Important: Windows XP support ends April 2014

[philo]

On 3/3/2014 6:04 AM, philo wrote:

You can do great things with Photoshop. ;-)

Ok, well I saw nothing but dry lake beds and sand when I lived there.
About once a year a huge storm would came in and it just down poured all
day. Water everywhere! Next day the sun was back and not a drop of water
anywhere. And if you wanted a well, you had to drill about 5,000 feet to
hit the water table.

I have relatives on AZ and have been there often and there is a lot of
boating going on.

Many of the rivers are dammed and there are a lot of artificial lakes.


Weirdest thing I saw was what I thought for sure was a mirage:

Driving across the desert I thought I saw a water slier off in the
distance. It was not mirage...there was a river there.

 

[philo]

I take it you never installed Windows 7 on a EeePC with a 16GB SSD? Yeah
I bought the 16GB SSD just so I can install 7. It was really horrible.
If you just boot up and do nothing for 20 minutes to let it settle down,
the CPU use never dropped less than 50%. And this is just the OS
running. Just try and open up a browser or something, its click and
wait, click and wait. XP on the same machine flies. Opening up a browser
and it is instant. And Windows 2000 on the same machine is grease
lightning!

I am not familiar with that machine but wonder if it uses one of those
"mini" ssd's? I have a Dell Mini that someone gave me...the SSD was bad
so I replaced it and installed XP. The machine has 2 gigs of RAM and ran
horribly slow. I suspect those mini SSD's are not so hot.


Even though it's said SSD's do not need to be (nor should they be)
defragged, I tried it anyway and it helped quote a bit...but I am not
going to bother with those mini SSD's again.

I also experimented with Windows 7 on beefier machines, but they too had
single core CPUs. Better, but still sad. Still more CPU use at idle than
XP on the same machines and higher CPU temps too. Not even enough power
to enough play youtube videos. But XP on these same machines plays
youtube videos just fine.

You might have noticed that I am running Windows 7 on this dual core
machine. Yes now Windows 7 is running somewhat respectable. And it now
can run youtube videos too. So how can I get Windows 7 playing youtube
videos on a single core processor? Say on a Motion Computing LE1700 with
an Intel Centrino Core Solo U1400 @ 1.2 GHz? By the way, the same
machine with an Intel Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 @ 1.5 GHz, Windows 7
plays videos just fine.

I also have two Dell Latitude ST tablets. They came with Windows 7 Pro
and sports an Atom Z670 single core processor. These are one of the
slowest computers I have ever seen. But turning off Aero and disabling
all appearance features, it is barely tolerable and being drop dead
ugly. And it now can play some lower quality youtube videos. Have
Windows 8 installed on one of them and Windows 8 you can't disable Aero.
Apparently the Metro side requires Aero for some reason. I can't even
use gadgets on these machines either, as it brings that poor Atom down
to its knees.

As to Aero, I don't ever enable it, even on high end machines.

Even though I have installed Win7 on quite a few P-4's and it works...

yes, a dual core CPU is much better and a good video card is also advisable.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I've found that a P-4 (Northwood or better) with 1-2 gigs of RAM will
suffice for Win7

How much RAM you need for good performance is *not* a
one-size-fits-all situation. You get good performance if the amount of
RAM you have keeps you from using the page file significantly, and
that depends on what apps you run. Most people running a typical range
of business applications under Windows 7 find that 2GB or more works
well, others need more. Almost anyone will see poor performance with
less than 2GB.

My EEE Netbook runs Windows 7 with only 1GB. Its performance is
terrible, but since I only use it for e-mail and only when traveling,
I find it acceptable.

 

[Nil]

An excerpt from Wiki:
Lake Powell, straddling the border between Utah and Arizona,
is the second largest man-made reservoir in the US,
storing 24,322,000 acre feet of water when full.

'Course, that IS part of the Colorado River. And I think it hasn't been
full for many years, and may never be so again.

 

[Paul]

How much RAM you need for good performance is *not* a
one-size-fits-all situation. You get good performance if the amount of
RAM you have keeps you from using the page file significantly, and
that depends on what apps you run. Most people running a typical range
of business applications under Windows 7 find that 2GB or more works
well, others need more. Almost anyone will see poor performance with
less than 2GB.

My EEE Netbook runs Windows 7 with only 1GB. Its performance is
terrible, but since I only use it for e-mail and only when traveling,
I find it acceptable.

