Choosing retailer for mimimum complaints
 

On Fri, 2 Jul 2010 12:32:40 -0700 (PDT), Ste
wrote:

I always get my replacement PCs with no OS on them at all, and then
use the same copy of XP that I have used on all my previous PCs.
AFAIAA that is perfectly legal.

It depends on whether your copy of XP is retail or OEM. As far as I
know, it's not legitimate to transfer OEM licences.

It's retail, bought many years ago.

Incidentally, I would recommend an upgrade to Windows 7. I recently
installed it on my 7 year old laptop (upgraded from XP SP3), and I
found it at least as fast as XP even on that age of hardware (and
ReadyBoost allowed me to take the strain off the old ATA hard disk),
and unlike Vista the UI improvements are worth having this time. I'm
not easy to please, but I honestly cannot find any significant fault
with it.

I have not seen any advantages that W7 would have for me that could
anywhere near justify its price. Furthermore, when I tried it briefly
on my home PC, it could not handle playback of HD video files that XP
handles fine.

Finding an off-the-shelf PC that most closely matches the
specification you want, and upgrading it where it does not match is
cheaper IME than building the whole thing from scratch.

Here's a good site
http://www.palicomp.co.uk/pc-base-units/cat_1.html

I've never found an off-the-shelf PC to be cheaper than self-build.
Profit more than wipes out any bulk-saving that systems builders may
get on the hardware.

Try taking any build on that site, and try to find somewhere you could
buy the component parts from for the same or cheaper.

--
Cynic

Choosing retailer for mimimum complaints
 

"[email protected]" wrote in message
...
"Andy" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
"[email protected]" wrote in message
...

I find that when you actually run applications rather than windows
managers the OS makes little difference.
Of course if you like a particular app that runs on a particular OS it
becomes pointless worrying about which OS to use.
And as I run apps for 99.999% of the time the OS is pretty irrelevant,
the apps are not.

I am referring to apps. I write software and compile for Windows and
linux (mostly C++ and Java). The software generally runs faster on linux
than windows. Where I write data mining and conversion software with a
lot of disk access and memory access linux is measurably faster as it
handles disks and memory better (assuming you use a linux disk format and
not a windows disk format). In many cases it is a small margin but if I
am trwaling through Gbs of data the time saving becomes appreciable.
For low-end systems linux is by far the better system. I am involved with
a group that 'recycles' old PCs for people who may not be able to afford
one otherwise.
I have had a modern linux system running on a laptop that only windows 98
would look at. On many of the older systems linux would run smoothly
where XP would spend ages swapping data with the virtual disk even in
basic office apps.

If it will run a modern linux with its window manager it will run win7.
the resource requirements are quite similar.
If you mean it will run a light weight linux distro then you are probably
right.

You may be right on this I installed it before I installed Win7 which is
pretty impressive in all ways except its dislike for changing motherboards
which has caused me a few problems.

BTW I do like how you compare a 9 year old version of windows with a
modern linux rather than a nine year old version of linux.
This is quite common when linux user compare linux to windows, probably
because they have never tried anything more recent.

This was purely because when I tried to install a newer windows OS (even a
stripped down XP) it did not like it.
Mepis worked great and even Debian worked well.
I was not trying the skew the linux win debate. I'm a complete tart and I
will go with whatever OS will do the job (and suit the pocket).

For the standard office user then there is little difference in speed as
generally the slowest thing is the user (but the fact that linux and
office are free and linux is far less prone to malware tends to tip
towards linux)
I play games on both linux and windows and some games actually run faster
under WINE on linux than natively on windows.

that may be true for some old windows systems, tried any directX 10 games
on wine?

I can't recall any newer direct X games that I play. I usualy play strategy/
resource management games. The only FPS I play is CoD which runs under WINE.
Sadly C&C Red Alert 2 does not run under wine so I play it on an XP virtual
machine.
I still play amiga games (under emulator - games like Amberstar) to I am
well behind the curve.

Andy

Choosing retailer for mimimum complaints
 

On Mon, 5 Jul 2010 09:31:27 +0100, "[email protected]"
wrote:

I find that when you actually run applications rather than windows managers
the OS makes little difference.

Applications usually make *many* calls to the OS, and lets the OS or
OS dependent drivers deal with things such as memory management, file
I/O, hardware I/O and several other things. All of which can have a
very significant impact on the speed at which the application runs.

--
Cynic

Choosing retailer for mimimum complaints
 

"Adrian" wrote in message
...
"[email protected]" gurgled happily, sounding
much like they were saying:

If it will run a modern linux with its window manager it will run win7.
the resource requirements are quite similar. If you mean it will run a
light weight linux distro then you are probably right.

Hmm. I have here on my desk a ~4-5yo Dell Latitude D800.

It runs Ubuntu 10.04 very happily indeed. Compiz at full 1920x1200 runs
smoothly.

Win7, however, is slow and awkward, and since there are no Win7 drivers
(Vista drivers do not work) for the nVidia GeForce FX5650 Go video
controller in it, it is not at native resolution. It can sometimes be
persuaded to 1600x1200, if it's in a good mood, but more commonly sits at
1280x960.

I recently upgraded to Win7 after sticking the disk in and it telling me
that my system was suitable. It did install but the my motherboard
manufacturer did not support Win7 so it ran the default drivers and
evrything was slow.
Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora all ran beautifully.
I bought another MoBo and fitted it only to discover the Win7 does not like
new motherboards (well documented on fora) so I had to re-install. It does
call into question by fanatical weekly system backups using Norton and if my
machine does die I may have to get a new MoBo and my backups will be
useless.

