[rescue] Request for recomendation [was: Why is everyone so OSX happy?]

[N. Miller]

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003 22:21:27 -0700, "Robert Novak" <rnovak at indyramp.com>
said:

> 4.9 and 5.9 respectively, according to apple.com.

Maybe I will have to save my pennies for that 4.6lb 12" G4, then.
 
> > > I think the 3 year old Latitude P3 notebooks are still viable. 
> > > Maybe I'll take the dare and run W2k3 on my Inspiron 7000 when
> > > I get more memory for it. 
> > 
> > I would compare 9.2 to W2k--try XP instead, then we'll see if it
> > holds up. ;-)
> 
> I think W2k3 (note the 3--Windows 2003 Server) is a bit heavier duty 
> than XP home or pro. 

Sorry, didn't recognize that designation.  I have never been involved on
the server side of Microsoft products, other than running Samba and 
CIFS on NetApps.

>The machine is running win2k 
> now and, if it had more than 128MB RAM, would be quite perky. I 
> even found a rescued P2-233 Gateway usable with WinXPPro and Office
> XP Pro. But then I ran Win95 October and Office95 beta on a 386/25
> with 8MB/520MB. :)

Ouch. I mean about the Win95 tests. :-)  Yes, Win2K and XP are memory
hungry.  It doesn't help that you don't have a second disk to farm the
swap file out to on a laptop.  Hard drive speed is the biggest problem
on my Fujitsu P-1K--that little two inch drive just can't crank fast
enough.
Hopefully this Fujitsu/IBM thing with the disks will get fluid bearing
drives
to the sub-notebook critters.

Not to tempt the slings and spears of the list purists, but I have
actually 
found Win2K and XP to be rather stable as desktop OSs.  At $job back 
in the day, I used Win2K on a Toshiba 720 (I think) in pre-release, and 
hibernation, power mgmt., etc. worked quite well compared to 95 or NT.  
I could go for several weeks without rebooting the thing if made sure to 
quit and restart Netscape (v4 days) rather than letting it run all the
time.  

The only really annoying "break down" thing I have found about 2K and 
XP is that sometimes the \windows directory gets horked up somehow, 
and it will slow the machine to a crawl.  I have seen this happen twice, 
and I am not sure what causes it.  I didn't have access to Norton the 
first time it happened, so I just did a rebuild over the existing stuff. 
The
other was a my biz partners' home computer; I don't know if he's fixed 
it or not. 

I have been contemplating switching my gaming machine to XP, since it
allows you to do so much more wrt "imitating" older OSes than Win98
(which was? the reigning gamer's OS).  But, I find the prospect of re-
installing all the software that I have on the 98 box daunting (I still
have save files from the original X-Com. :-)  Yes, I know, I'm 
pathetic. 

=Nadine=

-- 
  N. Miller
  vraptor at promessage.com