I Hate Computers

Bird · Aug 15, 2001

GlueGuy, I hadn't heard about that plan; guess I won't be needing any XP then./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif Ol' Bill don't want to just be the richest man in the world; he wants to own it all.

And Wingnut, Gateway may be a fine computer; I don't know. But 3 years ago, before I bought this IBM, I called Gateway three times; talked to a different person each time, and each time they promised to send me some literature (the second and third times, I told them about the previous calls and they said they didn't know what happened, but that they would guarantee I'd get the literature this time). I'm still waiting for it to arrive./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif At least it simplified my shopping, since I sure eliminated them from the list./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Bird

cowboydoc · Aug 15, 2001

My medical software is the same way and it really burns my butt. Every six months you have to call in to get a new code to keep your software running. It's an excellent program but it just doesn't seem right that you pay for something and then they keep the keys for it.

Alan L. · Aug 15, 2001

I hate windows too. However everything I need runs on it, so what can you do?

I have bought exclusively Dell computers in the last 4 years, including several small fileservers, desktops, and latitude notebooks (I'm using a P2-300 one now - nearly 3 years old).
We have had great service and Dell's service has been excellent except for one case. One of our notebook CDrom drives wouldn't read a clients CD that was done with a CD writing drive. All the other systems I tried it on read the CD fine. Dell wouldn't replace the CDrom drive in the notebook (even though the CD would work in 2 identical notebooks) because they said they don't support CDs except those that come from a software manufacturer. Turns out this CDrom drive would read any other CD I put in there, but refused to read any CDs made with the CD writer drive. I pitched a fit and said I would now switch my business elsewhere. A couple of weeks later I ordered some more Dells.

Alan L., TX

r0GuE · Aug 16, 2001

Trying to timePC buying is like timing the market. Now is a pretty good time, prices are quite low. Any machine you buy now will be quite ast enough for many years to come.
Grandkids need PC? Best reason I can think to buy a new one. Have fun with it! Worry not.

Rogue

StoneHeartFarm · Aug 16, 2001

Glueguy,

BIOS handle the IO's or is that up to windows?

Have you had any experience with Linux? I've even though about switching from the ol 98. I just don't believe it will run windows programming, although I've had several people tell me it will.

According to Geek.com, Rambus stock is in the dumpster. Dropped from over $100.00 to under $10.00.

SHF

GlueGuy · Aug 16, 2001

<font color=blue>BIOS handle the IO's or is that up to windows?</font color=blue>

I presume you're talking about the interrupts? The PCI bus is totally different from the old IDE bus; it doesn't really use the old IDE IRQ scheme at all. Although if you look in your system information, you will see different items assigned to IRQ's, they are all "virtual" and you will often see multiple devices using the same one ('cause there are only 16 of 'em).

Windows NT installs its own BIOS that replaces the hardware BIOS. For all intents and purposes, it all becomes "virtual".

As for running Windows programs on Linux, that is kind of the holy grail. It's not quite there yet, but there are several things in the works. The only downside is that Linux becomes almost as flakey as a Windows box when it's used as a desktop. Different world than servers.

The GlueGuy

GlueGuy · Aug 16, 2001

Bird,

Gateway is one of those companies that is sort of "on the ropes". They are exploring different ways to improve their margins, but they aren't a big enough player to take advantage of scale. They would have to increase their sales by (at least) 2X or 3X to get into that zone.

I feel their venture into retail stores is costing them dearly. Likewise Apple's decision to open a bunch of retail stores may be a mistake. We'll see.

The GlueGuy

StoneHeartFarm · Aug 17, 2001

Glueguy,

In some ways, I still think 3.1 was better. More stable and fewer crashes. XP is supposed to be more stable than 98, but this rental scheme...

I've noticed that my BIOS has a switch for letting the OS handle the interrupt requests. Doesn't seem to make any difference if the switch is on or off. The shared interrupt thing works fine until you have 2 devices trying to run on the same one at the same time. Then stuff gets flaky.

Frankly, I would like to see Linux succeed. Gates needs some competition and there's enough people mad at windows to give him some competition. Even if Linux didn't work any better that Windows, it would still give a lot of us a choice.

SHF

scruffy · Aug 17, 2001

Glueguy, you've hit the reason why I've limited the computers at our house to a max 850mhz cpu. We've got 2 850's, 1 700, 1 500, 2 450's, and an old 166mhz floating around here. The least memory in each is 256meg of ram.
I have yet to buy a 'store-bought' computer, all of the above are built here in house, and many of the relations have home-builds that I have made for them.
Like Harv, I add RAM to them, and keep small upgrades going as needed for the game machine. My wife is into the photo thing, so her machine is the 'fanciest' in the house...I'm running an 'old' AMD 700, which suits me fine. (although intell chips do run quite abit cooler...AMD's require a lot more fans to keep them cooled down.)
As for OS, Bird, I would recommend staying with 98 vs ME, but then that is my personal preferance.
Personal choice is VAX/VMS (Open VMS), the systems are very stable, and unlike NuTs, do not require rebooting everytime you make a change to something. Of course, many of our Pro's out there will think I'm nuts, but it has also provided me with a good living for several years.

looch · Aug 17, 2001

<font color=blue>...I would like to see Linux succeed. Gates needs some competition...</font color=blue>

I agree with you that it would be nice to see Linux succeed. However I tend to think that - contrary to popular belief - Linux will do more harm to the expensive proprietary UNIX servers and workstations than to Windows. As I have found and as GlueGuy mentioned, Linux has a ways to go in the desktop environment - at least the free window managers that i have tried. I understand that you can pay for a Mosaic window manager that is pretty decent.