New PC OS Query

[AndrewPK]

PS I know Dell's been slagged a bit on here but on another forum I frequent there was a lengthy thread discussing said company. One chap is an IT manager for a company with over 450 active pc's. He swears by Dell and says he has very little problems with them.

I think the thing with dell is that its quite fashionable to slag them off currently, in the same way as we all slag of Microsoft even though at a guess i would say 80-90% of us are running a Microsoft OS.

Dell make good computers that do the job they are intended to do and are VERY good machines for an office environment, In fact you would be hard pushed to find better 'office' machines. Where they do fall down however is as games machines, Often dell machines will use on board graphics and such, making them pretty crap at being 'games' machines (*)


Dell are also quite good for software, although they will try and lead you towards Vista, they will supply your computer with pretty much any currently available operating system, they will even supply Linux if you ask them nicely the only thing they wont do is install if for you (they install the operating system and software from a master image, not a manual install) so if you want the non standard OS (IE not Vista) you would need to install it yourself (**)


*this information is based on the 'Pre-Built' systems, obviously the 'design it yourself' systems will have whatever you ask for in them


**This was the case the last time i got involved in the 'dell are crap' argument

Our main pc is an IBM5100.

would it be a bad thing if i said i currently have one of those gathering dust in my attic No idea if it works (power supply is borked as i recall)


AndrewPK

[CymraegKev]

So... what does Vista do that makes an upgrade/replacement (with all the driver/software uncertainty issues) worthwhile?

The main one is the security. Vista is n times more secure than any other MS operating system, and it's also much more threat resilient to future incoming attacks.

Driving the nice icons (which, incidentally, I hate), you get the WPF, which is a completely new way of delivering graphical Operating Systems and applications (web and client). No more scaling issues with fonts (no jagged edges on a font at 200px), a much crisper and cleaner development environment (leading to faster, more secure applications and websites in the future). The new Yahoo WPF messenger is a classic example of the future of WPF delivered applications.

Much better support for tablet PC's and "swivel" top Laptops, Power Management is greatly improved. SuperFetch technology (google it), Non-reboot updates etc.



There are so many features of Vista that make it better than XP (take a look at this article)...but it all depends on what you want and need now.

Yes, more memory is required, but try running XP SP2 on the same memory that Win95 ran on. Yes, some of the drivers from the vendors do not work, but try using the drivers from Win 95 on Win XP etc.... in fact, the driver issue is mostly the problem of the vendors - the driver SDK for vista has been available to developers for three years... no excuse in my mind for Sony not to have a driver for half of its cameras.

But by far the best bit, is the little Snippit tool, that means screen capture is a ....well, snip! ;-)

Seriously though, it's the future, whether you like it or not. Don't hold out for SP1, because I believe there never will be one... windows update will spit out fixes as and when needed, rather than the Service Pack paradigm.

For me, as a developer and web developer, it's a very exciting operating system.

That said, I can fully understand people's concerns and reluctance to upgrade just yet. It was the same for Windows for Workgroups 3.11 if I remember rightly....

Kevin - right, where is that Tin hat I only just put down?

PS. It's only my opinion, and as I said to my ex-wife "you keep the house, I have the dog, but we'll have to share the Ms Developer Network subscription because it's too bl***dy expensive!"

[Jan]

So... what does Vista do that makes an upgrade/replacement (with all the driver/software uncertainty issues) worthwhile?

It gives you spare time, very few of your computer programs will work once you have installed it, thus giving you extra quality time with your family and friemds. (Don't like Vista by the way, it's illogical).

Regards,

[gabrielcrowe]

Anyone tried to install XP onto a machine shipped with Vista? I guess this should be possible .. thinking ahead to if (when) an XP machine dies.

yes, and the only reason it wouldnt ever work is hardware compatibility.

for instance, DX10 graphics adapters.

