Mark Jones wrote:
|||
||| XP still blue screens without too much difficulty. Not as much as
||| NT4 used to, but it does it. I've had at least two just in the last
||| week.
|||
||| Damien
||
I have XPpro on my notebook since 22 month no crash of the OS, single apps
sometime crash i.e. Eagle, 2020, realplayer, mediaplayer. But it is much
better than '98.
||
|| I'm convinced the whole thing is Karma.
||
|| In my garage are two bikes. A 1981 Yamaha Maxim 650, always babied,
|| which there is ALWAYS something wrong with it, hard to start, runs
|| bad. It's supposed to be a good bike... the oil pan is off of it
|| now. Then there is a 1971 Suzuki RV 90J (little 90cc dirt bike, big
|| wide tires, 2-cycle rotary valve intake) and it has so far not
|| required any major engine servicing. ANY! And it's been abused, very
|| very abused... been through other consumables though, 2 chains, 2
|| rear sprockets, 2 pairs of rear shocks, new seat, 2 new tires, new
|| front fender... yet it starts on the first kick, even after sitting
|| in a corner for a year. Now *that* is Karma. Both bikes are made
|| from the same kind of metals and plastics, but one has clearly
|| worked much better over the years than the other, and under much
|| harsher conditions. Is it manufacturing, materials, or Karma?
||
|| It might be a combination of all three, but there something to say
|| about the position of the stars when the item was manufactured, its
|| "birthday" if you will... I think the state of the universe at the
|| moment of conceptulization determines part of how an entity further
|| interacts with the rest of its reality (and hence our experience
|| with it.) This is disregarding the technology aspect.
||
|| I've built PC's that have worked fine even with Win98, and had
|| troubles with Win2k. I've used WinXP for 6+ months now, abused it
|| with 10GB of hardcore applications, use it for lots of advanced
|| things like CNC, programming uC's, render/animation, games... and
|| can't remember a single BSOD.
||
|| Generally, I've found the following to be true in regards to PC's:
||
|| 0. Backup important data!
|| 1. Avoid junk no-name hardware and the hottest cutting-edge
|| technology.
|| 2. Update BIOS and drivers religiously (especially video drivers.)
|| 3. Don't install a bunch of junk software and expect things to work
|| perfectly! Software dude A knows knothing of sotware dude B...
|| 4. Heat is a bad thing! Keep your components cool and clean.
|| 5. BSOD's indicate a problem! Even in '98, they are not normal.
|| (Maybe more likely though, due to 98's poor memory management.)
|| 6. Anti-Virus software /w email scanning... mandatory. Even if you
|| don't need it, you'll eventually need to scan something.
|| 7. Firewall, mandatory. ZoneAlarm is great, don't leave the 'net
|| without it. Get a spyware scanner also, like BPS Spyware Remover.
|| You'll be surprised at the junk you can find.
|| 8. Norton WinDoctor - great all-around tool.
|| 9. Defrag... once in a great while at least. And goto
||
www.windowsupdate.microsoft.com occasionaly too.
|| 10. And one last thing, losing everything and formatting is NOT
|| optional. It will happen eventually, even to the best of us. Be
|| prepared.
||
|| We humans seem to have this egocentric notion that our particular
|| OS is bulletproof and eternally-sustaining, yet if you think about
|| it, changing one specific bit on any OS will render it useless. So
|| have a backup if nothing else.
||
|| -M
I found backups absolutely necessary.
And never think the backup is secure, the CD/DVD doesn't read anymore, or
like on my new desktop the backup-HD stops functioning.
So my advise is: keep another backup on your 2nd computer and another on an
USB-stick, which seems to be quite reliable.
Also I still can use my 1st PC from 1987, a 286 with coprocessor, a blatant
20MHz and 2Mb. Never any part failed, the keyboard became yellowish, but
still is better than any new KB that comes with the computer nowadays. Even
the mouse works still perfectly.
But with the rapid pace of hard- and software progress, this kind of
ruggedness is certainly overkill, I do not want to go back to the
pre-windows software I had been running that time, like ACAD2.4, I like it
more in the -2004 version.
)
Also comparatively the price tag was around 5* what we pay today for a
multiple of performance.
I cannot imagine a better idea than what BGates had, to create a common
OS-interface for all apps.
This idea has not only made Bill rich, but also the success of the PC.
Otherwise this tool would have remained with only professional users and few
tech-freaks like todays Linuxers.
I LOVE BILL GATES :-(
ciao Ban
