The PSU thing is quite interesting. I knew it was peak performance, but I didn't expect a newer PSU being much more efficient. I'd expect it to generate more heat and thus be less efficient. Good to know that it isn't the case.
As you said: I cannot do what I do now with a hardware router (which is what you suggest). You are right, a hardware router is the way to go for a normal family to do things. My family is not normal in that context. They have now gotten used to having their profiles stored on a server and having the same environment on whatever computer they log in to. Also since it hosts my own domain, I can do my own SPAM handling, I can run my own webmail, and all stuff like that.
I am very much aware that a computer with more services running is less secure. I know what I'm doing. I keep up with patches (as far as I know) and the only ports that are open to the outside are 22, 25 and 80. That's it. The rest is for internal use only. (I don't expect anyone in my family to become a malicious hacker anytime soon *grin*)
Finally, I was quite startled to see this: It would be possible to setup port forwarding rules on the new routers so that sme other computer on the network can take up the slack.
From a security standpoint that is of course true. However those other machines would need to run 24/7 too, and the topic here is "helping the environment". So you suggest that running a hardware router *and* a (more modern) machine 24/7 that gets portforwarding from the hardware router is going to be *more* environmentally friendly than the current setup I have?
I know that XP boots quite quickly. But after login in the worst case you can have 5 minutes between login and the antivirus that starts (if you really have that much crap on your machine - I'm exaggerating a bit). That is a 5 minute window I don't want to take. NT4 and W2k both start the services before you are allowed to do anything, which is the *propper* way to do it.
And you think that W2k or XP is compiled to take advantage of a P4? Well, in that case it must have a lot of switches. (It's not like Linux where you specify the platform you compile the kernel for) The API's are pretty fixed, just don't start using the latest and greatest. I'm not an end-user developper, nor do I write games. It's internal development, it doesn't need to look slick and use all the latest little hooks.
That MS doesn't support NT4 doesn't concern me: that is the problem of the Administrators in this company. I have not yet seen any indication of switching over to W2k or XP. NT4 does the job, and it does it well.
Uhm, my devstation here at work is a spanking new P4 from Dell with 1Gb or memory. It runs the company standard software: NT4 with Office 97 (which I only use to read the speficiations) and a bunch of devtools.
NT4 boots faster than XP on any recent machine I've seen. Memory footprint in idle is insanely low (both compared to W2k and XP). Granted, the soundcard doesn't work (driver is not installed, if it even exists) and the graphics card probably uses a very old driver. Does it matter? Nope, it's not a gaming station, I am not allowed to play music, so this is really the perfect choice for a corporate environment that is highly standardized.
Also note that this machine has no connection to the internet and hence is not vulnerable to the latest worm attack.
The reason why libraries get these fancy PC (usually with 17" TFT screens) is because they are in public places. They want to show off "look we can buy the greatest latest hardware". The fact that it runs NT4, W2k, XP or even Linux does not matter in the eyes of non-geeks. What matters is that the hardwrae "looks" expensive and spanking brand new.
Re:Good Distros for older machines?
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I know you want Linux, but most modern distros (except Slackware and Debian who are highly customisable) are geared to at least P-III class machines. Do what I did, and try either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Small memory footprint (depending on what you run), and not much CPU usage. Of course, it's mostly meant as server usage. I never tried to make a desktop of OpenBSD or NetBSD.
A P120 is able to do MP3 decoding. You only need to be sure it does only that. I had a P120 laptop with 32Meg RAM and it played MP3's nicely with mpg123 under Linux.
Of course, you needed to make sure it was the only thing that could do any "heavy" processing.;-)
I recently got rid of a 133MHz Pentium that did a halfway decent job at being a firewall, but doing anything else with it took forever.
