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#46
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
In ,
BillW50 wrote: In , Paul wrote: J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: In message , glee writes: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message ... snip (Can't they be "told" it's a single-core processor they're running on?) [Avira seems OK here.] snip Avira is the only AV that I can get to run on really old XP systems with 512MB RAM or less and an older processor, without it bogging down the entire system. (Good to know - I think - that I'm using a light one.) How do you mean, "tell" the program it's on a single core? I was referring to the suggestion someone made that most AV 'wares these days assume they're on a multicore system, and cause heavy load if run on a single-core system. I was wondering if they might have a setting to prevent them trying to multiprocess. (Probably not, as presumably it should be possible to do it - the detection of whether multicore or not - automatically, so if they don't, they're not going to bother.) In Windows, you can use Task Manager and the "Affinity" setting, to force an executable to stay on a particular core. On a multicore system, that would effectively reduce the loading on the system. On a single core system, Affinity is not going to help you as you only have one core to begin with. Task Manager also has "priority" settings, and you can experiment with cranking down the priority setting. If two processes want to run 100% on the same core, they split 50:50. If you drop the priority of one process by one notch, then one process might get 75% while the other gets 25%. So priority doesn't prevent one from running entirely, it just changes the balance between the two. If you use too extreme a setting, sometimes a potential side effect is a deadlock in the system. So don't get carried away. But an AV program, isn't going to tolerate being manipulated like that. AV programs are pretty sensitive, and they have to be able to defend themselves against any potential malware attack. Undoing Task Manager changes, would be childs play for them. They're armor plated. Oh man! Manually adjusting the priority almost never works well. What works better is software designed to automatically adjust the priorities on the fly. As they automatically lower them if they are using too much and bring them back up when they are using too little. Why Windows doesn't have something like this built in, who knows. What is funny is back in the Windows 3.x days, many claimed that cooperative tasking was crap and preemptive tasking was great. And Windows 3.1 didn't preemptive task anything but non-Windows applications like DOS. I personally loved cooperative tasking and I thought it worked really well. Although the tasking was dependent on all of the applications to play nicely together. And the vast majority of them did. The few ones that didn't well were not good programs IMHO and I wouldn't bother using. So now Windows 95 comes along and does preemptive tasking for 32 bit Windows applications only. Many thought this was so great, I did not. Now the applications had no say about how much CPU power they needed, but now an OS who had no clue what the application was doing anyway did say so when to start and stop (that is like having an idiot as a boss). Now it is like you are working on something and you only needed a few msec and you were done and the OS comes along and says you're done before you finish. I never saw this as a good thing, despite my peers back then. Well, well, well... 17 years later with preemptive tasking and it just isn't working so well. And all of those big promises how well life was going to be and now it turns out that preemptive tasking just isn't working well at all. Who would have guessed besides me who said it wasn't going to work well? And where are those bozos who thought preemptive tasking was our savior anyway? Yes back in the cooperative tasking days, one bad apple that didn't play well with others ruined it for everybody else. And now we have had 17 years of preemptive tasking and nothing changed. Still one bad apple still ruins it for everybody. But it is worse now. It is like you are about to take a bite of your favorite meal and get right to your mouth and the OS says stop, it is somebody else's turn and you have to wait. :-( -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2 Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3 |
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
... snip I was saying that if software is written to multiprocess, i. e. assume that it has multiple cores to run on, then running it on a single core will make it run inefficiently - and I was saying that ideally the software ought to run in a different _way_ - one thing at a time - if it is told (or, ideally, detects) that it is running on a single-core system. snip I'm pretty sure no software writers and developers give a rat's nose if you have an older single core system or less than 1GB RAM. If you do, as far as they're concerned, you need to upgrade your hardware. They simply don't write for older hardware, just like, for the most part, they don't support older operating systems with their newer versions. -- Glen Ventura MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009 CompTIA A+ |
#48
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
In ,
glee wrote: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message ... snip I was saying that if software is written to multiprocess, i. e. assume that it has multiple cores to run on, then running it on a single core will make it run inefficiently - and I was saying that ideally the software ought to run in a different _way_ - one thing at a time - if it is told (or, ideally, detects) that it is running on a single-core system. snip I'm pretty sure no software writers and developers give a rat's nose if you have an older single core system or less than 1GB RAM. If you do, as far as they're concerned, you need to upgrade your hardware. They simply don't write for older hardware, just like, for the most part, they don't support older operating systems with their newer versions. True, but it bites them in the ass. As it is a two way street. I have seen this over and over again. When programmers don't care about the user's wishes, their income end up dropping. Only experienced programmers realize this. The newer programmers don't get it and have to learn the hard way. But they will blame it on something else of course and might never learn. Microsoft had played this game and balanced it very well all the way up to XP. Then things changed. I personally think all of the older programmers retired and there are only new programmers left who doesn't know any better. So this is going to be a real test for Microsoft to see how fast those newbies can learn this hard lesson. It isn't all about Microsoft of course, that was just an example. There are some software developers out there that still get it. Although I am not sure if the future there will be any left. -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2 Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3 |
