Windows Vista

dragracer1951 · Post by **dragracer1951** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 7:47 pm

It's being worked on by a couple of people. I was even thionking about just that as Tamara is the EE in our house. But I'm getting away from Haas machines anyway...Might well think about data servers for Fanucs though

dragracer1951 · Post by **dragracer1951** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 7:49 pm

Boy...Did THIS ever get off topic

silver · Post by **silver** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 8:37 pm

".... the Code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. "

I've always thought that good conversation knows no bounds. Well, within good taste anyway.

Yoniboi · Post by **Yoniboi** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 4:13 am

".... the Code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. "

How did 'Pirates of the Caribbean' get into this thread???

John

I'm looking at buying a HP s7730 for most of the reasons that Silver outlined.
I 'just' want it to play games, films, deal with photos from my P&S, run quiet, be unobtrusive, serve as an office, work with my printer and let me connect to EXUPBROTHERHOOD without any headaches. Nothing really.

silver · Post by **silver** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 5:19 am

Yoniboi wrote:How did 'Pirates of the Caribbean' get into this thread???

I think it had something to do with drifiting "off topic".

I'm looking at buying a HP s7730 for most of the reasons that Silver outlined.
I 'just' want it to play games, films, deal with photos from my P&S, run quiet, be unobtrusive, serve as an office, work with my printer and let me connect to EXUPBROTHERHOOD without any headaches. Nothing really.

One system I would never buy (if I were ever to buy one for myself) would be a slim-line/small form factor/HPC. They inevitably use proprietary parts such as power supplies, motherboards, heatsinks and fans

Post by **Hooligan** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:24 am

you windows guys are all lame. i have been on a mac full time since 1995 and haven't looked back.

hahahahahahaha. i'm just kidding, but i know how much windows guys love fighting with us mac users. our in-house programmer/app developer is that way.

actually, now that the mac hardware and os will run a windows partition i'll be testing that out on my next new mac. i would really love to get a good CAD package and possibly start some 3D modeling with Rhino and those packages run on windows.

haunter · Post by **haunter** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:59 pm

dust wrote:
You are absolutely correct. It's not ready for desktop use for people who does not have the knowledge and/or will to make it work. How hard it is to get it to work is up to the user. For easy use there are lots of options. Red hat would not be my choice if plug and play is what you would want. The Linux equivalent of Windows XP would be something like Debian or Ubuntu.

The point is that most PC users do not need what Windows have to offer. Most Microsoft office users could just as well be using Open office (I would bet my FZR that Open office's script language (python) is a heck lot more powerfull than the one in MS office). If you are the type that play a lot of games Windows is the choice. That is what Windows does best. For Office and server use Linux would be the best bet. The problem is that most users choose what software to use first and then look at Linux. If they looked at Linux first then getting the software they want to use would be a lot easier

Vista is going to be nice im sure but for non-gamers i would recommend Linux, bsd or OSX.

Vista will be far outdated by the time most users could ever figure out how to install a package in linux/bsd.

They just plain are difficult and not user friendly.

Vista offers just about everything people want, multimedia support, plays games, huge driver bank, pretty interface, vast compatibility.

How does Linux do the office best? Open office is a joke compared to office 2003, and 07 looks to be fantastic.

Not to mention getting things like wierd handhelds and wierd printers in the office to talk, you think there is a linux driver for the Sharp copier/scanner/fax/printer I have upstairs? Sharp could barely make it interact with windows, let alone releasing drivers for the other 5% of the office environment, and then linux after that.

I have a multimedia server that runs server 2003 at home, I set it up in less than hour including the install time for Server 2003, that wouldnt even give me time to update the ports collection in BSD. Not to mention the constant tweaking and installing to make it play nice with the 4 XP boxes in my house......and my xbox 360.

Vista is of course sketchy righ tnow, most places have SHIT drivers for it, and DX10 is brand new and completely different from DX9, its supposed to be AMAZING, atleast thats what alot of game developers are saying......

give it a few more weeks, the only reason OSX as so bulletproof when it launched is because of how clamped down Apple has the market on periferals for their products, which is basically apple or nothing. Its the same reason that a BSD install is rock solid, the kernel was configured for that ONE MACHINE

Post by **Hooligan** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 3:29 pm

haunter, almost any peripheral for a pc will run with no problems on a mac and have been since the release of OS X.

silver · Post by **silver** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 7:00 pm

Kinda depends on which version of OSX you're talking about. For instance my Epson 4490 PHOTO scanner has the following drivers avaialble : Macintosh OS X (v10.2.8 or later), Intel-based Macs with OS X (v10.4.4 or later).

It's pretty much the same for the printer/scanner/copier widgets.

