Is XP 64 safe? Will it make me happy

  • Thread starter Thread starter Borg Vomit
  • Start date Start date
You don't need 8GB to run 2 or 3 client virtual machines. If you are
running server vm's I suggest you get a server system with Windows Server
2008 and run your virtual machines on Hyper-V.

8 gig? WHY? What do you have running that will need that much?
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I want to run 2 or 3 Virtual PC's--maybe create a ram disk if it'll
help.
I'd guess that you wouldn't see any improvement.
But I'd also guess that you're obsessed with the idea and that there's
no talking you out of it.
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I just need to multitask (a lot) without having 4 or 5 boxes heating
up the office. I used to have a system that ran Windows 3.11 and it
had PC Tools desktops that seemed to work very well. Now, no matter
what I do, I see that damn hourglass and it's just a matter of time
before I have to shut everything down and restart a couple dozen apps
and browser sessions.

I'm hoping VPC's will make things a little better.
Go for it.
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I like people who understand obsession. I had high hopes for Vista.
We tried 3 different boxes running Vista Ultimate and all of them had
not 1, but 3 show stoppers. Some Vista issues will most likely be
fixed with a service pack, most will not. So we're stuck with XP, or
maybe XP64.

Borg Vomit
 
We need RAID because none of our hard drives seem to last more than 2
My guess is, we're getting reconditioned drives being sold as new.
Most if not all of them are Western Digital drives. We're having
much better luck with Maxtor.
I think you should find out why that's the case and address the issue,
not try to patch it with RAID.
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I just don't have the time to sit on the phone with a HD tech unless
I'm trying to recover important data. And I this is the first time
I've heard an argument against raid. I guess I've given up on trying
to make the manufacturers backup their claims--the quality's just not
there anymore.
Ø RAID 0 is the last thing you should be
considering. It greatly increases the risk to whatever is on the
drive.
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Oh, sorry Ken, I meant RAID 1 (whichever one is the mirror)--yeah, I
remember using NT 4 to "blend" 2 drives together... that was a very big
mistake.

"Backing things up doesn't seem to be a skill we've master either,"
In that case, my view is that you badly need to acquire that skill.
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Backing up large amounts of our data would be very complex, well, I
should say restoring it is very complex. The best we can do is to
mirror it.

I don't mean to turn this into a hardware thread, but if you look at
posts about external hard-drives you will find a fair amount of
complaints about their reliability. As far as odds are concerned, I
don't know what the failure rates are, but I have a feeling that
having 2 or 3 out of 5 RAID members fail is much less likely than
having an external backup drive fail.

Borg Vomit
 
My guess is, we're getting reconditioned drives being sold as new.
Most if not all of them are Western Digital drives. We're having
much better luck with Maxtor.


I just don't have the time to sit on the phone with a HD tech unless
I'm trying to recover important data.
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Then don't buy reconditioned drives.

And I this is the first time
I've heard an argument against raid. I guess I've given up on trying
to make the manufacturers backup their claims--the quality's just not
there anymore.


Oh, sorry Ken, I meant RAID 1 (whichever one is the mirror)--yeah, I
remember using NT 4 to "blend" 2 drives together... that was a very big
mistake.

"Backing things up doesn't seem to be a skill we've master either,"


Backing up large amounts of our data would be very complex, well, I
should say restoring it is very complex.
Click to expand...



Then you need to look at some of the better backup programs out there,
like Acronis True Image. It's very easy.

The best we can do is to
mirror it.
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Mirroring is not a substitute for backup. It provides redundancy,
not backup. It's used in situations (almost always within
corporations, not in homes) where any downtown can't be tolerated,
because the way it works is that if one drive fails the other takes
over seamlessly.

Most companies that use RAID 1 also have a strong external backup plan
in place. If you just rely on RAID1, you remain vulnerable to losing
both drives simultaneously to things like severe power glitches,
nearby lightning strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the
computer). If your data is important to you, you *need* to perform
regularly scheduled backup to external media.




I don't mean to turn this into a hardware thread, but if you look at
posts about external hard-drives you will find a fair amount of
complaints about their reliability.
Click to expand...


No hard drive is perfect, and they all fail sooner or later.

As far as odds are concerned, I
don't know what the failure rates are, but I have a feeling that
having 2 or 3 out of 5 RAID members fail is much less likely than
having an external backup drive fail.
Click to expand...



Drive failure is only one of many possible dangers to your data.

In my view, you're playing with fire, and are very likely to get
burnt.
 
