wrote: [snip]
Well.. Except there's no like for like. The AMD processors are 125W vs Intel 70W which is significant and there's a big performance difference with AMD flagging way behind Intel. AMD boast an impressive number of cores with no performance advantage from chips having twice as many cores as Intel.
Good for boasting, pointless in RL.
Resolution isn't everything, plenty of cheapo LCDs are dithered 6bpp not
8bpp.
and get an IPS panel as TN (whilst faster so gamers love them) does not have the same viewing angles or the same quality of colour reproduction.
XP and 7 wasn't though.
Vista I have no real experience of, and 8 seems *basically" like 7 (if you install one of the "return the start button and miss out Metro" programs).
now the problem
The "new"[1]SATA data cables have little clips on them so they should stay connected more reliably than the "old" ones.
XP was and is a pain it took ages before MS fixed the problem that a user could see shared file and folders even if group permissions were set to prohibit access, for example.
Seven is nasty in all the usual Microsoft ways, Home try's to prevent a user managing their own computer and £200 ish for the version with features that you can get for free (Linux) or £65 (Apple) is taking the piss.
Win 8 is a hideous mess rushed out too early. It's so bad that head or heads has/have rolled at Microsoft. Sadly Bill won't sack Ballmer who is an idiot and the root cause of Microsoft's problems.
I'm sure we all have our owb sexual preferencies and oddities ;-)
No it wasn't it was reasonabley stable and worked quite well.
What was s**te was W1.0 to windows95. WindowsME millenium probbley the worst
Agreed.
No I have to use that at work and it's not bad for a MS product, it;s usable and reminds me of OS X in some ways.
Not used it myself but I don;t like the idea unless it;'s on a tablet device.
it sort of goes every other software product is not bad and teh others pretty bad.
because it's cheap & easy to get and at least you can DIY build your own PC which you can't really do with Mac.
I think W7 would be a good choice here.
Thanks for lots of useful comments.
My current unit, has an Intel Core 2 6400 @2.13 GHz
Being 32 bit, I only have 4 Gb RAM.
I suspect that the memory limitation may be more of a bottleneck than processor speed, but there is little I can do without going to 64 bit. There are times with one particularly large spreadsheet where both cores sit at full stretch for up to a minute doing comparatively minor edits.
Backup is covered, both to NAS, and USB HDD, though Acronis seems to be a real memory hog, and I have a feeling that it doesn't release it properly.
However, I have never trusted Ghost since the way it behaved on XP. I had a problem - BSOD intermittently when backing up the boot partition - which gave me great grief, until I found others with the same problem. It got to the point that the only use I was having to make of my backups was restoring when Ghost had trashed Windows.
I have a pair of BenQ monitors, which suit me well, and I will be keeping them.
One of my HDDs is beginning to make unexpected mechanical noises, though only when booting or up or running updates. That can never be good news, even though the SMART data shows no issues.
I understand the economics of self-build, and have done some minor component changes in the past, but if problems arise, without a workshop full of swappable components, fault-finding is more than slightly tricky, so I am looking for a built system. I guess the budget is going to have to be in excess of £500, maybe rather more.
I had forgotten CCL, though have bought from them before.
Chris
I wouldn't mind if there was just one button or setting that made everything appear like the 'classic' arrangement, but I'm damned if I'm going to waste the now comparatively little remaining time of my life tinkering with Windows to rid it of all the stupid 'bright ideas' that spotty-faced programmers fresh from school, without the benefit of long experience to tell them what is efficient and what is inefficient for people to have to use in real life, put there because they think they will look cool and impressive on the boss's machine(s).
As you're about the third in a row replying to my post to say this, perhaps it's time to ask all of you, in W7, and to a lesser extent XP, how ...
??? How can you make *all* folders, including all the media folders with their attributes I'm not interested in, appear the same, without having to go through at least one of every possible type, in a myriad of types of folder, to set this up?
??? Can you bring back the right click option to search a directory or share, so that the results come up in the 'traditional' different window, and therefore don't get lost everytime you navigate on the basis of the results, and therefore have to be re-searched again when you want to return to deal with the next result, which is a mind-boggingly inefficient and crass arrangement.
