was murdered. There are too many coincidences, Anyway, M$ put a lot of pressure on the owner not to carry it. It was a shame, since his philosophy was not to put all his eggs in one basket. He was going to carry Apple computers, but we ended carrying the Franklin. He may of also though of carrying the mac clone called Umax, but never did. My other brother bought a Umax and went back to a real Apple Mac when Apple forced Umax out of business. Umax was "Legally" outselling brand name Apples (at least in this area) and no one wanted an overpriced Apple mac. My brother loves the mac. Mostly because that is what they use at the small newspaper he works at. He did purchase an HP laptop with Vista (Ugh) so he could run software required for his part-time job as an insurance adjuster. He so loves hurricane season. (Just kidding.)

That is a good idea, I might try Lxde on my Debian based ancient pentium one laptop, though icewm is doing just fine and I am not limited to just three applications even with just 96 megs of memory. In fact, because it is still so useful, there is no reason to chunk it to have the gold extracted out of it. (The knife gets turned slowly into the back of M$ low end W7). I prefer Lxde over Gnome and KDE. We use a lot of Icewm and Fluxbox for our older systems. It is nice not to have to be tied to one desktop look. In setting up a machine, I will usually do a minimal net install via pxeboot from any computer with a dhcp/tftp server (no external rom drive required) so I can choose exactly what applications I want on my machine. Makes it a lean mean computing machine and only a few minutes to set up, The you can add additional applications as you need them. You do not waste gigabytes of space like W7. I know that third parties have created stripped down versions of XP such as tinyXP and there is even a TinyVista. Probably someone will do that with W7 for the nettops. I do wonder why Microsoft did not do it. They would have increased their sales quite a bit. I have no use for the Home editions of M$. (Hint Hint)


There are several apps to do cl twitter, but I have not tried them.

[kzap]

At a little store, I used to work we sold the Amstrad computer with Drdos and Gem. I think it is still being worked on and you can get it from the somewhere on the net.
Yea I was looking at a newer version of Gem recently on the web somewhere. The other GUI that dos machine I can't remember the name of, it was just a load of lists (not a proper graphical GUI).

I will usually do a minimal net install via pxeboot from any computer with a dhcp/tftp server (no external rom drive required) so I can choose exactly what applications I want on my machine. Makes it a lean mean computing machine and only a few minutes to set up, The you can add additional applications as you need them. You do not waste gigabytes of space like W7. I know that third parties have created stripped down versions of XP such as tinyXP and there is even a TinyVista.
Yea I have been using that for installing Ubuntu on low end machines the problem is all the Ethernet ports are used up on our router and I can't get WPA encryption working from the command line so I end up having to do an Xubuntu install and then unistalling everything via synapitic. :(
I did try Window FLP (a cut down version of XP) I got from a freind on someones old computer, as they wanted Itunes but it wasn't that much faster so I set up Ubuntu with LXDE and songbird insteed, I don't think she would have been able to tell the diffrence anyway.

[computoman]

WinFlp (aka winflop) was supposed to be M$ lean mean computing machine. I played with it and it was ungodly slow. I am about this close to getting a nettop for internal penetration testing. I will pxe boot it into a netinstall and probably install debian or the like. I am not sure yet as ssd's are getting a lot of bad press lately. To be fair I may get the beta of the embedded software suite for w7 if not vista and see how it works. I downloaded winxpe, but never played with it.

Not enough ports? Just add an extra nic to one of your machines and route through the second nic or run one of the router distros in a vm. I do not use wireless on main machines for security reasons. I do need to spend time on wireless. In September, a new standard is supposed to come out i think for the n type routers, so I will wait till then to see what the latest thing is. Most every setting for linux is in a text file either as plain text or xml. A good grep search should help you find where they are.

[chimel]

750GB is quick to reach these days, hey! that's what my WMAs and MP3s take...