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
Per BillW50:
When programmers don't care about the user's wishes, their income end up dropping. I had a really good (second-longest employed contractor in the place) run at a major mutual fund based, I think, completely on my attention to user's wishes. I'm not that great a developer, but my motto the expression that a former co-worker coined: "I don't sell programming. I sell happiness." -- Pete Cresswell |
#50
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
In ,
(PeteCresswell) wrote: Per BillW50: When programmers don't care about the user's wishes, their income end up dropping. I had a really good (second-longest employed contractor in the place) run at a major mutual fund based, I think, completely on my attention to user's wishes. I'm not that great a developer, but my motto the expression that a former co-worker coined: "I don't sell programming. I sell happiness." Aww... I love it! ;-) -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2 Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3 |
#51
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
BillW50 wrote:
What is funny is back in the Windows 3.x days, many claimed that cooperative tasking was crap and preemptive tasking was great. And Windows 3.1 didn't preemptive task anything but non-Windows applications like DOS. I personally loved cooperative tasking and I thought it worked really well. Although the tasking was dependent on all of the applications to play nicely together. And the vast majority of them did. The few ones that didn't well were not good programs IMHO and I wouldn't bother using. So now Windows 95 comes along and does preemptive tasking for 32 bit Windows applications only. Many thought this was so great, I did not. Now the applications had no say about how much CPU power they needed, but now an OS who had no clue what the application was doing anyway did say so when to start and stop (that is like having an idiot as a boss). Now it is like you are working on something and you only needed a few msec and you were done and the OS comes along and says you're done before you finish. I never saw this as a good thing, despite my peers back then. Well, well, well... 17 years later with preemptive tasking and it just isn't working so well. And all of those big promises how well life was going to be and now it turns out that preemptive tasking just isn't working well at all. Who would have guessed besides me who said it wasn't going to work well? And where are those bozos who thought preemptive tasking was our savior anyway? Yes back in the cooperative tasking days, one bad apple that didn't play well with others ruined it for everybody else. And now we have had 17 years of preemptive tasking and nothing changed. Still one bad apple still ruins it for everybody. But it is worse now. It is like you are about to take a bite of your favorite meal and get right to your mouth and the OS says stop, it is somebody else's turn and you have to wait. :-( Preemptive multitasking, is to *guarantee* correct operation, and keep the kernel standing on its feet. They didn't do it for fun. It was done, to allow building systems with "uptimes" longer than 24 hours. If you compare MacOS 9 (cooperative) versus MacOSX (preemptive), the difference is night and day. Twice a day, with the cooperative one, I'd be down in Macsbug, trying to keep my computer running. The preemptive OS is like a breath of fresh air by comparison. I never have to rescue it. Paul |
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
On Sat, 28 Apr 2012 13:50:45 -0500, BillW50 wrote:
In , Stefan Patric typed: On Sat, 28 Apr 2012 08:12:41 -0500, BillW50 wrote: [Big snip] I disagree that 900MHz isn't enough for any arbitrary video playback. As [snip] My Asus EeePC 701/2 netbooks are underclocked to 633MHz. And they too can keep up with arbitrary video playback without missing a beat under Windows XP, even on an external monitor running 1440x900. Oddly enough, Linux on the same machine can't even come close. Which Linux distro? The one originally installed? Xandros, I think it was. Awful. I've got a EeePC 900 (900mHz Celeron, 1GB RAM, 4GB+16GB SSDs) on which I installed Eeebuntu 3.x (an optimize version of Ubuntu for the EeePC) wiping out the original Xandros, and it now plays any video, etc. without problems. What a difference overall compared to Xandros. Stef Xandros, Ubuntu 8.10 netbook edition, Ubuntu 9.10 netbook edition, and Puppy Linux. And I really liked Xandros, especially in easy mode which boots in 20 seconds. Although the wireless to connect had taken an extra minute. You could only use Firefox 2.0 tops with Xandros without updating the kernel, and that makes Xandros unusable to me as is. As Firefox 2.0 displays webpages worse than IE6 does. Xandros was just too old, too, on my 900. And there were no newer versions. That's one of the reasons why I replaced it with Eeebuntu 3.0. Unfortunately, Eeebuntu was based on Ubuntu 9.04, which went End of Life last year, and along with that the repositories were removed. And as Eeebuntu used them, not having its own . . . Well, that makes it all the harder to keep it usable. (If only for security reasons, I should upgrade Chrome and Firefox and Flash as they are all at least two years old.) I suppose in the future I'll be forced to install another OS on the old EeePC. (Or retire it to my junk closet.) Don't know what it will be. Eeebuntu was the only version of Linux I found--at the time--that was specifically configured from the ground up for the EeePC, so everything worked out-of-the-box. And it did. No glitches at all. No fixes required. No tweaks needed. I was delightfully surprised. Stef |
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
Thanks everyone.
