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P4 2.2GHz and D845BG Review

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the hardwareto-lust-after dept.

nihilist_1137 writes "GreenJifa.Com has gotten their hands on the new Intel P4 2.2GHz/Intel D845BG DDR Motherboard for review. This is the new P4 that has the 0.13m die and the new "Northwood" core. Check out the review." This setup might have a chance to run XP without it feeling like a 386/16 running Windows 3.0 on 4 megs of RAM. Allright, thats probably crazy talk ;)

58 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Taco's XP comment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This setup might have a chance to run XP without it feeling like a 386/16 running Windows 3.0 on 4 megs of RAM.

    For what it's worth, XP doesn't run all that slowly. It's merely average -- comparable to your typical decked-out Gnome desktop on X...

    Man!

    1. Re:Taco's XP comment by garcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ahh, but see... When OS's get older they should get faster. GNOME and KDE have the age advantage. They are too young yet to have increased their speed. XP on the other hand has come from a long line of slow OS's.

      You get what you pay for (or at least that's what should be the case). If you are going to pay $200 for something you should at least have a decent speed at which to work at.

      I hear everyday, "I really need to upgrade my computer, it's only 500mhz". No, what you need to do is have an OS that is actually decent and runs well on a slower CPU.

      Well that's just my opinion.

      I really don't think that we should have to have a 2.2ghz machine just to open a couple of applications.

    2. Re:Taco's XP comment by _xeno_ · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Since this was posted by an AC, I'd like to reiterate this point with an actual datapoint.

      Windows XP ran fine on a PII 400 with 256MB RAM and 5GB hard drive space. With all the pretty and useless GUI options enabled. Now it was a little slow, but no worse than GNOME on X on my nVidia GeForce2 on my 800MHz Athlon. The only thing that really killed the usability was excessive use of alpha fade effects in certain scenarios (namely, selecting a rectangle of files Windows Explorer) that weren't hardware accellerated due to an older graphics card.

      For most "every day" tasks, the PII 400 was fine - you could browse the web, listen to MP3s, and play older XP-compatible games (which, in most cases, is the same as a Win2K compatible game).

      Bottom line is that XP is no worse than any other "modern" graphical OS - it's just made by Microsoft. Accept the fact that Windows XP is a decent operating system and far superior to the Win9x line and get back to using your Linux PC. To each their own, but bashing XP without actually using it is pretty foolish, especially because it does run at without noticable slowdown on any new PC and on most older PCs as well.

      Unless your desktop is still a Pentium class machine, assuming that your computer has enough disk space and RAM, Windows XP is a decent operating system. If you're going to bash it, bash it on the potential Digital Rights Management that was supposed to be introduced in XP, or on the product activation, or on any other Microsoft expansionist move. Bashing it for being slow is mostly just uninformed.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    3. Re:Taco's XP comment by MattRog · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ok -- I was amazed at the difference. If I had the money, I'd be tempted to buy two copies of XP to upgrade my two systems just for that feature!

      --

      Thanks,
      --
      Matt
    4. Re:Taco's XP comment by VAXman · · Score: 2

      In my experience, XP is much faster than 2000. When I upgraded my computers form 2000->XP, I defnitely noticed a speed increase. Not just bootup time, but overall performance. I still have one computer with 2000 (necessary because my employer's VPN software only works with 2000), and I just upgraded to 512MB, but it's still slow as a dog. My Celeron 433 Laptop with 256MB RAM is faster with XP, than my Celeron 800 Desktop with 512MB of RAM is with 2000. (But my P4 with XP blows them both away :-)

    5. Re:Taco's XP comment by yoshi_mon · · Score: 2, Informative

      I hear everyday, "I really need to upgrade my computer, it's only 500mhz".

      Who are you hearing this from? I expect that it's either a) gamers or b) ppl who want every damn bell and whisle turned on.

      My AMD 300 with it's measly 128M of RAM has been running XP for a while now. I am able to have more than, "a couple of applications" at one time and it does it well actually.

      I will upgrade soon, but my current computer will go to another family member who I will probaly setup with XP. If they decide to turn on all the eyecandy that I will tell them not to do, they can live with the slowdown, but as my box is setup right now, it's way better than Win9x ever was.

      Yes, I do run a 2.4.x kernel on here and it smokes. Yes, by running a light window manager in X it runs way faster than XP. However, as it stands, when I do use windows I would much rather run XP than Win9x. And by tweaking it, it runs better than 9x ever could.

