New Machine

  • Thread starter Thread starter philo
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philo

A friend of mine needs to buy a new desktop or tower and asked me for
advice.
Though I've been building machines for many years I have never once gone
out and purchased a new one...so have no idea what's good now days.

I really don't have time now to build a new one...nor do I think I'd
save her any money over new.
 
philo said:
A friend of mine needs to buy a new desktop or tower and asked me for
advice.
Though I've been building machines for many years I have never once gone
out and purchased a new one...so have no idea what's good now days.

I really don't have time now to build a new one...nor do I think I'd
save her any money over new.
Click to expand...

Don't buy an Advent.
 
philo said:
A friend of mine needs to buy a new desktop or tower and asked me for
advice.
Though I've been building machines for many years I have never once gone
out and purchased a new one...so have no idea what's good now days.

I really don't have time now to build a new one...nor do I think I'd
save her any money over new.
Click to expand...

Build her one. You know you want to :-)

I looked at a few web sites, and it's a "sea of crap" out there.
If you're a consumer right now, you'll need to don your hip waders.
And hold your nose. I didn't see anything I liked.

Paul
 
Paul said:
Build her one. You know you want to :-)

I looked at a few web sites, and it's a "sea of crap" out there.
If you're a consumer right now, you'll need to don your hip waders.
And hold your nose. I didn't see anything I liked.
Click to expand...


Yeah ...maybe I'll do that...
There is probably a good reason I've never once bought one...
but have literally built at least 500 over the years
 
A friend of mine needs to buy a new desktop or tower and asked me for
advice.
Though I've been building machines for many years I have never once gone
out and purchased a new one...so have no idea what's good now days.
Click to expand...

We can recommend PCs for our friends only if we have some idea
of their main uses. (People who just want email and income tax
have needs different from those who plan to edit videos.)

Most home users are most cheaply and reliably accommodated
by 2nd-hand office machines, a couple of years old, from high-
end suppliers e.g. HP and IBM/Lenovo, now costing about $200
(without monitor.)
 
We can recommend PCs for our friends only if we have some idea
of their main uses. (People who just want email and income tax
have needs different from those who plan to edit videos.)

Most home users are most cheaply and reliably accommodated
by 2nd-hand office machines, a couple of years old, from high-
end suppliers e.g. HP and IBM/Lenovo, now costing about $200
(without monitor.)
Click to expand...



All she really needs is a minimal machine...

I could easily fix her old one but can convince her
 
We can recommend PCs for our friends only if we have some idea
of their main uses. (People who just want email and income tax
have needs different from those who plan to edit videos.)

Most home users are most cheaply and reliably accommodated
by 2nd-hand office machines, a couple of years old, from high-
end suppliers e.g. HP and IBM/Lenovo, now costing about $200
(without monitor.)
Click to expand...

So you consider IBM/Lenovo to be high end. That's good to know. My
old desktop made in 2000 has been very reliable and still runs Win98
and Win2000 very well. I just bought a 2005 Thinkpad laptop because I
like the older computer.
 
So you consider IBM/Lenovo to be high end. That's good to know. My
old desktop made in 2000 has been very reliable and still runs Win98
and Win2000 very well. I just bought a 2005 Thinkpad laptop because I
like the older computer.
Click to expand...

I like my older computers too. I'm still running MS Office Professional for
W95 & 97, as well as a lot of special purpose software (hobby oriented)
which might have difficulty with newer versions of windows. Anyone know if
new computers (windowsversions) will have a compatability mode for older
software?

HankG
 
I like my older computers too. I'm still running MS Office Professional
for W95 & 97, as well as a lot of special purpose software (hobby
oriented) which might have difficulty with newer versions of windows.
Anyone know if new computers (windowsversions) will have a compatability
mode for older software?

HankG
Click to expand...


I'm into antique computers myself and have at least one of each from an 8088
on up

plus some older ones such as Kaypro and Comodore 64.