Uh? A halfway decent job for firewall? There are 386 machines at 20Mhz that do this hands down. My "server", running NAT/firewall, ssh, DHCP, mailserver, webserver, timeserver, samba and I'm surely forgetting a service left or right is a stupid little P166Mhz with 128Meg RAM (okay, it's full SCSI). This is just for a normal 5-head family, but really, the thing sits idle all day:
Firewall for a company? Yeah, my P166 won't do a 1000-head company, but it'll probably cope with about 50 users. Of course it costs some electricity to keep it running, but I've got some big advantage of doing that (internet 24/7 on each computer in the network... which is 5 computers)
It's the same as your fridge: a big power-eater. The advantage is: fresh food for 24/7...
Also consider this: that P166 has a powersupply of 200W. Any new machine these days will need a powersupply of at least 300W. Which one is better you think? If you're running Win on such a "new" machine, the next worm that comes along infects it and will pump up the CPU usage to 100%, negating all fancy powersave options it might have.
and we all know that "they" are the US government?
Yes and no. I stayed vague on purpose. In my opinion no international treaty or law is worth anything anymore. So, "they" can be interpreted as "anyone in power in any country".
They need to update that list: Belgium is missing. *sigh* (And "update" is quite an understatement because French has been an official language of Belgium since it's creation)
Well, I didn't dare to speak about "that linux" thingy yet. I've just met her 2 months ago, so I'm not going to scare her away with Linux. For the moment I equated it with "Not Windows" and "See that Pinguin thingy, that's Linux". For now that's more than enough.
I'm going to have a hard time explaining what OpenBSD is and that's Sun hardware I have lying around isn't going to be an easy one either;-)
And about the speed: I kept a P120 laptop alive (read: usable) by installing Linux on it and running WindowMaker. Granted I couldn't run OpenOffice but for plain surfing, chat and email it was more than enough. It kept me one more years from replacing it and I learned a lot. I wish I had a spare laptop to put Linux on.... the only laptop I now have is my iBook with OS X, which is great, but I also like Linux.
Hehe, this is kind of funny. When my girlfriend saw my iBook she was amazed. (note: she is not technical, okay...) She didn't know these things exist. She has quite some problems with her brand new computer (running XP Home) mainly due to her little brother, uhm, "researching the internet". Her explanation was kind of enlightening: "but I didn't know there were other kind of computers, when you look at the advertisements you only see Windows Machines, Macs are just not advertised". This is true for where I live: for every 100 PC's advertised, there is perhaps 1 Mac and usually only in speciality press. You see, for what she needs a computer for, even a low end eMac would have done the job quite well.
I still wonder why she has a computer 10x more powerful than mine (not that I care, I have a nice dual-CPU setup): 2.8GHz P-IV, 512Meg RAM, CD-Writer and DVD-Writer, about any Smartcard slot you can think of, 160Gig HD and a real nice 17" LCD screen. I don't want to know how much she spent on it, but the machine really is overkill. (And no, she doesn't do any digital video editing or so and doesn't plan to do it)
Idiots! I think I'm going to write them an email too. Valorlux can be considered a public service, and they should adhere to the W3C standard, so that an absolute maximum number of people can get to the information. Hey, how am I supposed to know when to put my empty beer-cans in the blue bag outside.
Well, apparently I need to upgrade my iBook too, because really, I need to install crappy flash addons just to know when they fetch my recycable trash. *sigh*.
SuSE/KDE wouldn't surprise me. A great European distribution. But are you sure about the Windows part? Well, since he advocates "the best tool for the job", you just might be right.
Oh, come on! That's a BSOD of the 9x series. Billy is at least running Win2000 or XP, which both reboot instead of bluescreening. (There is an option where you can tell it to bluescreen and not reboot, IIRC)
Uhm, I have a USB cable, works fine, but I just don't have any ringtones that apeal to me. I have no clue about MIDI files (being absolutely amusical) so making one myself is out of the question. (What software? How? I do not know)...
I listened, didn't I? Besides theoretical drivers exam is pretty hard, no way you get it without paying attention and studying. On top of that you have a mandatory skidding course when you got your license for 6 months. You'll hear your ABS on that course, believe me.
