[extropy-chat] when will computers improve?

[Kevin Freels]

A 200 mhz machine? I didn;t know any of those were still running!
I am all ready to buy Win 2k just to see if it helps. It looks like I can
get the full version on ebay for about $100. I'd rather have the full
version than the upgrade because my Win98 disk has about had it. (remember
when cds first came out and they talked of how rugged they were?...HA!) If
it is a drastic improvement, I'll take it. Here's some questions:
1.) Will it run all software designed for Win98?

2.) Do I have to call, login, or send any information to Microsoft to
register it, or is it like Win98...just punch in the key code and go?

3.) Are the service packs free, or do I have to pay for SP4? (Just making
sure, I don;t have to get SP1, 2, 3, and 4 do I? I wouldn;t think so, but
you never know with Microsoft!)

4.) Can I use NTFS partitions? I always wanted to. If so, is it trouble
converting FAT32 partitions to NTFS without losing data?

5.) Am I shopping for Win2k pro?

I am having this trouble with a Machspeed motherboard with a 266 FSB, 512 MB
PC2100 DDR 266 mhz memory, an XP Athlon 2200+ processor and 8x AGP video
card with 128MB memory. I thought the problem was the basic build behind the
computer design. If Win2k will help, I'll try it.

Thanks for the help.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury at aeiveos.com>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 8:32 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] when will computers improve?


>
> On Sat, 20 Dec 2003, BillK wrote:
>
> > I have Win98, 256MB memory,
> [snip]
> > I have resources available of about 83% GDI, 80% USER and 80% SYSTEM.
>
> > Try different software?
>
> That isn't it Bill -- I used to run into similar problems on 95 and 98
> running a very different set of software.  Part of it simply has to
> do with how many windows you have open.  Microsoft didn't design those
> OSs so they could handle lots of windows.  Mike is also right that it
> depends to some extent on how many processes you are running.  It isn't
> entirely fixed in Win2K but it is a *lot* better.  I can generally get up
> to 4-5 full task bar lines of the smallest window icons before things
> start to go south.  And then it doesn't really crash -- the stupid
> Msft scheduler keeps going round-robin between all of the windows
> giving them each little time slices (I've never been able to get
> them to confess how one could tweek this to lower the amount of
> CPU time that non-active windows get).  So your response time goes
> through the floor essentially forcing you to cleanup your tasks.
> (I'll admit I'm only on a 200Mhz machine -- but still...).
>
> I've got 256MB of main memory and 384MB of paging file space and
> I can have occasions where Netscape goes into some infinite loop
> allocating memory.  If I wait long enough the system will give
> me a very nice error message -- and recover's nicely once I kill
> the Netscape (though sometimes it will kill Netscape for me...).
>
> But 2K is much more stable for a much longer period.  NT 4.0
> is pretty good as well.  I've got the server version and it
> will run fine for months.
>
> I will openly admit that I probably don't push the systems as
> hard as someone like Eugen does so I may not be stressing them
> enough to make the flaws show up.
>
> Robert
>
>
>
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