As I mentioned, surfing the internet is slow right from the beginning of reformat and install, and it just gets worse. When I said "Ctrl+Alt+Del" doesn't work I was thinking in terms of turning my PC off *after* it freezes up. (But obviously in XP that is not what it is supposed to do). Nevertheless, it does usually brings up the Task Manager, but that may freeze also, necessitating an unplug. In the "Task Manager" Firefox appears to use the most memory at over 235k. (Perhaps because I have a lot of tabs open at the moment). I have 31 items under "Processes" and when I refresh a window it will shoot up to 100% under the "Performance" tab. BTW. The system has Windows XP SP2.(I no longer bother with Windows updates). I even uninstalled Google Chrome because of scripts which kept trying to run even though I was only using Firefox. As for hard drives, I've used different ones after each install, and always have two in the system. A 20G and a 40G. (Not including the 500G USB drive). I'm only using about 1/3 of the space on my 40Gig "C" drive. http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l...equoiaView.jpg I'll ditch AVG and go with either Avast! again or Avira. A pointer to how to turn off processes would also be appreciated. I wish there was a way to avoid all scripts which are a main culprit in freezing up my system. I only get individual options to stop the script from running until the next one pops up. Obviously this system cannot handle the internet efficiently anymore. http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l...arcAdvisor.jpg I'm going to have to ditch this Dell XPS-Z Pentium III and build up the hardware I already have, which include either a Dell 8400, HP 7955, or an ASUS A7V8X motherboard I can put in a case I have. All have have a minimum of 2.8Ghz processors. I'll just have to make sure the memory is maxed out or at least over 1G on whatever I system use, and of course use a graphics card. A dozen years ago internet speed on my 486 using dial-up beat the crap out of the 1Ghz+ DSL systems I've used over the last decade. (Perhaps I should dig out and stick to using Windows98 on one of these older systems). At the moment and as per "Speakeasy" my DSL speed is 1.57Mbps(Upload) & .58Mbps(Download). According to Verizon I should get 3Mbps max, but they conveniently don't say what the minimum is. Thanks a lot. Darren Harris Staten Island, New York. |
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
"Searcher7" wrote in message
... Thanks everyone. snip In the "Task Manager" Firefox appears to use the most memory at over 235k. (Perhaps because I have a lot of tabs open at the moment). I have 31 items under "Processes" and when I refresh a window it will shoot up to 100% under the "Performance" tab. snip In Task Manager, while on the Processes tab, click the View menu Select Columns, put a check in the boxes for Virtual Memory Size and GDI Objects, and click OK. You may find rather high Virtual Memory usage for some apps (like Firefox) as well as for GDI Objects.... this will tell you more about what is slowing it down that just looking at Mem Usage. snip As for hard drives, I've used different ones after each install, and always have two in the system. A 20G and a 40G. (Not including the 500G USB drive). I'm only using about 1/3 of the space on my 40Gig "C" drive. http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l...equoiaView.jpg snip ....and what were the results of the Hitachi Drive Fitness Test (DFT) on both internal drives, that I mentioned earlier? http://www.hitachigst.com/support/downloads/#DFT -- Glen Ventura MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009 CompTIA A+ |
#55
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
In ,
Paul wrote: BillW50 wrote: What is funny is back in the Windows 3.x days, many claimed that cooperative tasking was crap and preemptive tasking was great. And Windows 3.1 didn't preemptive task anything but non-Windows applications like DOS. I personally loved cooperative tasking and I thought it worked really well. Although the tasking was dependent on all of the applications to play nicely together. And the vast majority of them did. The few ones that didn't well were not good programs IMHO and I wouldn't bother using. So now Windows 95 comes along and does preemptive tasking for 32 bit Windows applications only. Many thought this was so great, I did not. Now the applications had no say about how much CPU power they needed, but now an OS who had no clue what the application was doing anyway did say so when to start and stop (that is like having an idiot as a boss). Now it is like you are working on something and you only needed a few msec and you were done and the OS comes along and says you're done before you finish. I never saw this as a good thing, despite my peers back then. Well, well, well... 17 years later with preemptive tasking and it just isn't working so well. And all of those big promises how well life was going to be and now it turns out that preemptive tasking just isn't working well at all. Who would have guessed besides me who said it wasn't going to work well? And where are those bozos who thought preemptive tasking was our savior anyway? Yes back in the cooperative tasking days, one bad apple that didn't play well