That basically means to me that it's only compatible with certain revisions of OSX which has often been the case with Apple. Windows has far, far better backward compatibility.

Post by **Hooligan** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 3:09 pm

don't know about that, every firm i have ever been at has been mostly mac based without any problems running legacy or new equipment. the current design firm i'm with has a good selection of publishing equipment and again, no issues. in fact, for most epson equipment we have we didn't even have to install drivers.

straygator · Post by **straygator** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 1:07 am

Oh boy you guys sure sound like you know your stuff, so I'm going to request some simple advice. My laptops harddrive is about to fail again. It's a Toshiba P25 and the first HDD may have failed because it bounced around so much in the truck ... up 2', a 270 roll and down 3' to the floor ... more than once. So I bought a panasonic 100 gig and within 2 months I got a notice that the HDD was about to fail (press F1to continue) everytime I booted up ... so now I never shut it off. This happened without any severe bounces, just the normal big rig constant jolts. I was told that larger capacity drives are more delicate because to put more information in the same space requires everything to be tighter with smaller tolerances. So I'd like a suggestion as to what size and make to purchase for the machine to run the OS (XP Media Center), apps ect and some games (flight sims) then I'd like to buy a LARGE external drive to store the media stuff. I thought I saw one that could download without the PC running, had it's own power and all. I listen to XM ALL day long and the unit can capture up to 5 hours of programming. I'm always saving great stuff and then recording over it. I'm here in LA just 2 miles from FRYS, a great place to get something NOW. I spend 2-3 hrs/day on this thing and would like to give it the BEST.
I sure appreciate all suggestions and am glad so many of you know so much. I really don't trust sales personal at most retail bussinesses.

Thanks to all,
Paul

PS just had my battery fail

haunter · Post by **haunter** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:28 am

Hooligan wrote:haunter, almost any peripheral for a pc will run with no problems on a mac and have been since the release of OS X.

which is good for you, unless you like 1 button mouses with no scroll wheel.

I was refering more to actual componets not peripherals, mobo, ecu, ram type etc....ALOT less variables

ExupElvis · Post by **ExupElvis** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 1:37 pm

I'll be interested to see how this Vista thing shakes out.
If I had to cast a vote today based on what I've seen and heard so far, I'd have to say I think it will be short lived, or at least not quite what M/S is promoting it to be.

Still, running Slackware on a Duo-Core box isn't all that much fun either.
All those driver issues are real, and I have to fight with them just to get anything to happen.

I've been reading a lot lately about software/hardware alliances, who owns who this week, and how that is affecting the end consumer market.

It's anybody's guess how well Vista is going to run on Intel/Nvidia as compared to Amd/Ati..............but it looks like that is how things are shaping up for the imediate future, (and stranger still since those second tier chip makers are now supplying the onboard chipsets to some degree) - and with Mac's now ported to X86 type hardware........................this thing could be a long way from being sorted out.

(xorg.conf really isn't all that hard to learn....

)

silver · Post by **silver** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 5:58 pm

ExupElvis wrote: (xorg.conf really isn't all that hard to learn.... )

LOL !

I can't believe it took me 3 hours of tweaking xorg and researching the issue on my wifes system to get dual monitors to display from my ATI X600 video card.

Re: Vista. Well it's the next MS platform. XP was great for its day however a 5.5 year old OS is like a 20 year old car. Too old to be updated and not old enough to be a real antique.

silver · Post by **silver** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 12:02 pm

About that Vista ....

http://www.iusevista.com/

genesis_rider · Post by **genesis_rider** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:00 pm

FZRDude wrote: I have a K6 133mhz running Win95 and a 233mhz running Win98.

this is EXACTLY why we should just deem tim a god right now....

lol vista is ok, looks nice but im NOT impressed with any of the coding behind it. The way they did the video is for complete SHIT! I runnin a homade version of Vista "lite" on a quad core and SLI setup and it still has a noticable system resource drain!
Microsoft has MONEY, it took them what 6 years (ish) to go from xp to vista?? I understand the problems paving the road (longhorn...etc) but still im not impressed!! Vista is XP with a graphic intense UI skin, for $200

lol sry i got my 2 cents out now

genesis_rider · Post by **genesis_rider** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:19 pm

straygator wrote:Oh boy you guys sure sound like you know your stuff, so I'm going to request some simple advice. My laptops harddrive is about to fail again. It's a Toshiba P25 and the first HDD may have failed because it bounced around so much in the truck ... up 2', a 270 roll and down 3' to the floor ... more than once. So I bought a panasonic 100 gig and within 2 months I got a notice that the HDD was about to fail (press F1to continue) everytime I booted up ... so now I never shut it off. This happened without any severe bounces, just the normal big rig constant jolts. I was told that larger capacity drives are more delicate because to put more information in the same space requires everything to be tighter with smaller tolerances. So I'd like a suggestion as to what size and make to purchase for the machine to run the OS (XP Media Center), apps ect and some games (flight sims) then I'd like to buy a LARGE external drive to store the media stuff. I thought I saw one that could download without the PC running, had it's own power and all. I listen to XM ALL day long and the unit can capture up to 5 hours of programming. I'm always saving great stuff and then recording over it. I'm here in LA just 2 miles from FRYS, a great place to get something NOW. I spend 2-3 hrs/day on this thing and would like to give it the BEST.
I sure appreciate all suggestions and am glad so many of you know so much. I really don't trust sales personal at most retail bussinesses.