Windows 7 is a bit flexible, when it comes to RAM.
Especially in the last two 512MB pictures, you can see how the
OS "deflates" when under pressure. Leaving room for fresh
RAM consumption later.

A 2GB machine has about 1.6GB immediately free.

Win7 2GB Resource Monitor picture In_Use Free+Standby

http://i57.tinypic.com/jpk4mq.gif 395MB 1493MB + 138MB

Win7 1GB Resource Monitor picture

http://i60.tinypic.com/volcbb.gif 358MB 507MB + 133MB

Win7 512MB Resource Monitor picture (no program started yet)

http://i62.tinypic.com/28a6jvp.gif 345MB 35MB + 129MB

Win7 512MB (just after exit of Firefox)

http://i62.tinypic.com/9pufbn.gif 205MB 138MB + 160MB

*******

I did a set for 8.0 as well.

Win8 2GB Resource Monitor picture In_Use Free+Standby

http://i62.tinypic.com/afekcx.gif 548MB 1280MB + 183MB

Win8 1GB Resource Monitor picture

http://i60.tinypic.com/348iu0g.gif 373MB 314MB + 317MB

Win8 512MB Resource Monitor picture (no program started yet)
Right after this, Firefox was very very slow to start.

http://i58.tinypic.com/70ibsp.gif 493MB 0MB + 18MB

Win8 512MB (just after exit of Firefox)

http://i60.tinypic.com/2196s9h.gif 290MB 54MB + 162MB

Even the wasteful applications (your business suite idea),
they'll page out if under pressure. Test it sometime.

All you need, is a fast page file
If you could manage to set up an old
machine, with the pagefile on a tiny SSD,
that might be better than nothing.

In the testing, Win8 under stressed conditions, behaved
really poorly. (I even had Task Manager report "Not Responding".)
And Philo's observation that 1GB and 2GB are good configurations,
is reasonable. As long as you're using the machine as a
communications device (web surf) or a TV set, chances are
that's enough. If you're doing Photoshop of billboard sized images,
then it would not be enough.

Also, the release version of Win8.0, did more poorly
than the very first Preview release. The Preview
release would run with 128MB.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Andy]

M$ *could* force the issue by surreptitiously letting loose

a destructive virus, based on a known security hole in XP.



Nah, M$ wouldn't do that, would they?

It would not work for those who do image backups.

Andy

 

[BillW50]

In philo typed:

I am not familiar with that machine but wonder if it uses one of those
"mini" ssd's?

Yes indeed. The 701 (soldered in SSD) and 702 (8GB on card) models used
the faster and increased wear leveling SLC SSD. The 701SD (8GB on card)
used MLC SSD.

I have a Dell Mini that someone gave me...the SSD was bad so I
replaced it and installed XP. The machine has 2 gigs of RAM and ran
horribly slow. I suspect those mini SSD's are not so hot.

On the SLC SSD, XP bots in 90 seconds and Windows 2000 boots in 30
seconds. So that isn't too bad. Those MLC SSD are much slower. Also
these including the Dell are PATA SSD. Later EeePC used SATA SSD which I
am sure improved speeds.

Even though it's said SSD's do not need to be (nor should they be)
defragged, I tried it anyway and it helped quote a bit...but I am not
going to bother with those mini SSD's again.

I never tried that before and that is interesting. I don't know why, but
defragging my hard drives once every 2 years or so only shortens boot
times by about 2 seconds. I guess my hard drives don't fragment that
much.

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

In philo typed:
[snip]

Even though it's said SSD's do not need to be (nor should they be)
defragged, I tried it anyway and it helped quote a bit...but I am not
going to bother with those mini SSD's again.

I never tried that before and that is interesting. I don't know why, but
defragging my hard drives once every 2 years or so only shortens boot
times by about 2 seconds. I guess my hard drives don't fragment that
much.

Or fragmentation is not nearly the bugaboo that it is presented
as.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[BillW50]

In Gene Wirchenko typed:

In philo typed:
[snip]

Even though it's said SSD's do not need to be (nor should they be)
defragged, I tried it anyway and it helped quote a bit...but I am
not going to bother with those mini SSD's again.

I never tried that before and that is interesting. I don't know why,
but defragging my hard drives once every 2 years or so only shortens
boot times by about 2 seconds. I guess my hard drives don't fragment
that much.

Or fragmentation is not nearly the bugaboo that it is presented
as.

Back in the old MFM days, the difference I got from defragging was about
double the speed. Since IDE drives, never noticed much of a difference.