Kind advice: Audi Allroad (or any of their Quattro models) or Volvo XC70 or XC90 (one of them is a SUV though).
You don't need to have a SUV, to have a practical 4WD car. Besides, the cars mentioned above are way more sexy than any SUV I've seen. (Okay, I like the BMW X5, X3 and the Merceds M-class, but you wouldn't catch me buying any of those because I like to have my ass close to the asphalth, and I still have 4WD)
My best friend is 200cm tall (calculate yourself, I'm not good at american measurements). He drives a Fiat Bravo. He's has got space enough.
Of course, he doesn't fit in *my* car, but that's because it's a two seater and somehow two-seaters are always built for people that are 180cm tall.
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As you said: I cannot do what I do now with a hardware router (which is what you suggest). You are right, a hardware router is the way to go for a normal family to do things. My family is not normal in that context. They have now gotten used to having their profiles stored on a server and having the same environment on whatever computer they log in to. Also since it hosts my own domain, I can do my own SPAM handling, I can run my own webmail, and all stuff like that.
I am very much aware that a computer with more services running is less secure. I know what I'm doing. I keep up with patches (as far as I know) and the only ports that are open to the outside are 22, 25 and 80. That's it. The rest is for internal use only. (I don't expect anyone in my family to become a malicious hacker anytime soon *grin*)
Finally, I was quite startled to see this:
It would be possible to setup port forwarding rules on the new routers so that sme other computer on the network can take up the slack.
From a security standpoint that is of course true. However those other machines would need to run 24/7 too, and the topic here is "helping the environment". So you suggest that running a hardware router *and* a (more modern) machine 24/7 that gets portforwarding from the hardware router is going to be *more* environmentally friendly than the current setup I have?
And you think that W2k or XP is compiled to take advantage of a P4? Well, in that case it must have a lot of switches. (It's not like Linux where you specify the platform you compile the kernel for) The API's are pretty fixed, just don't start using the latest and greatest. I'm not an end-user developper, nor do I write games. It's internal development, it doesn't need to look slick and use all the latest little hooks.
That MS doesn't support NT4 doesn't concern me: that is the problem of the Administrators in this company. I have not yet seen any indication of switching over to W2k or XP. NT4 does the job, and it does it well.
NT4 boots faster than XP on any recent machine I've seen. Memory footprint in idle is insanely low (both compared to W2k and XP). Granted, the soundcard doesn't work (driver is not installed, if it even exists) and the graphics card probably uses a very old driver. Does it matter? Nope, it's not a gaming station, I am not allowed to play music, so this is really the perfect choice for a corporate environment that is highly standardized.
Also note that this machine has no connection to the internet and hence is not vulnerable to the latest worm attack.
The reason why libraries get these fancy PC (usually with 17" TFT screens) is because they are in public places. They want to show off "look we can buy the greatest latest hardware". The fact that it runs NT4, W2k, XP or even Linux does not matter in the eyes of non-geeks. What matters is that the hardwrae "looks" expensive and spanking brand new.
I know you want Linux, but most modern distros (except Slackware and Debian who are highly customisable) are geared to at least P-III class machines. Do what I did, and try either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Small memory footprint (depending on what you run), and not much CPU usage. Of course, it's mostly meant as server usage. I never tried to make a desktop of OpenBSD or NetBSD.
A P120 is able to do MP3 decoding. You only need to be sure it does only that. I had a P120 laptop with 32Meg RAM and it played MP3's nicely with mpg123 under Linux. ;-)
Of course, you needed to make sure it was the only thing that could do any "heavy" processing.
Uh? A halfway decent job for firewall? There are 386 machines at 20Mhz that do this hands down. My "server", running NAT/firewall, ssh, DHCP, mailserver, webserver, timeserver, samba and I'm surely forgetting a service left or right is a stupid little P166Mhz with 128Meg RAM (okay, it's full SCSI). This is just for a normal 5-head family, but really, the thing sits idle all day:
Firewall for a company? Yeah, my P166 won't do a 1000-head company, but it'll probably cope with about 50 users. Of course it costs some electricity to keep it running, but I've got some big advantage of doing that (internet 24/7 on each computer in the network... which is 5 computers)
It's the same as your fridge: a big power-eater. The advantage is: fresh food for 24/7...