      Microsoft markets it's products to the MASSES, and they love pretty things. When ppl see my desktop they think its sterial and plain, but to me all the crap that they put on their desktops only annoys me. However, that is why they have their computers and I have mine. They will go out and spend $2000 on a new computer that will do what they need it to do, while I will go out and spend $200 on a bare bones upgrade and it will do what I need it to do.

      --

      Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
    6. Re:Taco's XP comment by peripatetic_bum · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Bottom line is that XP is no worse than any other "modern" graphical OS - it's just made by Microsoft. Accept the fact that Windows XP is a decent operating system and far superior to the Win9x line and get back to using your Linux PC.

      I will have to respectfully disagree (unlike some of the replies ive seen to you)

      We decided to set XP in my families new XP1800 computer. I wil be the first to admit that when it runs, it runs smoothly and the family likes it, but It certainly is much worse in terms of stability to say Mandrak or MacOSx. There is not a day that does not go by the computer iwll up and reboot for no reason or simply crash.

      As for being a decent OS being made by Microsoft, all i can say is that we must remember that Microsoft KNEW about a HUGH REMOTE HOLE for almost a month before deciding to let the rest of us know about. That in my opinion makes it a very much worse OS than the others. At the moment, i am trying to get hem used to a linux desktop and will simply replace it all with Linux in a few months.

      Thankx!

      --

      Sigs are dangerous coy things

    7. Re:Taco's XP comment by Pinball+Wizard · · Score: 2
      If you're going to bash it, bash it on the potential Digital Rights Management that was supposed to be introduced in XP, or on the product activation.


      OK! I, for one, like many people here, enjoy tearing down my machines and putting them back together again. That precludes me from using XP, unless I want to activate Windows every time(no, thanks).


      Furthermore, you can't take MP3's created on a Windows XP machine and play them on another machine. They did build DRM into it, and its the dumbest thing I've ever seen. I'm sure its easy to get around, but frankly its much easier to just not go there.


      I use Windows 2000 primarily on my desktops and as far as I'm concerned, thats the last Microsoft OS I'll ever buy.

      --

      No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?

    8. Re:Taco's XP comment by sheldon · · Score: 2

      I don't know, I used to have a 386SX16 running Windows 3.1 with 5 Megs of RAM and I'm fairly certain my 850Mhz PIII with 768 Megs of RAM not only cost less than the 386, but also runs Windows XP considerably faster.

      BTW, the key to WinXP speed is a relatively fast hardware accelerated video card. i.e. a Tseng ET4000 isn't going to cut it, I'd recommend a Riva TNT at the very least. And also RAM, I bought my 768 Megs when it only cost $30 per 256Meg DIMM. I realize they are not like $60, but it's still worth putting in at least 512 Megs.

      Honestly for the first time in my experience with computers, I see no reason to buy the absolute latest greatest computer and two year old technology is more than adequate.

    9. Re:Taco's XP comment by throx · · Score: 2

      Even using WMA format there's no DRM unless you choose to turn it on. I've ripped my entire CD collection into WMA format and am able to play them on any machine I want (though not any OS I want obviously).

      As for activation, it's required whenever you make major changes to your PC (change more than 4 major components between reboots) or reinstall the OS. In any case it's rather painless...

      --

      Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means

    10. Re:Taco's XP comment by Jace+of+Fuse! · · Score: 2

      XP runs absolutely beautifully on my Pentium 3 800 and 256 megabytes of ram.

      Stable. Fast. Relatively secure (as opposed to other Microsoft offerings). And compatible with most Windows software from either the 9x or 2K line.

      XP is actually pretty good. Sorry, Linux people, you're going to have to bash XP for reasons other than technical, now. Call it ugly. Call it Expensive. Call it the work of satan. Call it Fred if you want. But you can't call it slow or unstable anymore without basically being full of crap.

      --

      "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

      Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
    11. Re:Taco's XP comment by clinko · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Thank you so much for being realistic on slashdot. And thank the moderators for being fucking retards that automatically bash anything that says microsoft. (i'm a moderator too)

    12. Re:Taco's XP comment by ThatComputerGuy · · Score: 2

      "intel rabid boot bios"

      Where did you get this bios? Where, where, tell me! Damnit, tell me, or I'll bite you!

