OT - Windows upgrade

I have several PC that run Windows XP. Because I wanted to add an SSD, I decided to upgrade some of them to Windows 7. It turns out that you can buy a 3 machine upgrade (Home Premium) for just over $100. It contains both 32 and 64 bit versions - your choice which to use on each machine you upgrade. The upgrade from XP is really a clean install - which did not bother me since I like to clean the system every so often anyway. The surprise was that at no point in the process was I asked for my XP code. It appears that I could have done the install without having a previous version of Windows. I did the upgrade onto a new hard drive. It failed the first time - I think because I made a typo when putting the W7 code. But it could have been because there was no existing WXP installation on the machine. It worked fine the second time, so I suspect the typo theory is correct. FYI if you want to upgrade a few machines.

W7 sucks balls IMO. with a few tweaks XP runs just fine on an SSD. been running a couple of older (but gooder) notebooks that way for a year now.

now i'm looking into what i need to do to get W2K to play nice with an SSD

Hi

A better upgrade path is Ubuntu. It is far superior to MS products and it's free.
In most cases there are Linux applications that are equal to windoze products.

I run dual boot XP and Unbuntu on all my PCs.

I have Linux... and still run Windows for useful things like CAD, good games, compatability with thousands of USEFULL programs and hardware, things Apple and Linux just can't get a grasp on...

Disks drives have held up for me, last one that died was a 340 megabyte model... around 1995.. SSD's still seem a bit flakey.. Though fast...

Have 2 machines running XP, 1 running Win 7 64 bit. I turn off eye candy and things have been pretty solid with Win 7.. And it boots FAST...

Both XP machines have almost 10 years on them now...

I can upgrade any part of my system at will (Linux drivers/hardware compatibility list anyone??? )

I don't need to sacrifice performance running another OS within an OS either...

Not an OS fanboy, started writing programs with clunky computers in 1979.

Nothing like the smell of computer lab.. Hot oil and heat from Teletype style input, with 1 in paper tape to save programs...

I hate threads like this maybe you should run a P2 400 mh old peace of crap running windows 98 so you dont have to run real computers. fire up that hot windows 2000, lol that way you dont need to have a clue.

Its 2011 little ladies, what the hell is your malfunction?

Vista and win 7 is not bad, maybe you need brain surgery?

You ding dongs make me sick.


Linux rules

oldbikerdude37 said:

I hate threads like this maybe you should run a P2 400 mh old peace of crap running windows 98 so you dont have to run real computers. fire up that hot windows 2000, lol that way you dont need to have a clue.

Its 2011 little ladies, what the hell is your malfunction?

Vista and win 7 is not bad, maybe you need brain surgery?

You ding dongs make me sick.


Linux rules

Click to expand...

i actually still use a P2-266MHz notebook with win98.

Two of my five computers are W7, and the other three probably don't have the chops to run it and are doing fine on XP. But thanks for sharing this info - may be useful...

I did a W7 install over the top of Vista on my work computer. Vista had become unstable. Vista was a poorly conceived, poorly executed POS that was sold just to keep Microsoft's revenues up. The version on my work computer had become unstable. Installing W7 over the top of it has resulted in a very stable, usable O/S.

So I like W7 more than Vista. In terms of use satisfaction when each system was current, XP beats W7, but I like W7 ok. It's just that Microsoft is deleting features and ease-of-use tools that have been in Windows since DOS. Stupid, really. Their one ace in the hole is an installed base of users that is familiar with their software, and they go and change the look and feel. Seems to me this gives folks an incentive to try Linux, or the Mac O/S as they upgrade. Really stupid.

My son's work buddy was going to through out a functional computer (he had somehow initiated an O/S reinstall and wiped out all his files, so his solution was to upgrade the computer... ????). I also upgraded the CPU an memory - all for about $100! XP works fine for this computer.

I have an old Dell latitude laptop that I just installed a brand new hard drive on, and reinstalled a clean, legit copy of Windows XP and Office 2001 (I think). Plus a bunch of freeware. XP certainly does the job, here, too. Reliably. I'm gonna put it on ebay, but if anyone is interested...

I tried to install Ubuntu, as I understand it is supposed to be pretty straightforward. Had no success. I used to run Linux VMS clusters in grad school, and was a software product manager, and I can't install f***n consumer software! Grrrr. Must be getting stupider.

bosleyjr said:

... ease-of-use tools that have been in Windows since DOS

Click to expand...

I am having a hard time envisioning ease-of-use tools in Windows since DOS. Can you give example?

Also not sure what "in Windows since DOS" -- do you mean since the good ol' days when Windows was not an OS at all, but rather a GUI layered on DOS?