There are a few cheap options to secure data without the constraint of backing it up:
- Use an online provider such as Google or Yahoo (free illimited storage) to store documents, emails and profiles (same favorites and RSS feeds from any computer), and let them do the backing up for you.
- On a desktop computer, upgrade the internal drives to bigger capacity, so you can have 2 or 3 disks in an autorecovering RAID config. That's not a backup, though, but the extra redundancy offers an extra layer of safety maybe suitable for personal data, especially when combined with online storage.
- On a laptop or desktop computer, you can get starting at $9 a USB external SATA port, on which you can plug a 1/1.5/2TB disk, if you have the need for true backup, which BTW takes 20 seconds to configure in Vista and is then entirely automatic, so there is really no justification for tech-savvy people for not backing up. You just need a separate drive, internal or external, and you never have to care about it, Windows zips it all for you every day or week.

I personally use a mix of all of the above: Free online storage, backup of personal data, external 1.5TB drive for music, a few movies and personal data when offline (travelling), and I am in the same situation as you for some types of data, namely ripped DVDs, for which I can't afford to backup 12TB although I use RAID (8x1.5TB external enclosure, already way too small for my home server needs...). This data is not critical, as it is already redundant with the DVDs, but RAID conveniently saves me hours of re-ripping should a drive fail.

[chimel]

I don't back up and I'm VERY tech savy, I just can't afford to back up, I need to use all the space I have, I only back up super, super, super important things. I have used over 750GB of space and can't afford that much again just as a back up.
I just make sure I'm super careful.

750GB is quick to reach these days, hey! that's what my WMAs and MP3s take...

There are a few cheap options to secure data without the constraint of backing it up:
- Use an online provider such as Google or Yahoo (free illimited storage) to store documents, emails and profiles (same favorites and RSS feeds from any computer), and let them do the backing up for you.
- On a desktop computer, upgrade the internal drives to bigger capacity, so you can have 2 or 3 disks in an autorecovering RAID config. That's not a backup, though, but the extra redundancy offers an extra layer of safety maybe suitable for personal data, especially when combined with online storage.
- On a laptop or desktop computer, you can get starting at $9 a USB external SATA port, on which you can plug a 1/1.5/2TB disk, if you have the need for true backup, which BTW takes 20 seconds to configure in Vista and is then entirely automatic, so there is really no justification for tech-savvy people for not backing up. You just need a separate drive, internal or external, and you never have to care about it, Windows zips it all for you every day or week.

I personally use a mix of all of the above: Free online storage, backup of personal data, external 1.5TB drive for music, a few movies and personal data when offline (travelling), and I am in the same situation as you for some types of data, namely ripped DVDs, for which I can't afford to backup 12TB although I use RAID (8x1.5TB external enclosure, already way too small for my home server needs...). This data is not critical, as it is already redundant with the DVDs, but RAID conveniently saves me hours of re-ripping should a drive fail.

[kzap]

750GB is quick to reach these days, hey! that's what my WMAs and MP3s take...

There are a few cheap options to secure data without the constraint of backing it up:
- Use an online provider such as Google or Yahoo (free illimited storage) to store documents, emails and profiles (same favorites and RSS feeds from any computer), and let them do the backing up for you.
- On a desktop computer, upgrade the internal drives to bigger capacity, so you can have 2 or 3 disks in an autorecovering RAID config. That's not a backup, though, but the extra redundancy offers an extra layer of safety maybe suitable for personal data, especially when combined with online storage.
- On a laptop or desktop computer, you can get starting at $9 a USB external SATA port, on which you can plug a 1/1.5/2TB disk, if you have the need for true backup, which BTW takes 20 seconds to configure in Vista and is then entirely automatic, so there is really no justification for tech-savvy people for not backing up. You just need a separate drive, internal or external, and you never have to care about it, Windows zips it all for you every day or week.
Yea I had a friend who went to collage with a full 80GB drive, brought a 1TB drive and is now onto his SECOND! he filled in a few months just from torrents and TV recording.
If I go for a second drive it will be internal and I have the money but have decided to save up for a new motherboard, CPU, graphics card and case instead that will only run me £200 and my computer will be SO much faster, I might throw in some more RAM as well.
You see that's my problem why spend money on a back-up when you could spend it on a MUCH faster PC. I do know how important it is when my dad worked for the NHS he used to hide all the computers one morning a year and when everyone came in and asked where they where he said "oh there just reformating all the hard drives as some of them have a got a virus but it should be fine because you all told me you back up regularly" when he saw shock on there faces he would tell them he was joking and to remember to back up. Oddly everyone hated him in that job.