Post #113,969
8/16/03 3:25:05 AM
|
Re: ME laptop CPU/mem oddity
Questions about Windows ME will only earn you scorn. Upgrade, change, or shut up and die like a Windows user.
-drl
|
Post #114,002
8/16/03 6:11:43 PM
|
Choices?
Questions about Windows ME will only earn you scorn. Upgrade, change, or shut up and die like a Windows user.
What the fsck is my choice, man? At purchase time, they did not offer NT/2000, plus it would have required more memory. (Although I should look into an upgrade now perhaps.) And, my career (what is left of it) depends heavily on Microcruft, even though I tried to move to PHP and MySql. I would like to see a movement away from MS, but I don't want to be the sacraficial lamb or the pioneer who gets all the arrows trying to get Linux device drivers. I am not a rich man and I have a family stuffed into a tiny house. Plus, I spend all my rant units on OO :-)
PS, thanx for tips for those of you who didn't do the holywar shuffle.
PS2, what would you guys suggest WRT a "decent" RAM amount for XP-home?
________________
oop.ismad.com
|
Post #114,004
8/16/03 6:25:46 PM
|
RAM is cheap
Go 512Mb minimum. A gig is better. I would not build a machine with less than a Gb any more. The chips are cheap and they make a lot of bottle necks wider.
|
Post #114,005
8/16/03 6:43:34 PM
|
Doesn't more RAM eat up laptop batteries?
Plus, I accidently broke the motherboard the last time I tried to install RAM. I tried to be careful, but it did an el-snappo. Had to use rubber bands to keep it together.
________________
oop.ismad.com
|
Post #114,050
8/17/03 9:53:36 AM
|
I do tend to think more in terms of desktop machines
Batteries, for me, are just to keep going until I plug in again. If you really rely on battery usage, you should probably trade off performance (use less memory.)
Laptops typically have teeny (even though many gigabyte) single platter, single head drives that do not have great throughput. If you want your laptop to perform anything like a desktop machine, you really do not want it spapping to disk any more than necessary. Virtual memory with a slow disk is not your friend.
Just my opinion. Take with as much salt as necessary.
Hugh
|
Post #114,054
8/17/03 11:45:10 AM
|
Re: I do tend to think more in terms of desktop machines
I have a "high" RPM (5400) drive in my Thinkpad. It's not that bad.
And it's dead quiet. Spookily so.
-drl
|
Post #114,064
8/17/03 1:14:22 PM
|
Varying mileage :)
I have seen some decent IBM laptops. I don't deny that some upper level machines are quite nice.
I don't tend to use laptops as my real workspace. I normally use laptops as test machines, which accounts for my point of view. If I use a browser to download a large file, an ISO disk image for example, I notice that it takes about 10 minutes, literally, to copy the image in the tmp directory to the final destination. I put that down to having one platter and one head which has to scurry back and forth to do the copying. I am aware that extra memory would not help that situation particularly. I just used it as an example really poor performance of laptop drives. I try to avoid doing anything that requires any real performance on laptops. They are either target machines or a portable terminal to a machine that I can use to do serious work. They're not bad for catching up on e-mail during boring meetings.
Again, that's just me. Varying mileage, salt, etc.
Hugh
|
Post #114,070
8/17/03 3:51:28 PM
|
Re: Varying mileage :)
Don't know about Windows, since it's pointless to measure ANYTHING under Windows (there being no way to really change it) - but ext2 on this A31 is blazing fast due to intelligent caching. A global find command that returns 10s of thousands of files gets entirely cached and runs at processor and memory speed when executed a second time.
-drl
|
Post #114,009
8/16/03 7:16:32 PM
|
Re: RAM is cheap
512 is enough. It goddamn well should be.
-drl
|
Post #114,008
8/16/03 7:14:30 PM
|
Re: Choices?
You can buy an upgrade to XP Pro. It's life. We let this happen to us, now live with it.
Windows ME is without any doubt, the worst, most vile and greed-soaked release of Windows ever. Get it hence. Upgrade to Windows 2000 at least. Steal a copy.
-drl
|
Post #114,011
8/16/03 7:35:06 PM
|
Sheesh.
WinME isn't that bad. Win 2.11 and Win 3.0 were a heck of a lot worse.
Tab's problems aren't due to WinME, is my guess. Throwing more RAM or a new OS isn't going to keep multiple popups and spybots from gunking up his machine. SBS&D or AdAware will.
Cheers,
Scott.
|
Post #114,040
8/17/03 1:02:28 AM
|
If it came pre-installed, it's fine.
Because whoever built the system image would have gotten all the right drivers et al. I know this because I, too, have a laptop with WinME pre-installed.
Of course, that will not rule out the odds that it has either eaten itself or been damaged. Which is what the Recovery CD-ROM is for.