with others ruined it for everybody else. And now we have had 17 years of preemptive tasking and nothing changed. Still one bad apple still ruins it for everybody. But it is worse now. It is like you are about to take a bite of your favorite meal and get right to your mouth and the OS says stop, it is somebody else's turn and you have to wait. :-( Preemptive multitasking, is to *guarantee* correct operation, and keep the kernel standing on its feet. They didn't do it for fun. It was done, to allow building systems with "uptimes" longer than 24 hours. If you compare MacOS 9 (cooperative) versus MacOSX (preemptive), the difference is night and day. Twice a day, with the cooperative one, I'd be down in Macsbug, trying to keep my computer running. The preemptive OS is like a breath of fresh air by comparison. I never have to rescue it. Paul I didn't see any of that with Windows. As far as stability went, each newer Windows version was slightly better than the previous version. But the change between cooperative vs. preemptive I didn't see anything better as far as stability goes. Okay only in one area. And that was one cooperative application could crash and take the rest of that session with all of the other cooperative applications along with it. Although I just stayed away from poorly written software and I didn't have that problem. And one big disadvantage with preemptive tasking that I found was that multitasking and task switching got much slower compared to cooperative tasking. Things were very snappy under cooperative tasking with 386 and 486 machines. Although when Windows started to use preemptive tasking, those slower processors just couldn't cut it anymore. Under today's machines with so much processor power, you probably couldn't see the speed difference anymore. And my only big beef with stability with the Windows 3.x and Windows 9x OS was the limit of resource heaps which I never seemed to have enough of. Sure if you just booted up, it probably would be fine for a few hours until the heaps got low. And the quickest way to reset the heaps was to reboot. -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2 Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3 |
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
BillW50 wrote:
In , Paul wrote: BillW50 wrote: What is funny is back in the Windows 3.x days, many claimed that cooperative tasking was crap and preemptive tasking was great. And Windows 3.1 didn't preemptive task anything but non-Windows applications like DOS. I personally loved cooperative tasking and I thought it worked really well. Although the tasking was dependent on all of the applications to play nicely together. And the vast majority of them did. The few ones that didn't well were not good programs IMHO and I wouldn't bother using. So now Windows 95 comes along and does preemptive tasking for 32 bit Windows applications only. Many thought this was so great, I did not. Now the applications had no say about how much CPU power they needed, but now an OS who had no clue what the application was doing anyway did say so when to start and stop (that is like having an idiot as a boss). Now it is like you are working on something and you only needed a few msec and you were done and the OS comes along and says you're done before you finish. I never saw this as a good thing, despite my peers back then. Well, well, well... 17 years later with preemptive tasking and it just isn't working so well. And all of those big promises how well life was going to be and now it turns out that preemptive tasking just isn't working well at all. Who would have guessed besides me who said it wasn't going to work well? And where are those bozos who thought preemptive tasking was our savior anyway? Yes back in the cooperative tasking days, one bad apple that didn't play well with others ruined it for everybody else. And now we have had 17 years of preemptive tasking and nothing changed. Still one bad apple still ruins it for everybody. But it is worse now. It is like you are about to take a bite of your favorite meal and get right to your mouth and the OS says stop, it is somebody else's turn and you have to wait. :-( Preemptive multitasking, is to *guarantee* correct operation, and keep the kernel standing on its feet. They didn't do it for fun. It was done, to allow building systems with "uptimes" longer than 24 hours. If you compare MacOS 9 (cooperative) versus MacOSX (preemptive), the difference is night and day. Twice a day, with the cooperative one, I'd be down in Macsbug, trying to keep my computer running. The preemptive OS is like a breath of fresh air by comparison. I never have to rescue it. Paul I didn't see any of that with Windows. As far as stability went, each newer Windows version was slightly better than the previous version. But the change between cooperative vs. preemptive I didn't see anything better as far as stability goes. Okay only in one area. And that was one cooperative application could crash and take the rest of that session with all of the other cooperative applications along with it. Although I just stayed away from poorly written software and I didn't have that problem. And one big disadvantage with preemptive tasking that I found was that multitasking and task switching got much slower