The newer versions of Windows have a compatability mode where some of the
odler software will work
 
HankG said:
I like my older computers too. I'm still running MS Office Professional for
W95 & 97, as well as a lot of special purpose software (hobby oriented)
which might have difficulty with newer versions of windows. Anyone know if
new computers (windowsversions) will have a compatability mode for older
software?

HankG
Click to expand...

If you use "virtual machine" software, it becomes possible to run
an entire OS within a "window", load your software in there, and work.

http://pubs.vmware.com/guestnotes/w...htm?context=Favorites&file=guestos_win95.html

I don't have a lot of experience with all of them (virtual machine alternatives).
I've been using mainly Virtual PC (a Microsoft product). But there are
other third party ones you can try out, and preserve an older
environment.

A modern Windows OS, installed in 64 bit mode, will support 64 bit and 32 bit
programs. It has some "compatibility modes" for you to try, to get your older
programs to work. The current 64 bit Windows, won't run a 16 bit program. But
if you use "WinXP Mode", which is one virtual machine alternative, that would
extend the range of possibilities (then, things that work in WinXP, would likely
work for you). And if your software still doesn't work, then you look at VMware,
Virtualbox, and so on. As long as you have a valid installer CD for the older
guest OSes, a license key or whatever, then you can likely cook up an environment
to your liking.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/virtualbox/downloads/index.html

I currently have 21 entries in my VPC2007 menu, which means I've tried, at
some point in time, to set up 21 different OS versions or types. They might
include many Linux OSes, a couple Windows ones, Solaris, and so on. Not all
of those are working. Some are "dead" environments, used for testing. Some
others, are actually useful (maybe 25%, fit in the useful category).

Some people may ask, "why does my new computer come with so much RAM ?".
Why, that's there, so you can run virtual machines :-) I've run up to
three OSes virtually, at one time, and that uses up all my RAM on a 4GB machine.

One other capability of interest. Some environments support what is called
P2V, meaning transforming a physical machine into a virtual environment. I've
tested that here (once), and it actually worked. Now, I'm currently running
WinXP on this computer. Using P2V capability, I took a snapshot of my WinXP
partition. The snapshot starts at sector 0 of my hard drive, and captures
enough of the hard drive contents, for the specified copy to take place.
I think, to capture the essence of my WinXP, it ended up being a 40GB VHD
file.

Now, I mounted that in VPC2007, and "booted" it. At that point in time, the same
copy of WinXP, was running within WinXP :-) Now, a reason this can't really work,
is because of the license key and activation. The copy failed activation
immediately, and that copy of Windows would have shut down after 3 days perhaps.
The purpose of the experiment, was to see whether P2V really worked, and it
did. So it is possible to "hoover" an entire environment, and run it
virtually. And especially with older, less anal OSes, such a transformation
could be done without complaint. If I wanted to use that copy of WinXP virtually
forever, I would need to change the license key, activate and so on.

Disk2vhd v1.63 - an example of one of many different P2V tools. Many of
the other ones are likely commercial and cost money.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415

You don't have to use P2V. Most of the 21 entries in my VPC2007 right now,
would have been "install from scratch" type, just like installing an OS
on a brand new, blank PC. P2V capability, is just to demonstrate, that it
is also possible, to take a snapshot of a physical machine, and then
load it into a virtual environment, and run it in a window.

Example - Ubuntu, running virtually, in WinXP. Note the "window frame"
around the virtually running OS. The window can be resized, until it is
full screen, but I don't typically run mine that way.

http://miniburb.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/fp_insall_ubuntu.jpg

A virtual environment, isn't good for everything. If you use your
PC, to control some home experiment with a parallel I/O card, a
virtual OS can't "reach out and do stuff". It's a lot more isolated
than that. In fact, the level of isolation can be daunting at
times, annoying even. One of the reasons I run multiple OSes
at the same time, is I make one of them a "server" or intermediary, to
allow file transfers in and out of some of the more crippled OSes.

Have fun,
Paul
 
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