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  2. What's the Hurry?!? by The+Gardener · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Four comments, none above zero, and its already Slashdotted

    The Gardener

    --
    --
  3. boot times by Gavitron_zero · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Why the heck are people so interested in boot times on windows PC's? If you are running Win2K or higher, you don't need to reboot very often...

    In the last month, I've had to reboot twice, and that was booting when i got the lan party, and when i got back...

    1. Re:boot times by garcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      a good majority of people don't leave their computers on all the time, that's why.

      Also a lot of people are still running ME or 98. Booting takes up to 5-6 mins on some machines. That's why they are so interested in boot times.

    2. Re:boot times by Nameles · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Even in XP, I've seen the fastest bootup times of ANY OS (Win9x's, ME, 2k, Linux, Win 3.x, old old old OS's that I can't remember the names of) I've used.

    3. Re:boot times by trentfoley · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I use a laptop and am rather mobile with it. Boot times are very important when you just need to check that one little thing that some pesky client "needs". There is nothing more frustrating than having the conversation with the client go on to something entirely different while still waiting for a login prompt to appear.

    4. Re:boot times by RussGarrett · · Score: 2

      On the same hardware, I've had BeOS, QNX, Win98, Win2k, WinXP, and Linux. Excluding BeOS and QNX, which I haven't done much testing on (although I don't doubt they're quick to boot), WinXP and Linux take about the same time to load, possibly Linux is a tad quicker, because I've got a pretty stripped-down kernel. But WinXP takes a good half the time of it's predecessor.

      (note: it's a SMP celeron system, so that may have something to do with it)

    5. Re:boot times by ivarneli · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The operating system is not the only factor that decides system uptime. Many people do not leave their computer on all the time for one reason or another. For example, I turn mine off every night because I can't sleep with the noise. But boot times are important for many other reasons. Boot times are very important for people who dual boot and have to switch operating systems often. My work forces me to switch between Windows and Linux about 6 times per day. If Windows takes 5 minutes to boot, that's a half hour of time that has been lost. It's even more important when doing service work on computers. I used to work at a local tech shop, and the reboot times add up when you have to install a number of different applications or drivers. Also, we used to test parts, so if I had 50 video cards to test, that meant booting Windows 50 times. A great deal of time is wasted depending on how long it takes to load.

      BeOS is probably the fastest-booting full-featured operating system, taking about 7 seconds to boot. DOS is of course much faster, although there isn't a whole lot for it to do. MS-DOS 5.0 with no autoexec.bat/config.sys presents a command prompt pretty much instantly after POST, even on a 486. I once got an extremely minimal Linux to boot in 3 seconds on a Pentium 90 when I was designing a car mp3 stereo. However, that was without any daemons running, no unnecessary drivers, etc... so it was not really a usable general-purpose operating system. In the Windows world, I would consider Win95 to be the fastest (contrary to every review and ad for Win98+ that claimed faster boot and shutdown times). A fresh install of Win95 on my Athlon 800 loads in under 10 seconds, although this starts going up when you install a real video driver, Internet Explorer 5, etc. Still, if you carefully monitor what gets loaded on startup, you can keep Win95's boot time under 30 seconds, which helps immensely when rebooting many times daily is necessary. Even in cases of normal use, a short boot time is a great convenience.

      But maybe that's just me.

    6. Re:boot times by Drakino · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Then people need to look into sleep or hibernation. Everyone assumes it's for laptops, but it works just fine on desktops. I hibernate my media system all the time to have a middle of the road between power usage and boot times.

      Macs should be using sleep mode if running OS X.

    7. Re:boot times by Emil+Brink · · Score: 2, Informative

      Um, either they draw 300 W, or they don't. They most certainly won't draw 300 W/h, since that just doesn't make sense. 1 W = 1 J/s, dividing by time again is simply crazy. This has been a heads-up from your friendly elementary physics and units consistency police, now please go back to the regular programming. Thank you. ;^)

      --
      main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
    8. Re:boot times by Peyna · · Score: 2
      A default XP install on my box boots in about 1/3 the time than the default Redhat 7.2 workstation install (booting into X Windows to make it fair, even though without going into X it is still about 1/2 as slow.).