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
|
Post #114,041
8/17/03 4:10:19 AM
|
No.
This is one of those rare occasions when I agree with Ross.
Windows ME is a big pile of arse, even by Windows' standards.
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
|
Post #114,045
8/17/03 6:40:55 AM
|
and why?
..because the WDM driver model, which works "OK" now (relative to Windows), was immature when ME was released - so it's half 98 and half NT, with the worst aspects of both.
-drl
|
Post #114,287
8/19/03 6:59:16 AM
|
So sure are you...
When my laptop with Windows ME has been stable and trouble-free ever since I bought it over two years ago? :-) And I've never ever re-installed it.
However, I am aware that I do not maintain Windows PCs (apart from my own), either for a living or not, whilst I believe you do. Does you experience of pre-installed Windows ME on laptops match mine?
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
|
Post #114,305
8/19/03 10:23:54 AM
|
Re: So sure are you...
I've seen at least 5 or 6 ME desktops just go completely tits up, like no Windows I can remember after the jokes before 3.1. The only fix was to upgrade to something real. I don't even remember early NT as being that bad.
-drl
|
Post #114,317
8/19/03 11:09:54 AM
|
ME was pretty universally despised inside Microsoft.
General consensus was that it was a Turd, and the sooner it was disposed of and replaced with XP Home, the better.
A few people got lucky, though.
In that final hour, when each breath is a struggle to take, and you are looking back over your life's accomplishments, which memories would you treasure? The empires you built, or the joy you spread to others?
Therin lies the true measure of a man.
|
Post #114,342
8/19/03 2:38:19 PM
|
The first thing you do with Me . .
. . is turn off system restore (though some times it just won't turn off) to improve stability, performance and disk utilization. I have worked on Me machines with as many as 80,000 files in the system restore temp directory. As far as I've seen, system restore doesn't work on Me anyway.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
|
Post #114,343
8/19/03 2:40:34 PM
|
Au contraire...
The first thing *I* did with my new laptop, which came pre-installed with WinMe, was format the drive.
Individual circumstances may differ, however. ;-)
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
|
Post #114,347
8/19/03 3:39:06 PM
|
Yeah, but the clients get annoyed . .
. . if I hand them back a computer that boots toa a "No Operating System" message.
As I see it, Microsoft owes an operating system to anyone who got a computer with WinMe on it, but Microsoft and the BSA don't seem to agree.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
|
Post #114,351
8/19/03 3:51:08 PM
|
Yep.
I filled mine with RedHat after the drive format.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
|
Post #114,398
8/19/03 5:55:09 PM
|
*snort*
A friend recently bade me repair his home machine. I saw that baby-shit green and said without even looking farther "This shit must go."
-drl
|
Post #114,402
8/19/03 6:06:26 PM
|
ICLRPD (new thread)
Created as new thread #114401 titled [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=114401|ICLRPD]
In that final hour, when each breath is a struggle to take, and you are looking back over your life's accomplishments, which memories would you treasure? The empires you built, or the joy you spread to others?
Therin lies the true measure of a man.
|
Post #114,408
8/19/03 6:40:30 PM
|
Dunno what color it was.
I don't recall even booting it once.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
|
Post #114,418
8/19/03 8:31:35 PM
|
Refund?
[link|http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7040&mode=&order=0|HOWTO].
--\r\n
Karsten M. Self [link|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com|kmself@ix.netcom.com]\r\n
[link|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/]\r\n
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?\r\n
[link|http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/|TWikIWETHEY] -- an experiment in collective intelligence. Stupidity. Whatever.\r\n
\r\n
Keep software free. Oppose the CBDTPA. Kill S.2048 dead.\r\n[link|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html]\r\n
|
Post #115,228
8/24/03 8:31:55 PM
|
Many thanks!! Karsten
This is EXACTLY the sort of info that I was having to triage (re the Dell Thing and a friend). Have sent her this perfect illustration of the er 'attitude problem' in dealing with a Small Claims judge.
It's a rare Jewel of a recipe, with the emphasis on what you Really [don't want to] do. Saved to disk.
It's also perfect timing: all the 'demand' docs. are now at Dell HQ, the local Tee Vee consumer-show folks waiting with bated breath for Next: which may well be CA Small Claims, if They can't induce action either.
..And a proxy kiss on both cheeks from L.
Need any Feldenkrais work ?
Ashton
|
Post #114,336
8/19/03 1:58:37 PM
|
Windows ME and stability
Part of the stability is the hardware used, the drivers used, and the rest is just pure luck. My brother runs ME with no problems, has the latest updates, drivers, and has hardware that works well with it.
Other people I know who run ME have problems.
"Lady I only speak two languages, English and Bad English!" - Corbin Dallas "The Fifth Element"
|