As far as pain, how would you compare your experience (or hearsay)
with Vista 64 to XP64?
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Drivers are the only rough part. Not many laptop vendors have an XP64
section. For pretty much everything on my two laptops I had to poke
around and Google most of the drivers. Mind you they are all recent,
functional drivers, so it's not like I got subpar stuff. I just
picked up the latest beta nVidia drivers for XP64 recently, for
example.
So what is your opinion of Vista?  If you had a big budget and your
goal was to build game box (just for the sake of argument) or a turn
key media center for your dad (something that you wouldn't have to fix
all the time), what OS would you invest in, here in 2008?
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It was a noble effort, but I think they lost focus. The interface is
almost cool, the glassy windows are nice and it does feel 2007ish.
However, the huge amount of resources it takes compared to XP64 is
just unforgivable. 800MB RAM used at idle (superfetch disabled)?
Ultimate takes about 14GB of disk space? This is completely
unacceptable. The lack of any noticeable way to remove components
completely off the machine means I'm stuck with freakin' Purble Place
whether I want it or not. I do have some issues with the GUI too,
specifically how inefficient and wasteful parts of it are. If Vista
was just a more secure XP with Aero, I'd use it, simple as that. But
they did something horrific under the hood that I can't rationalize
and I refuse to accept it.

Unfortunately Vista seems to be inevitable, with MS's big push to get
it on every possible new PC regardless of it actually being usable on
them. I'm lucky in that I have a fairly narrow application set, and I
can live without DX10. I do some virtualization stuff, and the
resources Vista 64 uses over XP64 is equal to one less VM I can run.
That won't work.

I did arrange one alternate bailout.. I tinkered with OSx86, Mac OS X
on non-Apple hardware. After a decent but not perfect experience with
that, I broke down and bought a Mac. If Windows manages to become
such a cluster that even *I* get sick of it, I can always just boot up
Leopard and forget about it.
 
Oh yes, it's still a 32bit program but the tricky bits have been put in a
64bit *.DLL as far as I can tell. That's all it takes and Avast was among
the very first to use the method, I think. No need to rewrite the whole app,
specifically not with something as lean and unobtrusive as Avast..

My Firewall requirements are modest, perhaps, I use Windows Firewall in
combination with the built-in FW in my Switch/Hub. I've had no issues, and I
want nothing more for the moment.

I was hanging on to the Vista public trials for as long as that was running
but I found too much change that didn't do any good - and the 'Cool' stuff
it 'pioneered' was too-little-too-late and allready far, far cooler on
Linux. So I thought that I was simply too old to jump on to that train and I
skipped the conversion entirely.

Statistics say that the next Windows version will appeal to me - as it
stands, Vista is Windows ME all over, but I may not be widely supported here
for that specific remark, many are growing fond of it!


Tony. . .
 
What about for things like the Photoshop scratch file?
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As far as I know, that operates similarly to the page file, and
wouldn't make sense for that either. But I'm not a Photoshop user
myself, so I can't be sure.
 
These are interesting thoughts. Putting the System Pagefile on a RAM disc in
order to release the full performance potential, would ideally use more RAM
than is installed. Add in potential caching conflicts and it soon becomes
one project you do not want to investigate!

I too, do not have any experience from PS, but conceptually, such swap space
would be application controlled and could be a fraction of your RAM size and
so, boost performance considerably - under the assumption that you know what
you are doing and can be certain that the RAM space can be safely used for
the purpose?

Personally, I have not been using RAM Disks since executing *.BAT files
under DOS, my gut feeling today is that the modern OS wouldn't benefit as
much as DOS did allthough the raw executing speed difference might be the
same. The OS and all the sub-systems working together has got to be the
Grand Equalizer, I very much suspect. But the application controlled swap
space is probably a different kettle of fish all together!


Tony. . .
 
Statistics say that the next Windows version will appeal to me - as it
stands, Vista is Windows ME all over, but I may not be widely supported
here
for that specific remark, many are growing fond of it!


Tony. . .
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With maybe one difference - we bought WinME because we were so sick and
tired Win98 and we were desperate for a stable operating system. WinME
turned out to be worse then Win98. I have two copies of WinME on a shelf
somewhere collecting dust, I think I ran it for all or 2-3 weeks before
going back to Win98.

Vista came out and we looked at it and said, "so what?". For the first time
in Microsofts history, they had made a good stable working consumer
operating system (XP), and we have no reason to upgrade to Vista. I own a
copy of Vista, but I have no plans on installing it. It does nothing that I
need that XP won't do.
 
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