I was able to strip off the data by mounting the images under Ubuntu virtual
machine, but it is a little concerning to have images that may be useless.

Andy

Choosing retailer for mimimum complaints
 

"Cynic" wrote in message
...
I have not seen any advantages that W7 would have for me that could
anywhere near justify its price. Furthermore, when I tried it briefly
on my home PC, it could not handle playback of HD video files that XP
handles fine.

You can get Win7 cheap at www.software4students.co.uk. About £40 if you
qualify (eg have a kid at school, are a student, teacher etc).

I bought 4 versions of win7 and 1 of MS office through this site. Quite
impressed.

Andy

Choosing retailer for mimimum complaints
 

On Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:42:28 +0100, Cynic
wrote:

On Fri, 2 Jul 2010 12:32:40 -0700 (PDT), Ste
wrote:

I always get my replacement PCs with no OS on them at all, and then
use the same copy of XP that I have used on all my previous PCs.
AFAIAA that is perfectly legal.

It depends on whether your copy of XP is retail or OEM. As far as I
know, it's not legitimate to transfer OEM licences.

It's retail, bought many years ago.

Incidentally, I would recommend an upgrade to Windows 7. I recently
installed it on my 7 year old laptop (upgraded from XP SP3), and I
found it at least as fast as XP even on that age of hardware (and
ReadyBoost allowed me to take the strain off the old ATA hard disk),
and unlike Vista the UI improvements are worth having this time. I'm
not easy to please, but I honestly cannot find any significant fault
with it.

I have not seen any advantages that W7 would have for me that could
anywhere near justify its price. Furthermore, when I tried it briefly
on my home PC, it could not handle playback of HD video files that XP
handles fine.

Finding an off-the-shelf PC that most closely matches the
specification you want, and upgrading it where it does not match is
cheaper IME than building the whole thing from scratch.

Here's a good site
http://www.palicomp.co.uk/pc-base-units/cat_1.html

I've never found an off-the-shelf PC to be cheaper than self-build.
Profit more than wipes out any bulk-saving that systems builders may
get on the hardware.

Try taking any build on that site, and try to find somewhere you could
buy the component parts from for the same or cheaper.


Indeed
Last one I bought came from here
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/barebones.html

No way could I have bought the bits cheaper

I already had the drives so it was just a matter of swapping them and
tweaking the OSystems for the new hardware.

Choosing retailer for mimimum complaints
 

"Cynic" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 5 Jul 2010 09:31:27 +0100, "[email protected]"
wrote:

I find that when you actually run applications rather than windows
managers
the OS makes little difference.

Applications usually make *many* calls to the OS, and lets the OS or
OS dependent drivers deal with things such as memory management, file
I/O, hardware I/O and several other things. All of which can have a
very significant impact on the speed at which the application runs.

Can, but don't between linux and win 7.
The things that made windows bad were things like FAT, swap file placement,
users.

Choosing retailer for mimimum complaints
 

On Mon, 5 Jul 2010 19:54:20 +0100, "[email protected]"
wrote:

Applications usually make *many* calls to the OS, and lets the OS or
OS dependent drivers deal with things such as memory management, file
I/O, hardware I/O and several other things. All of which can have a
very significant impact on the speed at which the application runs.

Can, but don't between linux and win 7.
The things that made windows bad were things like FAT, swap file placement,
users.

*Any* OS call that is used frequently by an application will affect
the speed of the application depending upon how efficiently that
routine is implemented and coded. Things such as calls to check
whether a keyboard or mouse input has occured, for example.

The swap file is potentially accessed whenever an application performs
a memory read or write operation - or even when an application is
resumed after other threads have been called.

--
Cynic

Choosing retailer for mimimum complaints
 

The message
from John Rumm contains these words:

On 03/07/2010 01:01, geoff wrote:
In message , Cynic
writes
On Fri, 2 Jul 2010 11:56:07 +0100, "John Turner"
wrote:

I then went to a small local independent computer shop, who sold me
the same
PC for a fair bit less money and installed a genuine copy of Windows XP
without extra charge.

Sounds very much as if it might be a pirate copy of XP.

I thought that there was always the option to "downgrade"

I think that a vista key is good for XP too

Usually only if you have the Pro version - so Win 7 Professional can be
downgraded to Win XP Pro. Its a slightly cumbersome process mind you
that requires getting a new key from MS first.

If you'd read my earlier posting carefully enough, you'd have omitted
the redundent "Usually" from that sentence. ;-)

Choosing retailer for mimimum complaints
 

In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 03/07/2010 01:01, geoff wrote:
In message , Cynic
writes
On Fri, 2 Jul 2010 11:56:07 +0100, "John Turner"
wrote:

I then went to a small local independent computer shop, who sold me
the same
PC for a fair bit less money and installed a genuine copy of Windows XP
without extra charge.

Sounds very much as if it might be a pirate copy of XP.

I thought that there was always the option to "downgrade"

I think that a vista key is good for XP too

Usually only if you have the Pro version - so Win 7 Professional can be
downgraded to Win XP Pro. Its a slightly cumbersome process mind you
that requires getting a new key from MS first.

no, you don't need to "downgrade" W7 Pro to XP. You run an XP emulator from
W7. It works, that's how I have kept my old scanner which has no W7
drivers.

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.16