I still run xp on this my main pc but Ubuntu really is good and is taking ever bigger bites out of the Microsoft monopoly! I only got into Ubuntu to run EMC2 for my converted bridgeport. Its a Very very nice operating environment and at least seams far less power hungry than windows! Equaly with Ubuntu im not tied into bed with Microsoft or being rapped by there main competitor!

When free software is as good as ubuntu and a lot of its programmes like open office it raises the bar a lot higher for people like Microsoft and mac to exceed it and justify there costs! IMHO if your a run of the mill pc user then its kinda hard to work out what mac or Microsoft are giving you for the costs!

ZAGNUT said:

W7 sucks balls IMO. with a few tweaks XP runs just fine on an SSD. been running a couple of older (but gooder) notebooks that way for a year now.

now i'm looking into what i need to do to get W2K to play nice with an SSD

Click to expand...

No TRIM support in XP. Windows 7 is the first version of windows to support TRIM. Windows 7 is therefore the first version of windows to fully support (and get best performance) from an SSD.

IOW, yes XP and vista will work fine with a SSD, but neither will ever use it to the best of it's ability.

mark thomas said:

I am having a hard time envisioning ease-of-use tools in Windows since DOS. Can you give example?

Also not sure what "in Windows since DOS" -- do you mean since the good ol' days when Windows was not an OS at all, but rather a GUI layered on DOS?

Click to expand...

I'm talking about little things like Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V not working uniformly in Office apps. Type Ctrl-v in some situation, and Office deposits a "v" at the cursor.

Also, in Office 2007, Visual Basic functions were not complete. For example, if I turned macro recording on in Excel, created a graph, and formatted it with dozens of tweaks, and turned the macro recorder off, all that showed up in the VB macro code was the create graph instruction - no formatting.

I think that Microsoft execs just told the Office folks "We are issuing Office 2007 with Vista - you are done whether you are done or not", and just abandoned a lot of VB users. A bunch of losers, if you ask me.

Win 98 runs amazingly fast on this quad core 3.6 GHz machine... just sayin. So does Debian, Win XP, and Win 7. All at the same time, thanks to VMware. I think I could even run MacOS, if I wanted to. Win 7 is vastly better than Vista IMO, and probably as good as XP.

gregormarwick said:

No TRIM support in XP. Windows 7 is the first version of windows to support TRIM. Windows 7 is therefore the first version of windows to fully support (and get best performance) from an SSD.

IOW, yes XP and vista will work fine with a SSD, but neither will ever use it to the best of it's ability.

Click to expand...

with the proper tweaks XP will behave nicely enough with an SSD that on my machines it is noticeably faster than 7. and although i've never needed them there should be plenty of third party apps that can perform the same function as trim under XP.

7 was designed to look pretty without a whole lot of thought given to productivity...you know, that thing the PC was actually invented for.

ZAGNUT said:

i actually still use a P2-266MHz notebook with win98.

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yea I bet it never crashes too.

I run vista and open 5 browsers, get photoshop running and fire up sony vegas video editor with some high def video and the fan runs faster. thats it it has never crashed on me.

Win is a 95 crash monster

win 98 crash monster light

Windows millennium never crashed on me.

windows XP works like a champ, it will crash if you dont have lots of ram.

vista never a crash and I am a power user. I never ever had it crash.

windows 7 is rock solid almost as good as linux

i dont see why anyone has a problem with windows, maybe the problem user is dumb.

Now if you run a web site you want a linux server, its the only way to go.

I had relatively good luck with XP for some number of years but it was so darn slow and clunky I hated the thought of turning my machine on. Then there are the things that were created simply to drive you nuts. I got the miserable "There Are Unused Icons On Your Desktop" one time too many and that was it. I loaded Ubuntu 10 onto the machine and life was good. Ubuntu prompted me to update to version 11 and that's when the love fest ended. I went back to version 10 and will stay there, I think.

If you, Bosley jr., were trying to load Ubuntu 11 onto an older machine, you may well have serious problems. (Ubuntu is a surprising resource hog, but it's worth it. I recommend at least 1GB ram, too.) There are two solutions, and neither involve Microsoft and "Unused Icons" or a paper clip man. You can load the legacy version of Ubuntu 10 (I think 10.04, although 10.10 is better if you can find it). Alternatively, there are other versions of Linux out there. I complained on this forum that I could not load Ubuntu on an older, p4 1.8Ghz machine with 256MB ram (don't believe the published system requirements, they are wildly optimistic). Another member kindly suggested Linux Mint, and that was indeed the mint! I'm running it right now and can recommend it unreservedly.