      --
      What?
    9. Re:boot times by Howie · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's worth mentioning that since at least NT4, the NT-based OSes 'cheat' about boot times compared to many Unixes... The typical unix will go through it's rc files (or rc.d/nnn dirs) and run the scripts in turn and wait for them to finish. NT plops it's login screen up long before it's finished loading Services (the rough equivalent of things like Sendmail and BIND on your *nix box). Wait and see how much time you need until both systems stop accessing the disk after reboot - the NT system will clatter away running IIS, DNS, DHCPd, whatever you have configured, for quite a while after the login screen has appeared.

      --
      "don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
    10. Re:boot times by Howie · · Score: 2

      As someone pointed out to me the other day here, and has changed the way I use my laptop - if it's a Win2K try Standby next time. As long as the battery holds out, my Toshiba now 'boots' in 3 seconds, and shuts down in about the same. I don't know why I never tried it before.

      Which reminds me - anyone know if I can do the same with Linux? I'd like to be able to suspend (mostly-power down) or suspend-to-disk (complete power-down) RH7.2 too...

      --
      "don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
  4. A treat! by alexmogil · · Score: 4, Funny

    We finally had the chance to hear 'I hate Microsoft and Intel' in *one sentence*! How rare!

    --
    A winner is you!
  5. Well Thought Out? by The+Gardener · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This was the system I benchmarked the P4 on. I used 128MB of Micron PC1600 (200MHz) ECC DDR Memory.

    The latest, preproduction, Intel CPU, and he only springs for 128 MB of ram? Why bottleneck the thing? No one is going to production ship it like that. I will likely go out the door with 512 or so.

    The Gardener

    --
    --
    1. Re:Well Thought Out? by VAXman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Additionally, why are they using such slow memory? Why not PC2100, PC2400, or PC2700?

    2. Re:Well Thought Out? by DeeKayWon · · Score: 2

      Because the system bus is 100MHz (albeit quad-pumped), and therefore PC2100/2400/2700 memory would still be running at 200MHz (the speed of PC1600 memory).

  6. She's hosed captain by 0xA · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hmmm, maybe they should chuck that board into their web server....

  7. Re:Amazing by VAXman · · Score: 2

    Hmm, well, if you ran a fullchip RTL simulation of an Athlon XP on a P4 your speed you be somewhere on the order of 10Hz-100Hz (depending on your simulation software). That's pretty slow.

  8. windows 3.0 on a 386 by Restil · · Score: 2

    Windows 3.0 on a 386 ran rather decently. 4 megs of ram? I could only have dreamed of having 4 megs of ram on my 386. I DID upgrade to 3 megs at one point. Back then I did it with an add-on isa card.

    Windows 3.0 even ran decently on a 286. And you didn't really need much more than 640K of ram, and it didn't complain much about it or spend too much time thrashing.

    However, thats not to say it was useful. In fact, I don't quite remember WHAT I did with win 3.0 except maybe something like paintbrush and the scanner software. Everything else back then still used Dos, and so did I. Windows was something that got loaded into a desqview window, along with all the other dos programs. :)

    -Restil

    --
    Play with my webcams and lights here
    1. Re:windows 3.0 on a 386 by chrysalis · · Score: 2

      Actually, Word and Excel were running pretty well on Windows 3.x and a 386.

      I was really amazed by Excel. For everything else, my Atari ST was way better :)


      --
      {{.sig}}
  9. XP doesn't seem to be in demand here by CatherineCornelius · · Score: 3, Interesting
    If you're going to bash [XP], bash it on the potential Digital Rights Management that was supposed to be introduced in XP, or on the product activation, or on any other Microsoft expansionist move. Bashing it for being slow is mostly just uninformed.

    Fair point. I'd also like to bash it for being rather insecure, but I suppose I'll just have to stand in line behind all the other /.ers who want to bash it for being a Microsoft product.

    But what interests me about XP is that so far there's no sign that the people at our office who use 98, NT or 2K want to upgrade. There seems to be a curious lack of keenness about this product. Perhaps it's the digital rights stuff. We developers run partly Microsoft, mostly Linux, so the people I'm talking about are the CEO, sales, marketing, legal, administrative and whatnot. They're more than happy with 9X or 2k, it seems. Or perhaps they're just scared to move in case they end up having to pay out for "upgrades" in the future.

    I guess we'll get an XP machine eventually because we are an ISP and we will have to support our users, just as we run tests on Mac (9 and X). But somehow our people don't seem to see XP yet as a gotta-have, the way 95 was.