compared to cooperative tasking. Things were very snappy under cooperative tasking with 386 and 486 machines. Although when Windows started to use preemptive tasking, those slower processors just couldn't cut it anymore. Under today's machines with so much processor power, you probably couldn't see the speed difference anymore. And my only big beef with stability with the Windows 3.x and Windows 9x OS was the limit of resource heaps which I never seemed to have enough of. Sure if you just booted up, it probably would be fine for a few hours until the heaps got low. And the quickest way to reset the heaps was to reboot. You would have to compare your recollection, to concepts like this. The tickless scheduler, which uses timers for keeping track of things. Linux has an option like this too (it cost them a lot of changes to their source code). The idea, is to no longer rely on steady clock tick interrupts, to drive the scheduler. When the system is sleeping between activities, it means the processor can go into a deeper C-state (and be awakened by an aperiodic timer, rather than by a clock tick). http://www.sandia.gov/tiros/ The problem, is finding good articles, that compare the characteristics, and provide diagrams of how scheduler slots can be used. A program can still "cooperate" with the OS. For example, if I write some code, and do sleep() or issue a HLT instruction, that passes control from my program back to the OS. Then, depending on how the scheduler works, either the end of the scheduling period can be used for something else, or not... It's possible your recollection is for preemption where scheduling slots aren't being entirely used. And that would lead to slightly more waste. Back in the day, another issue was the complexity of the scheduler. It was possible to design "more fair" schedulers, or "more efficient" schedulers, but you couldn't have both. The idea, was to keep the number of CPU cycles used by the scheduler itself, to say, 3 to 5%, so the scheduler wouldn't be wasting your available processor. I can't say now, how those metrics compare, and how much waste there is on a modern processor, due to the scheduler itself. A "strict priority" scheduler, versus a "round robin" scheduler, might have had implications for meeting those kinds of performance targets. I think our OS used "strict priority", and that was the designer justification of it (slightly lower overhead, with a less sophisticated scheduler). The processors at the time, might have been around 25MHz or so. Paul |
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
Searcher7 wrote:
Thanks everyone. As I mentioned, surfing the internet is slow right from the beginning of reformat and install, and it just gets worse. When I said "Ctrl+Alt+Del" doesn't work I was thinking in terms of turning my PC off after it freezes up. (But obviously in XP that is not what it is supposed to do). Nevertheless, it does usually brings up the Task Manager, but that may freeze also, necessitating an unplug. In the "Task Manager" Firefox appears to use the most memory at over 235k. (Perhaps because I have a lot of tabs open at the moment). I have 31 items under "Processes" and when I refresh a window it will shoot up to 100% under the "Performance" tab. Which version of FF? Keep in mind FF has always been a memory glutton and in old versions people kept referring to an unidentified memory leak that the user would have to shut down FF to reset memory, IIRC. BTW. The system has Windows XP SP2.(I no longer bother with Windows updates). I even uninstalled Google Chrome because of scripts which kept trying to run even though I was only using Firefox. I run WinXP, SP3 and recommend updating to it from SP2. I've been using SP3 for so long that I can't tell you the exact things I saw different between the two, but I use FF 10 with a number of add-ons for my browsing and don't have the same issues you mention. FF still uses more memory than seems reasonable to me, IMO. As for hard drives, I've used different ones after each install, and always have two in the system. A 20G and a 40G. (Not including the 500G USB drive). I'm only using about 1/3 of the space on my 40Gig "C" drive. http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l...equoiaView.jpg I'll ditch AVG and go with either Avast! again or Avira. A pointer to how to turn off processes would also be appreciated. I wish there was a way to avoid all scripts which are a main culprit in freezing up my system. I only get individual options to stop the script from running until the next one pops up. There are several options, the simplest using task manager. Under the processes tab, task manager allows you to view a number of variables. At the bottom is a clickbox that allows you to terminate a process - Not really a good idea unless you know what the process does. You can use the process name in google to discover more about what the process does. I've found it useful to also pay attention to how many processes are running - task manager tells you. Over time, you'll get a feel for that. On my pc, it's usually around 32 whereas on my laptop it's around 40. Those number are specific to my eqpt and will probably differ from yours. Alternatively, take a look at Microsoft's Sysinternals page. It has a number of very