I have kept two machines set-up with XP, one a dual-boot with Ubuntu, purely so that I can use stuff like tax s/w. But lately I have read about a Linux application that allows you to run Windows applications directly on Linux (not run windows itself within Linux). One day I am going to load this application and see how it works. If it's good, that's the solution that will get MS out of my life for good!

Steve

ZAGNUT said:

...there should be plenty of third party apps that can perform the same function as trim under XP.

Click to expand...

Well, no! Trim is a firmware function performed internally by the SSD to reduce bandwidth overhead and remove the need for the host to perform low level garbage collection.

There are a couple of utilities for XP that can issue trim commands, but only as a user initiated process, and only work with the specific drive they were made for, eg. Intel SSD Optimiser. These utilities are intended to be used as a periodic maintenance tool that you use when your ssd becomes noticably slower when writing.

There are numerous questionable utilities that claim to perform the same function as trim, but basically don't, clearly targeted towards those who don't know what it is. Many of these, depending on whether they actually do anything or not, will actually reduce the life of your SSD through write amplification from having to cache and erase entire blocks during reallocation, whereas a trim command can erase individual pages internally.

Fact is, XP is a decade old, obsolete OS. 7 is a nice operating system (by Microsoft standards) that is fast and stable on any decent hardware made in the last 3 or 4 years.

Things I use windows for:
CAM
Playing games

Things I use my mac for:
Everything else

Things I use linux for:
Playing with open source novelties
I think I used open office once, when I didn't have a copy of word handy...

sa100 said:

But lately I have read about a Linux application that allows you to run Windows applications directly on Linux (not run windows itself within Linux)

Click to expand...

It's called WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator). It's basically a free implementation of the Win32 api thus allowing you to run 32bit XP compatible executables directly within linux without using an emulator or a virtual machine. It has been used extensively under the name Cider to create commercial ports of windows games to the mac os for example.

Our company has just on 70,000 PCs. The cost of upgrading to a new office version is frightening, the cost of upgrading to a new OS is incredible. It isn't the license costs, all PCs are bought with licenses for current versions of software and OS. The cost is the lost productivity for the users while they learn the new systems and the support needed for the changeover.

We're just in the process of downgrading our email clients and servers from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook. Great idea, give everyone a different email client, 'course they'll have to keep Notes as well, since they aren't allowed to move more than 6 months worth of emails and the Notes databases aren't being ported. Those databases represent over one thousand man-years of work from the IT department...

Our company has just on 70,000 PCs. The cost of upgrading to a new office version is frightening, the cost of upgrading to a new OS is incredible. It isn't the license costs, all PCs are bought with licenses for current versions of software and OS. The cost is the lost productivity for the users while they learn the new systems and the support needed for the changeover.

Click to expand...

Lovely vendor lock. Can you run your old apps on Windows 7 and push settings to make it look as much like the Classic interface as possible?

We're just in the process of downgrading our email clients and servers from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook. Great idea, give everyone a different email client, 'course they'll have to keep Notes as well, since they aren't allowed to move more than 6 months worth of emails and the Notes databases aren't being ported. Those databases represent over one thousand man-years of work from the IT department...

Click to expand...

Lovely anti-migration migration policy.

From now on when I have the option I'll run Thunderbird Portable and slurp all my work email to USB. I already use Thunderbird on my Linux and Windows machines.

Free, very handy, and keeps my multiple webmail accounts sorted while integrating my old work email exported from Outlook. "Portable" means I can keep stored emails and the program files in the same folder and back them up together. Original emails stay on the server so it's "win/win".

Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB, portable and cloud drives

This is interesting:
Lotus Notes Email Export | Tech[niques]

I have kept two machines set-up with XP, one a dual-boot with Ubuntu, purely so that I can use stuff like tax s/w. But lately I have read about a Linux application that allows you to run Windows applications directly on Linux (not run windows itself within Linux). One day I am going to load this application and see how it works. If it's good, that's the solution that will get MS out of my life for good!

Click to expand...

WINE is neat, but Virtualbox is insanely convenient. I run a Ubuntu host with XP, 7, various Linux, and BSD (to learn something new) guest OS.
By taking Snapshots, you can try a wide variety of software and revert to a clean install at will. I used to use hard drive swap racks (I never cared for dual-booting since I sampled many different OS versions) but Virtual Machines render that pointless except on PCs without much memory.

http://www.virtualbox.org/

My "choice" of OS is "gimme all I can load" so I can stay proficient and have the right tools for whatever I'd like to do. I use a Linux host because Windows malware is always a threat. If I gamed, I'd run a Windows host and other guests.

How does Virtual Box deal with software keys, dongles, network licenses, etc? Many of those software license schemes are designed to prevent running multiple instances or across a network. Do they balk at VB?