Also consider this: that P166 has a powersupply of 200W. Any new machine these days will need a powersupply of at least 300W. Which one is better you think? If you're running Win on such a "new" machine, the next worm that comes along infects it and will pump up the CPU usage to 100%, negating all fancy powersave options it might have.
Yes and no. I stayed vague on purpose. In my opinion no international treaty or law is worth anything anymore. So, "they" can be interpreted as "anyone in power in any country".
Who cares? Even if it were, we all know by now that international treaties and international law are null and void. They can do whatever they please.
It's a poltergeist: the ISS was built on an Indian cemetary.
They need to update that list: Belgium is missing. *sigh* (And "update" is quite an understatement because French has been an official language of Belgium since it's creation)
Tell that to Volkswagen ....
I'm going to have a hard time explaining what OpenBSD is and that's Sun hardware I have lying around isn't going to be an easy one either ;-)
And about the speed: I kept a P120 laptop alive (read: usable) by installing Linux on it and running WindowMaker. Granted I couldn't run OpenOffice but for plain surfing, chat and email it was more than enough. It kept me one more years from replacing it and I learned a lot. I wish I had a spare laptop to put Linux on.... the only laptop I now have is my iBook with OS X, which is great, but I also like Linux.
I still wonder why she has a computer 10x more powerful than mine (not that I care, I have a nice dual-CPU setup): 2.8GHz P-IV, 512Meg RAM, CD-Writer and DVD-Writer, about any Smartcard slot you can think of, 160Gig HD and a real nice 17" LCD screen. I don't want to know how much she spent on it, but the machine really is overkill. (And no, she doesn't do any digital video editing or so and doesn't plan to do it)
Don't forget the Atari Portfolio . I owned one of those great little buggers back in the day. Heck, I still own it, but the screen is bust :-(
Well, apparently I need to upgrade my iBook too, because really, I need to install crappy flash addons just to know when they fetch my recycable trash. *sigh*.
Yeah, and? That would make any geek daddy proud! Smart and good at FPS...
Uh? When did I post goatse? You must be mistaking me for someone else. Show your face, so that we can resolve this issue as adult men.
SuSE/KDE wouldn't surprise me. A great European distribution. But are you sure about the Windows part? Well, since he advocates "the best tool for the job", you just might be right.
Oh, come on! That's a BSOD of the 9x series. Billy is at least running Win2000 or XP, which both reboot instead of bluescreening. (There is an option where you can tell it to bluescreen and not reboot, IIRC)
Actually, I think the people on slashdot would be more interested to know if he uses KDE or Gnome ;-)
Since everyone thinks like you, my cellphone with a normal "brrrng" will kinda stand out, no? ;-)
Uhm, I have a USB cable, works fine, but I just don't have any ringtones that apeal to me. I have no clue about MIDI files (being absolutely amusical) so making one myself is out of the question. (What software? How? I do not know)...
I listened, didn't I? Besides theoretical drivers exam is pretty hard, no way you get it without paying attention and studying. On top of that you have a mandatory skidding course when you got your license for 6 months. You'll hear your ABS on that course, believe me.
You don't need to have a SUV, to have a practical 4WD car. Besides, the cars mentioned above are way more sexy than any SUV I've seen. (Okay, I like the BMW X5, X3 and the Merceds M-class, but you wouldn't catch me buying any of those because I like to have my ass close to the asphalth, and I still have 4WD)
My best friend is 200cm tall (calculate yourself, I'm not good at american measurements). He drives a Fiat Bravo. He's has got space enough.
Of course, he doesn't fit in *my* car, but that's because it's a two seater and somehow two-seaters are always built for people that are 180cm tall.