good programs to help analyze and manage your O/S. I don't have the URL handy. Obviously this system cannot handle the internet efficiently anymore. http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/l...arcAdvisor.jpg I'm going to have to ditch this Dell XPS-Z Pentium III and build up the hardware I already have, which include either a Dell 8400, HP 7955, or an ASUS A7V8X motherboard I can put in a case I have. All have have a minimum of 2.8Ghz processors. I'll just have to make sure the memory is maxed out or at least over 1G on whatever I system use, and of course use a graphics card. Your choice, but from the info you've given, it seems like upping your memory to 1Gb might give it new legs. You'd have to balance that against the cost of the replacement and upgrade of your eqpt. It is always nice to have newer eqpt, but I'm still not sure the case has been made that your computer cannot handle the net anymore. I'd start with some basic things. One, upgrade to SP3. Two, check your pagefile size settings. Three, doublecheck your FF settings (because your post suggests that that is your default browser). Perhaps test out how it feels if FF blocks automatic image downloads. AFAIK, you have to have IE 8 installed for SP3, but you don't have to use it. Use something such as Microsoft Sysinternals to look at what starts up when you boot up your pc. Note that Sysinternals may require a bit of learning curve; the various programs give a lot of info. I'm by no means knowledgeable about everything it does, so I just focus on the start up section. Four, use something like CCleaner to delete trash off your hard drives and to scan for registry issues. Five, doublecheck that your trash bin is empty. I for one keep forgetting that moving something to trash bin does not delete the file; that has to be done separately. Those are free things that require spending time, not money. If you're still not satisfied, then choose if you want to spend your money either to buy more ram as a last ditch effort or to buy eqpt to replace/update your pc. A dozen years ago internet speed on my 486 using dial-up beat the crap out of the 1Ghz+ DSL systems I've used over the last decade. (Perhaps I should dig out and stick to using Windows98 on one of these older systems). At the moment and as per "Speakeasy" my DSL speed is 1.57Mbps(Upload) & .58Mbps(Download). According to Verizon I should get 3Mbps max, but they conveniently don't say what the minimum is. Thanks a lot. Darren Harris Staten Island, New York. |
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
In ,
Yes wrote: Searcher7 wrote: I run WinXP, SP3 and recommend updating to it from SP2... I'd start with some basic things. One, upgrade to SP3... You know I have over a dozen XP machines here with almost all of them have been updated to SP3 years ago. But if I had to do it all over again, I don't think I would. As most already know, making any changes to an OS carries a risk of causing stability problems. And since the day Vista was released, Microsoft has not shown any evidence that they care about any stability problems that any security patch causes with XP. As when SP3 broke compacting with OE6, Microsoft just didn't care and never bothered to fix it. That is only one example, but you get the idea. As far as security updates protecting you from infections, I too believed this was true too. But over the years I started to have doubts about this since I wasn't seeing any real evidence. I've been running Windows since '93 and I never had an infection on any of my computers yet. And on some of my computers I have stopped security updates for years now and still I never had an infection. There must be a reason for this? -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2 Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3 |
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
"BillW50" wrote in message ... In , snip You know I have over a dozen XP machines here with almost all of them have been updated to SP3 years ago. But if I had to do it all over again, I don't think I would. As most already know, making any changes to an OS carries a risk of causing stability problems. And since the day Vista was released, Microsoft has not shown any evidence that they care about any stability problems that any security patch causes with XP. As when SP3 broke compacting with OE6, Microsoft just didn't care and never bothered to fix it. That is only one example, but you get the idea. SP3 didn't break compacting in OE. There is a Registry counter that gives you a prompt to compact after 100 closings of OE. There were a few programs that interacted with the counter after SP3 was installed, causing the counter to increase more quickly than just with OE closings. I've not seen the issue on any systems I have worked on since SP3 was released, others have. Apparently some Nero plug-ins could increase the count but I never saw it and I have been using Nero for years, the Mailwasher program interfered, and supposedly installing Windows Live Mail also affected the counter. The counter can be manually reset through a registry edit, and Tom Koch made a tool that manually compacted on demand and also reset the counter at the same time. None of these are necessary, if you don't use Mailwasher or install