    1. Re:XP doesn't seem to be in demand here by Tony-A · · Score: 2

      Bashing it for being slow is mostly just uninformed.
      Mostly the eye-candy that makes it slow. But it's that same eye-candy that is used to promote it. Probably the main thing is to find what can be easily turned off that will bring performance up to at least sub-par.

    2. Re:XP doesn't seem to be in demand here by 4of12 · · Score: 2

      They're more than happy with 9X or 2k, it seems...

      They ought to be. AFAICT, there is no good reason to upgrade to XP if you already have 2K. The latter finally gives Windows users some reasonable semblance of stability and security with which to run the Office applications that are "must have".

      If it weren't for home users getting XP with their new PC (as if there were any choice), the newly released XP would be getting scant real sales.

      That's probably why there's been all the strong arm tactics applied to Enterprise Licensing Agreements: there is otherwise absolutely no good technical reason for corporate IT to upgrade from 2K at this point. Sheesh, most corporate users are still trying to figure out how best to bite the bullet on upgrading their servers to 2K because of the viral cascade effects to contend with Active Directory (an "all or nothing" proposition).

      Along the same lines, there is little good reason for anyone with something like a 800 MHz PIII with 256 MB RAM to upgrade to this 2.2 GHz machine for the usual corporate office applications. Until more demanding applications become more commonplace, I wouldn't waste my money on either XP or 2.2 GHz.

      --
      "Provided by the management for your protection."
  10. Get the slower versions by Oscarfish · · Score: 3, Insightful

    1.6 GHz and 1.8 GHz Northwood chips are going to be available soon; these will likely be reaching some nice overclocks (maybe up to even 2.4) and these are the chips to get. They're also the only ones most of us will be able to afford, given the way Intel prices their chips (see here).

    I'm using an Athlon 1 GHz now and getting nearly a 40% overclock out of it, on an Iwill KK266-R board (KT133A SDRAM), at 155*9; it's not worth it to me to upgrade to an Athlon XP or a DDR chipset.

    Overclockers.com, probably my favorite site, has daily bits of news and a lot of information lately on Northwoods. Apparently Intel is working on a dual-channel DDR chipset which should be a treat.

    --

    --------

    Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t

  11. Boot Time is Inversely Proportionate... by Myriad · · Score: 5, Funny
    Ever notice how it seems that the newer and faster your computer gets, the longer the sucker takes to boot?

    Hence, I believe that (Myriad's law?):

    Boot Time is Inversely Proportionate to Computing Power - The more power you've got, the longer it's going to take.

    Ie, my old 486DX50 took longer to bring up DOS than my 386. (The 386 behind my 286, 8086. Hell, the C64 kicked all their asses!) Primarily because of added TSRs, memory managers etc.

    Then my P100 took longer to fire up... Good 'ol Windows.

    Now the Athlon takes ages... init bloody RAID arrays, UTA100 controllers, SCSI devices, Windows...let windows initialize all the above plus more. Wait wait wait. Go for coffee. Wait some more.

    Kind of sick really.

    --
    "They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
    1. Re:Boot Time is Inversely Proportionate... by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well a lot of that has to do with what is in your system. My PIII 700 with XP certianly boots slower than my 486 50 of yester year, however most of that is hardware. IT takes longer for the system to POST than for XP to load. IT has to scan 768MB ram, several HDs, 3 CD-ROMs, a SCSI card, etc, etc. It takes about 40 seconds to post and then around 20-25 for XP to load.

      Now back when I had 2000, that took longet to load, it took like a minute or so, but now it's the POST not the OS that is the slower part. I tell you what, if you take a board with a celeron, 64 MB ram, a 4MB VESA card, SB16 and a single HD and boot to DOS, you're up and running in like 15 seconds flat :).

  12. The end of interpreters! by chrysalis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hardware is still getting faster and faster for the same price.

    This is neat for developpers. Soon, source code will be recompiled in real time at every key stroke.

    No more need for interpreters :)


    --
    {{.sig}}
    1. Re:The end of interpreters! by image · · Score: 2

      Actually, no need for compilers. Just interpret every line of code that much faster. Why compile to native code if you can build high-level engines that can do more at run-time than you can at compile-time? This is part of the theory behind virtual machines like the JVM or Microsoft's EE. Their biggest disadvantage is speed -- and you're right, if the trend continues (and it will) then we won't bother (manually) compiling code at all.

