advice on replacement computer

On Sat, 9 Aug 2014 17:57:26 -0700 (PDT), Ben Myers wrote:


I eventually ended up with an Optiplex 9020 and two monitors running Windows 7 upgradeable to 8.

I got disks and used them as described in a post a couple notches down.

The worst part of the job has been moving files across, which I had thought would be simple. The problem was that the old system crashed hard trying to read large files from C: to a USB disk or over the network. It crashed somewhat less often when I got the free space on the old disk up to a few GB; I don't know why free disk space would help reads...

It did not crash at all reading files off the other partitions on the same physical drive.

The new system does not seem much faster than the old system for most things. The clock speed has not increased much over the past ten
years, and most jobs that I have tried do not know what to do with
extra processor cores.

The "improvements" in the visual interface from XP to 7 seem unnecessary. Is there a way to make dialog boxes just appear and
vanish expeditiously rather than fading slowly in and out of existence?

I now have almost everything working on the new system, except I still
need a PAR2 program and a FLAC-WAV program. I am about ready to take
down the old system; another one bites the dust.

Bob S

Bob,

The simple statement is that Windows is horrific when it has to perform with resources consumed close to the limit. When a hard drive is 95% full, who knows what will happen? Literally. I have a customer still running a 10-year old Dimension 3000, upgraded a couple of years ago with a Dimension 4600 board (by me). It runs XP on an 80GB hard drive, and I get the call every few months to clean up the hard drive, because the system is being weird again.

The only surprise was because the machine had been performing with
complete stability for months, reading and writing those same large
files, and with less than 1% free space on the volume. It was only
when I tried to copy them to a USB disk or over the network that it
crashed. As you say, who knows what will happen.

As for the user interface, so you don't think the semi-transparent Aero is all that great? Me neither. But it's there. You should be able to tinker with the Windows 7 display properties a bit to get rid of the stupid fade. Also, you can edit the properties of executables to get them to run without the brainless and insulting it-was-in-Vista-now-its-in-7 dialogic box that asks you if you really want to run a program. Except Microsoft's own pet programs just simply run. So do other programs whose authors do the install correctly, which leaves out a lot of them.

Multi-core CPUs come in handy when your virus scanner kicks in or Window Update is running (again!) and you are trying to do real work. Intel capped CPU speeds at around 3.5GHz in the past, because faster speeds generated to much heat.

I have noticed that it is much faster at opening image files.


At least you do not have the regular reminder any more every time you boot your XP system that the operating system is no longer supported... Ben Myers

I was not getting regular reminders; I wonder why not? The main thing
I noticed was that Microsoft would not allow me to look at their site
because I was using XP.

Bob S

On Sat, 9 Aug 2014 17:57:26 -0700 (PDT), Ben Myers wrote:


As for the user interface, so you don't think the semi-transparent Aero is all that great? Me neither. But it's there. You should be able to tinker with the Windows 7 display properties a bit to get rid of the stupid fade.

Do you happen to know where those settings are? I haven't found them
yet.

Bob S

On Sun, 10 Aug 2014 14:00:07 -0400, Bob S
wrote:

I noticed was that Microsoft would not allow me to look at their site
because I was using XP.

Bob S
Huh!

I still get (now very minimal) MS automatic updates on XP pro SP3

The Windows (Microsoft) Update program still fires off properly when I launch
it,
It just does not find much left to update (I always use the Custom option). ')

Possibly your XP is not valid?
Your XP was not up to SP3? some things need SP3,I am not sure if that is a
limit)
You have been infected?

On Monday, June 30, 2014 8:44:45 PM UTC-4, Bob S wrote:
I am currently using a Dell Dimension 8400 P4 Windows XP computer with

1GB RAM, two monitors, and 2 500G disks in RAID mirroring

configuration (due to some previous bad experiences with disk drives).



It is used for the ordinary mail and web and WORD stuff, plus

occasional photo editing and small databases. There are no games more

advanced than Free Cell.



My major reason for replacing it is that I need more disk space (lots

of photos). I have tried larger disks but the machine cannot take

them; it looks like the "not enough address bits" issue.



The fading-away of XP is also a consideration.



The Dell web site has left me knowing only slightly more than when I

started. It seems that I need a "mini-tower" box because none of the

others hold more than one drive. I have been unable to get a clear

picture of which lines use that box; some of the XPS systems do, and

maybe some Inspiron, and maybe some things in the business side, but

in each case some don't.



Two drives are a requirement; I don't want to run out of disk again

for a while.



I have not found any mention of RAID; maybe Dell doesn't do that

anymore?



I have not found where it tells me whether any of the systems will run

two monitors without an add-on card. If I need an add-on card, which

is the quietest that will do the job?



Another wish is that the system is not noisier than my current

machine.



Additional considerations include reasonable processing "power" for

future-proofing without excessive cost; I had been guessing an i5

maybe.



I long ago learned that more memory is good; how much is enough for

the next several years?



I am assuming that Windows 7 Pro is the right OS.



So, what can you suggest, or what have I forgotten to mention?



Bob S

"The only surprise was because the machine had been performing with complete stability for months, reading and writing those same large files, and with less than 1% free space on the volume. It was only when I tried to copy them to a USB disk or over the network that it crashed. As you say, who knows what will happen."

I do not claim to everything about the way Windows works deep inside its black little heart, but from your description, I would surmise that copying files to a USB disk or over the network caused Windows to allocate some large temporary file space, eating up most of the 1% free space. What follows is a crash, because Windows is incapable of handling this sort of condition..

Heaven knows, Microsoft has many other odd practices built into Windows. How about when you download a file with IE, IE first downloads the file into the %temp% garbage can folder, then copies it to where you wanted it in the first place. I could go on and on... Ben