WLM. As far as security updates protecting you from infections, I too believed this was true too. But over the years I started to have doubts about this since I wasn't seeing any real evidence. I've been running Windows since '93 and I never had an infection on any of my computers yet. And on some of my computers I have stopped security updates for years now and still I never had an infection. There must be a reason for this? Famous last words: I don't install security updates and I never had an infection. But others have, even with updates installed, because so many infections are due to social engineering. If you are smarter than the average bear and practice Safe Hex, you are unlikely to get an infection. Most users need the security updates. By not installing them, you leave yourself open to getting pwned due to a security hole, and you and your AV will never know. -- Glen Ventura MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009 CompTIA A+ |
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Hardware Requirements for Internet PC
In ,
glee wrote: "BillW50" wrote in message ... In , snip You know I have over a dozen XP machines here with almost all of them have been updated to SP3 years ago. But if I had to do it all over again, I don't think I would. As most already know, making any changes to an OS carries a risk of causing stability problems. And since the day Vista was released, Microsoft has not shown any evidence that they care about any stability problems that any security patch causes with XP. As when SP3 broke compacting with OE6, Microsoft just didn't care and never bothered to fix it. That is only one example, but you get the idea. SP3 didn't break compacting in OE. There is a Registry counter that gives you a prompt to compact after 100 closings of OE. There were a few programs that interacted with the counter after SP3 was installed, causing the counter to increase more quickly than just with OE closings. I've not seen the issue on any systems I have worked on since SP3 was released, others have. Apparently some Nero plug-ins could increase the count but I never saw it and I have been using Nero for years, the Mailwasher program interfered, and supposedly installing Windows Live Mail also affected the counter. The counter can be manually reset through a registry edit, and Tom Koch made a tool that manually compacted on demand and also reset the counter at the same time. None of these are necessary, if you don't use Mailwasher or install WLM. Oh boy! Yes SP3 did break compacting with OE6. As the newsgroups lit up about this problem when SP3 was first released. And Bruce Hagen often talked about it. I didn't see it at first, but I did finally run into it (actually years after having SP3 installed). What I had seen happen is it actually compacts just fine at first and the very last thing it tries to update is folders.dbx. But it can't and an error message states it is in use by another application. Here read this: http://www.outlookforums.com/threads...compact-files/ I don't actually follow Bruce's advice though. As all of the years I've used OE, I almost never compact and I personally haven't ran into a single problem not doing so. But I don't doubt for a second that others can and do have problems. Oh yeah, my fix is to tell OE to go offline and close OE down. Then reopen it and OE won't be doing anything but just sit there. Now compact and don't do anything else with OE until it is done. And that always worked for me so far. And yes I know all about the counter and how it works and all. And I might be wrong here, but I thought the counter thing was put in there by SP2 and not SP3. As far as security updates protecting you from infections, I too believed this was true too. But over the years I started to have doubts about this since I wasn't seeing any real evidence. I've been running Windows since '93 and I never had an infection on any of my computers yet. And on some of my computers I have stopped security updates for years now and still I never had an infection. There must be a reason for this? Famous last words: I don't install security updates and I never had an infection. But others have, even with updates installed, because so many infections are due to social engineering. If you are smarter than the average bear and practice Safe Hex, you are unlikely to get an infection. Most users need the security updates. By not installing them, you leave yourself open to getting pwned due to a security hole, and you and your AV will never know. I understand all of this. And I base my opinion on testing on about 6 computers for over 5 years. And if not updating someday becomes fool hardy, no problem. I have tons of backups to fix that problem really quickly. But others should be doing this too if they want to stop updating anyway. And my beef about updates is that I am not troubled by malware, but updates breaking something I am constantly fighting over. I have over 20 computers here and it doesn't take long before an update to screw up at least one of them. So maybe you now know where I am coming from. -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2 Centrino Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz - 2GB - Windows XP SP3 |
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