      But you do need to add type safety and type checking to more interpreted languages. That is the second biggest compile time win after performance. Of course, that is more of a flaw in the languages as they are currently designed, not of the interpreter itself.

  13. Gates Law by Myriad · · Score: 5, Funny
    Ah, I see that in a way Mr.Gates got there first:

    From the Jargon Dictionary

    Gates's Law: "The speed of software halves every 18 months." This oft-cited law is an ironic comment on the tendency of software bloat to outpace the every-18-month doubling in hardware caopacity per dollar predicted by Moore's Law. The reference is to Bill Gates; Microsoft is widely considered among the worst if not the worst of the perpetrators of bloat.

    --
    "They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
  14. Re:Bah... by tswinzig · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sir, how dare you bring reality into the picture!

    By the way, why the hell does CmdrTaco care how fast it runs Windows XP? He only runs Linux, right?

    --

    "And like that ... he's gone."
  15. BeOS by tswinzig · · Score: 2

    Apparantly you've never booted BeOS.

    --

    "And like that ... he's gone."
  16. XP on slow machines by DaEvOsH · · Score: 4, Informative

    This setup might have a chance to run XP without it feeling like a 386/16 running Windows 3.0 on 4 megs of RAM. Allright, thats probably crazy talk ;)

    This kind of comments are, sadly, not making /. the best image in the eyes of the public, and not gaining a reputation for clear, objective content it should (could?) have. I know that, after all, this is CmdrTaco's personal journal, but it has millions of visitors and could be one of the showcases to the world of the linux/open source/it community.

    Back to the topic, to those who have used XP little, this is my experience.

    The OS is great, I did not expect something as good from MS. It is stable, plug and play really works and reboots are very ocassional. Uptimes are long. And it is quite easy to administer. Performancewise (the real reason for my comment) it needs lots of memory, but I have been running it on slooow machines, with very satisfactory results.

    For example, it runs very well on my old Sony Vaio laptop, 266Mhz Pentium (not II) with 192Mbs of Ram. It had Win98 before, and I was tired of that. It runs at very good speed, not blazingly fast but acceptable, browses internet faster, boots in shorter time and is totally stable. Also, contrary to Win2k, I get the power management stuff I really need.

    Also, I got some old PCs here at home and it runs pretty well, a 400 Celeron for my mother, 256Mb ram and a 333P2 with 128 Mbs ram. It is a RAM hog, and 128Mb is the minimun acceptable.

    Also, as a recommendation for anyone running it, turn off the blue theme and run it in 'classic' time. Not drawing all those bitmaps will make it more responsive. Also turn off system restore, it slows the system down quite a bit.

    I know this is a place where linux is the ultimate OS. For me, it is, but for some (critical and important) applications. I use it at work. For end users, XP is great, and we (the linux/opensource community) should appreciate how well it works, learn from it the good things and realize that MS just got a better we have to compete against.

    Too bad that (like at work) MS has no way to compete with the pricing of linux :)

    1. Re:XP on slow machines by larien · · Score: 2
      I have XP on my machine here, and it runs fine. But then, this is a 1533MHz Athlon and 768MB RAM, so it had damn well better run fine! I will also say that this is the first version of windows which has allowed me to install graphics drivers without requiring a reboot (or, in the case of Win3.1, restarting windows).

      That was a major shock to me and a sign of how things have improved.

      Course, it screwed up on me (in my case, failing to read system files; I can't remember which) within a week requiring a reinstall. It's been fine since, however.

    2. Re:XP on slow machines by Perdo · · Score: 2

      Don't like the pro-linux, anti-ms bent to stories on slashdot? Go get your news at msn.

      Ever packet sniff a msn/xp dialup? Have you ever tried to shut down the connection and have the modem spend another two minutes sending msn encrypted data?

      Look, brain washed boy, MS has stolen the software market, Steals your data every chance they get, stole half the jobs in IT, and you have given them your mind.

      Maybe you should buy another opinion.

      MS: "if we want your opinion we'll sell it to you"

      MS memo fron last year: "PLEASE STOP AND TROLL SLASHDOT!"

      --

      If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.

  17. Re:Lack of XP demand dooms Linux on desktop by CatherineCornelius · · Score: 2
    It's mostly just a fear of the unknown. Things work fine now don't try to fix them... that sort of thing.