??? Can you force XP and W7 *NOT* to waste hours, sometimes, searching zip files? It would be nice to have the option NOT to have them come up as directory trees in Explorer as well.
??? Can you return to the 'traditional' full-height, one-dimensional Start Menu, that was so much more efficient than the absurd too-unclever-by-half postage-stamp that was first introduced in XP, but fortunately at least in XP could be entirely disabled? The facts that it is absurdly small and has two columns of options to search visually mean that it is doubly inefficient.
??? Can you set the same security permissions on multiple parent folders at once?
??? Can you set security on shares without all the extra intermediate dialog boxes that were first introduced in XP?
??? Can you remove the redundant and ridiculous ratings column in Windows Media Player 12's playlist, and further increase the width of the playlist, so that there is enough room to display long filenames of the sort --? For example, and this is a comparatively *short* longer name, when playing this album, I can't see ever see further than the album title:
Corries, The - Live At The Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh - 01 Wha Wadna Fecht For Charlie.wav
Etc, etc.
I could also include things that annoyed me in W2k, but somehow seemed to get much worse thereafter.
For example, Microsoft should stop trying to tell everyone how to organise their data. If, as formerly, I'm working on a presentation, naturally I want all the files relating to it in one folder of my own choosing. I don't want, even by default, photographs put in one folder of Microsoft's choosing, music files in another, and video in another. Beyond setting aside a 'protected' area for a given user to keep his/her data, the programmers of OSs should not interest themselves further in how the user structures, or not, their storage of data. That is a matter entirely for the user. To attempt to force an ill-fitting structure of the programmer's own fancy on the rest of the world is profoundly undemocratic. I've actually had to resort to having zero-byte hidden system files with all access-rights removed to prevent the creation of a myriad of folders that Microsoft and others would like to force upon me.
And again, while we're upon the subject of My Pictures, My Music, and My Videos, why this ego-centric obsession with 'My' and 'Me' in everything these days? If we are to have these unwanted folders, at least lets call them by the more civilised Pictures, Music, and Videos.
But note, BTW, that not all audio files are music.
Although I'm probably com>
As an additional point Chris I would say there is not a great(if any) saving to be had on, say, £300-£400 pound systems[1] however there is a great saving to be had on building your own higher end systems.
[1] Unless you can/want to use lots of old kit say the DVD player, case, power supply etc. NOTE the "can/want to". For instance lots of people will not reuse power supplies. No one I know off would re-use HDD's
Yeah, but f*ck cheapo LCDs. Go for the expensive ones.
Cheers - Jaimie
never heard so much rubbish talked about an operating system mostly by those who had never used it.
bunch and it is very easy to drop into a Windows 7 type environment if you wish.
That's a part of many people roles in IT it seems, few seem to support the Mac OS X, basically because it needs little support.
Yes it's one of the reason we didn't take it on, we went to W7.
Yes on a laptop or desktop on a tablet W8 would be best.
Why? It depends what you want and why. My cheapo Dell 23" is perfectly acceptable to me.
*throws hands up to the heavens* Oh Lord, is 3pm picky picky time on the Internet? Can people not work reasons for things out for themselves?
Cheers - Jaimie
I don't think you mean one dimensional as that would be a line. :o)
Yup, (in XP) just set menu style to classic start.
If that doesn't wrap properly use
Well then just rename them. The main folders ARE Pictures, Music, videos etc within these folders are My X and public X folders The "my" is to differentiate them from public items. My son's[1] and wife have accounts on this system so everyone has their own folders as my musical tastes are far removed from anyone else's. Renaming Music to Sounds takes care of "not all the audio files are music" problem.
[1]Although they have accounts on this machine, they are very seldom used as they both have their own laptops and youngest son has a desktop machine as well
PC which you can't really do with Mac.
Cheap compared to linux that's free you mean? The only downsides I can find with linux is you need to trial several distros to find what you want, and there are specialist win only apps out there that some people need to use. Other than that its all upside.
NT
Ooops a plural apostrophe seems to have crept in there . That's what comes of starting to write one thing then deciding to write another without editing properly
And in any case, it ignores cache size(s), parallelism within the core, scheduling, pipelining and lots more...all of which may differ.
and mostof which make very little difference. Except on 'benchmark' tests.
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