Thanks to all,
Paul

PS just had my battery fail

paul, from what i read i think you have a few issues to address! One is defining the "best"...the other is do you have an issue with durability?

Durability: The theory you brought up, larger hard drives are less reliable due to compacting more parts- This is true is some instances and no much in others. Imagine a hard drive as a (very nice) cd burner with 4 or 5 cdrw's. When you delete a file, it doesnt actually get taken off your hd it simply is marked to be "burned" over. Now with this said, the difference between say a 20gig and a 100gig is going to be much better write disks in there, not nescelarly more parts. If you want to go with a traditional hard drive (the ones im describing) id HIGHLY recomend western digital caviar, they are VERY solid drives,and have unmatched durability. Drive interface is no variable in terms of this (sata, ata, raid0...w/e) then again on a laptop you done need to worry about that any way.

The best: This is a hard point to address considering their are some rediculously expensive, yet very cool, options out there. One that is just starting to become affordable is a full flash style hard drive. Imagine a pen drive, but serving as a hard drive. A 100 gig (not the largest but should offer ample storage spce) would run like $300, the main advantage to this is 1) its faster (can be faster) 2) NO MOVING PARTS, THUS FAILURE RATE IS ALMOST 0! and 3) its silent and runs cooler (not much of an issue in a laptop ne way) if you REALLY wana go for the best theres some seriosly good designs out there that i know pretty much nothing about their mechanics/reliability - but check out tiger or new egg they have some 1/2 terrabyte hard drives - which is insane

either way good luck!

genesis_rider · Post by **genesis_rider** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:22 pm

Yoniboi wrote: I'm looking at buying a HP s7730 for most of the reasons that Silver outlined.
I 'just' want it to play games, films, deal with photos from my P&S, run quiet, be unobtrusive, serve as an office, work with my printer and let me connect to EXUPBROTHERHOOD without any headaches. Nothing really.

watch out for "name brands" - you can get a custom built for about 1/2 tthe price!...i build- if not google "custom desktop"...you would be very surprised at the prices! and it doesnt come with bullshit software you will never need/use...which only serves the purpose of chewing up system resources ne way

silver · Post by **silver** » Fri Feb 15, 2008 10:00 pm

For my portables, I buy Dell and simply wipe the drives and reinstall the bare OS, drivers and softwares I need. I've done this since '99. I still build my desktop systems however I wouldn't have any problem with buying a Dell Vostro 400 which I recommended for a friend and it pleasantly arrived without all the crapola these companies tend to load at the factory. It's also a very upgradeable system. He uses it for a graphics workstation.

Regarding " .. you can get a custom built for about 1/2 the price!.". I've seen a lot of custom workstations in my time and the ones that come in under OEM price are usually a much cheaper build. Face it, custom one-off chops can't compete with companies that are shipping 30,000 systems a day. Shear economics of scale. If it were otherwise, I'd be running my own business. The only time it makes since to build a system today is when you want something really high-end such as a quad-core graphic workstation for doing CAD or video rendering.

Regarding flash drives, it'll be another 5 years before they're ready for prime time. And I just installed 2 x 250GB drives in a RAID0 and the out-of-pocket which came to the whopping total price of $156 which is less than half what I paid for a 2.5GB drive in 1997. Check out :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145213

By the way, don't take the flash drive failure rate as gospel. They fail just the same as regular hard drives do. In fact they start failing the minute you use them. Also the primary failing component that fails on a hard drive isn't the storage itself but rather the controller.

Lastly your analogy on HDD's vs CD-ROM's is OK but remember that HDD's are much simple and in fact most recently developed drives only have either 1 or 2 disks in them. Adding disks is an extremely expensive way of adding capacity for the drive manufacturers as more disks means more heat/higher failure rate, more parts/higher cost of assembly. Instead they have increased the aerial density from 0.004 Gbits/in2 in the first PC's to 185 Gbits/in2 in the currenly shipping systems.

genesis_rider · Post by **genesis_rider** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 1:07 am

this is the part where i say listen to silver cauz he knows what the hell hes talking about

well put silver