    But this same attitude pretty much also dooms the notion of Linux on the desktop. If people are afraid of moving to WinXP for fear of what might no longer work, they aren't about to jump into another plane of in-compatibility with Linux.

    I agree wholeheartedly on this. I've never really seen Linux as a general purpose platform for desktop productivity software. In fact it surprised me to see how far Ximian and whatnot have taken this. But the killer is interoperability. As long as Microsoft is permitted to keep its file formats secret, no competitor stands a chance because people will always need to keep a copy of a Microsoft product lying around in order to read and convert legacy files and files from third parties who have not switched.

    Even if Linux were a boon to the desktop user (it isn't, it has its own foibles and it can be a pig to learn them), the inertia that pertains to use of any non-mainstream (which translates to non-MS, in most cases) software would apply.

  18. Windows Not Slow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've been a linux user since 1995. I've used linux professionally since 1996. I've used nothing BUT linux on my desktop machines at work since 1998. I'm a huge fan of linux. I don't care for Microsoft... I despise their business practices and I feel that every iteration of windows up until windows 2000 was a hunk of garbage.

    However, these comments about 2000 and XP being slow are way out of line. They are the type of baseless, smug, nudge nudge wink wink hey other linux geeks look I'm cool I made fun of microsoft comments that I can't stand, and that I think severely hurt the linux community.

    I have a dual boot system at home. Its a dual p2 400, with 393 megs of ram. I have two 10 gig hard drives, one with debian gnu/linux, the other with windows 2000 professional. I use each OS for different purposes. I use debian for my work (development), for my hobby (more development), for some games (quake 1-3 mainly) and for my communications (email, irc, usenet, the www).

    I use windows 2000 for my games that don't work on linux, for my childrens' games, and my wife uses it for digital photo editing, browsing the web, and getting her email.

    Windows 2000 is a decent operating system (sorry to the zealots in the crowd.. but its true). Its been very stable for me. It runs very well on my hardware. I don't have any speed problems. My windows games play fine under it. All my hardware is easily supported with it. Recently I bought a digital camera and a usb printer, and setting them up was a snap. All in all, I've found it to be a very reasonable operating system for desktop use. I've heard XP is much the same, and geared a little more towards home users than 2000.

    All my hardware works under linux just fine as well, and linux runs great on the machine. Setting things up is of course more of a PITA.. when I bought my camera and printer, I had to recompile my kernel because I didn't include usb support in my last kernel. I wrote some scripts for automating downloading images of the camera. These are things an "average" home user does not know how to do, and does not WANT to know how to do.

    Windows is much farther along in terms of useability by non technical users than Linux is. Linux is playing a serious catch up game in that arena.

    Windows 2000 and XP are not slow. Will they run on a 386 with 32 megs of ram? No. Is Linux, with xfree 4.1, a full GNOME or KDE setup, and mozilla reasonable user on older hardware either? No.

    Windows 2000 Professional is also in my experience very stable. I've had IE crash a couple of times on me. Certainly no more times than I've had to kill -9 my mozilla processes.

    Linux is a great operating system for many things. I love it. Its been a pleasure to watch Linux evolve from its early beginnings to where it is now. However, it still has a long way to go (at least in the desktop arena).

    Making unfounded comments about competing operating systems doesn't accomplish anything, other than making you look cool to the other members of the he-man windows hater club. When someone who is unfamiliar with Linux, and uses XP or 2000, hears snickering and comments bashing Windows, when their Windows system in their experience works well, is reliable, fast, and supports all of their hardware, what do you think they think? Do they think "oh gee, I suppose I should use Linux, because Win-doze is for microsoft slaves and retards!". Or do they more likely think "wtf is that person talking about?".

    Only through honestly assessing where we are today can Linux continue to grow and move forward. Standing around patting each other on the back and making fun of other OSes is not a positive activity, and contributes to the negative stereotype of Linux users as an exclusive club of technosnobs.

  19. mod that up! by rebelcool · · Score: 2

    couldn't have said it better myself...

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    -

  20. Re:As others will surely also state... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Read the number of posts that use the exact wording, "Linux is not ready for the desktop." I am amazed that they are soooo obvious... Sad really.

    And the tag team that two of them have going is also fun to watch... One makes a statement, then the other one supports it.

    Tisk, tisk tisk. They must really be worried about XP getting trashed. We all know that sales of XP really sucked, and that this dragged down computer sales in the last quarter of the year. Maybe people wanted a choice as to what OS came on their machines.