[gabrielcrowe]

thought:

instead of getting vista for its extra security measures, why not try another approach.

http://www.sandboxie.com

run your browser in a protected sandbox and then empty it at every boot.

vista's big selling point is safety online, obtained in part by the IE7 sandboxed mode, and other daft security countermeasures.

with sandboxie, i can surf crazy websites all day, and fill my screen with toolbars and popups... then i empty the sandbox and *poof*, its all gone without a trace.

this little application really blows all sorts of vistas securty features away, its sort of like, retro-active anti-spyware.

[george]

i can surf crazy websites all day, and fill my screen with toolbars and popups...

lol

*sniggers at the use of `crazy websites`*

[thatscrafty]

We have a Dell now so I ordered a new pc from them with Vista on it and to be fair to them it came withing a week of ordering but thats when the problems started.

I thought that all pcs were tested before they were shipped to make sure that they were ok. The one we were sent couldnt have been because there were several faults/issues with it . After spending a day on the phone to them trying to sort it out I had enough and asked for a refund which they agreed to.

Now as for Vista I didnt like it at all. What I didnt also realise was that, after ordering a 320G HD and totalling up the partitions on it which only came to 297G, Vista has self test and diagnostics built in which takes up 23G . So if you order a 320G HD you only get 297G , which includes the OS partition so the space left for data is not as much as I would have liked (personally)

Other views of Vista are I cant see the point of the Aero design windows and the fancy way that the open windows are displayed on the screen - why not just continue using Alt Tab to change between windows.

Overall I was not impressed and will be ordering another pc running XP.

One question: does Actinic run on Linux?

Thats an option I was thinking about so I will start to have a play with Ubuntu or something else

[Duncan Rounding]

...
One question: does Actinic run on Linux?

Thats an option I was thinking about so I will start to have a play with Ubuntu or something else

Actinic only runs on windows.

We also always use Dell machines and have for quite a few years. On the rare occasions that we have had a problem it's always beed sorted out quickly.

Incidentally if you ever get Unbuntu running in an MS Virtual PC I'd be very interested to know how - been trying to do this for some time.

[AndrewPK]

after ordering a 320G HD and totalling up the partitions on it which only came to 297G, Vista has self test and diagnostics built in which takes up 23G .

In truth thats not windows fault, its the way drives are sold,

'True' hard drive sizes are based on binary figures, multiples of 2 (2,4,8,16.....), working this way your figure will never hit 1000, the closest you get is 1024, so you have 1024kb in a mb, 1024mb in a gb and 1024gb in a tb,

However when sold, retailers work on a metric system (1000 in a given denomination) so your 320gb is 320,000Mb (or 320,000,000kb) if you divide that down using the true value (1024) thats where you get the 297gb from

Retailers have been doing this for years, but its only 'really' been in the last few years that its become apparent, (you would only lose 4-500 mb on a 10gb drive for example)

The hard drives in my PC work out to

My 320gb is 297gb
My 120gb is 114gb
My 200gb is 189gb

A total loss of 'sold' space of 40gb

The only company that I know of that have sold on the 'True' space on a drive is Seagate, (my Seagate 60gb IS 60gb) but i think they have changed to the metric style of rating now

AndrewPK

[jont]

It's the same as buying a car ... your 2.0 litre car will actually be 1955cc (or whatever) .. but that is not so snappy on the PR blurb

[AndrewPK]

It's the same as buying a car ... your 2.0 litre car will actually be 1955cc (or whatever) .. but that is not so snappy on the PR blurb

yep and CPU's, My Athlon 64 3000, is actually a 1.83ghz processor (not the 3ghz the name would suggest!) but it is apparently 'equivalent' to a pentium 3 running at 3ghz! (still, it plays flat out 2 at on full graphics settings so i'm happy!)

I think you could probably find evidence of this type of selling in practically anything, PR teams will always use the best looking set of figures to sell something to you, and let you find out later that (whilst not actually lying) they were not telling the WHOLE truth

AndrewPK

[jont]

I think you could probably find evidence of this type of selling in practically anything, PR teams will always use the best looking set of figures to sell something to you

The favourite has to be the dB rating for Hi-Fi's .. meaningless numbers that shifts boxes ... don't get me started on MegaPixel counts emblazoned on digital cameras

[AndrewPK]

ahh yes, the joys of PMPO vs RMS,