    Personally, I build my own machines. My favorite is a 2 year old dual celeron on a BP6, overclocked to 522MHz. It has 512 MB of RAM and 80 GB worth of RAID 5 hard drives. That machine is so fast, you click on a icon and the app pops up almost as you are letting up on the mouse. Even Mozilla starts in about 2 seconds.

    I fix the boot sequence to boot to an Xwindows prompt in just a few seconds. All the servers and a lot of the services are started up after X windows is started. I am suprised that we don't have a better boot sequence in Linux yet. Especially since it was so easy to do this.

    Maybe the distribution people need to get together and all agree to a new init method that emphasises boot speed for desktop users. Since this seems to be a problem for a lot of people here.

    Only running applications that are linked against one set of libraries seems to help by not having to cache a lot of different libraries.

    I also would like to see our applications get prelinked against the libraries that they are using, like under OSX. Linking at run time is just too expensive. It is better to do it just the one time and to save the executable prelinked. This can just be another step in the installation process. Prelinking would easily half the load speed of almost every program.

    The last thing that I would recommend is using the intel compiler to compile a some of the executables that are taking a lot of processor, like audio/video codexes.

    This would make them run much more efficiently and be able to take advantage of special instructions on the various platforms. This could easily result in upto 20% performance increase over gcc compiled executibles. Not because gcc is bad, but because intel is just good at writing x86 optimized compilers.

    An increase of 20% will make a 500MHz processor run like a 600MHz processor, and this is the difference between dropping frames and not dropping frames during recording.

    Can you imagine a Linux distribution that did these 3 simple steps? It would boot in 5 seconds to a login prompt, would start programs in sub second times and would need 20% less processor for the same performance as a normal Linux distribution. I'd pay good money for that distribution.

  21. Time plays with your perceptions by Goonie · · Score: 2
    Sure, you might have felt that Windows ran fine on a 286 at the time, but try using it now. You'll be making coffees during the screen redraws. As our computers have gotten faster, our perception of acceptable response time has changed greatly.

    I know I recently had to use a 386DX40 running Windows 3.1, and I couldn't believe just how slow it felt.

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    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
    --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
    1. Re:Time plays with your perceptions by Restil · · Score: 2

      True. the screen refreshing really didn't get good until the eisa and vlb cards became available.

      Still... when windows was just another application and not your operating system, you didn't notice it as much. :)

      -Restil

      --
      Play with my webcams and lights here
  22. Re:Why use XP over w2k? by throx · · Score: 2

    For XP:

    - Best power management for laptops
    - Best "legacy" compatibility for Win9x games
    - Nicer UI than other Windows products (after you use it for week it's better)

    For W2k:
    - Less memory intensive than XP
    - Older and so behavior is better known.

    Your errors:
    DRM and driver signing exist in Win2k in exactly the same way that they do in XP.

    I don't get how either of these are "monopolistic" either. Is it monopolistic that Linux now has a flag that tells you if a driver isn't open source? Of course this is Slashdot and anything anti-MS doesn't need explanation.

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    Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means

  23. Re:Lack of XP demand dooms Linux on desktop by sheldon · · Score: 2

    Yes, the move from NT4 to Win2k was pretty big. The move from Win2k to WinXP is also a good step, but it's far more subtle. It's just more useable than 2k, whereas 2k over NT was more stable. Stability is noticeable right away, where usability takes some time to notice.

  24. Lame computer joke by ryanvm · · Score: 2

    This setup might have a chance to run XP without it feeling like a 386/16 running Windows 3.0 on 4 megs of RAM.

    Is it just me or does this sound like a joke you'd hear from Nick Burns - Your Company Computer Guy?

  25. Re:Don't forget by Dahan · · Score: 2
    But I better stop, since I'm being "silly" and obviously ungrounded in reality.

    Yup, better stop, since you're being "a troll" and obviously a loser...

    [Mr. "Pinball Wizard" admits that he's never actually used XP, and didn't know whether the statements he was making were true. Of course, they're not.]

  26. Benchmarks for the new processors by Lars+T. · · Score: 2
    In its latest issue the German magazin c't tests the new P4s and Athlons. There is a teaser (in German), and the SPEC Benchmark results online.

    BTW, the new "Prestonia" Xeons implement "Hyper-Threading" (a form of SMT), and report to have two logical processors.

    --

    Lars T.

    To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck