I remember running Corel DRAW in Windows 3.11 on a 386 with 4 MB RAM. When Windows 95 was released, MS said it was faster and more optimised than Windows 3.11. When Windows 98 was released, they said it was faster and more optimised than Windows 95. Same goes for Windows Me and now XP. If all this is true, then why is it that if I try to start Windows XP on a 386 with 4 MB of RAM it won't even make it past the M$ logo...? And if my CPU is 100 times as fast, why does everthing take more or less the same time?
By now it should be using a negative amount of memory and running on a Z80!
I've never had 95, 98 or Me installed on any of the computers I use regularly. I went from DOS to NT (3.51, then 4.0) and now 2000 Pro. And each of these changes was made for a reason.
From DOS to NT because of the native multitasking and GUI (and because some programs had become Windows-only).
From NT to 2000 for the plug-&-Play and because of DX (ie, games).
Now the question when considering the upgrade to XP is not "will it be much worse?", but rather "will it be much better?". What's the point in paying for an upgrade, installing everything all over again, going back to beta drivers, etc., if, in the end, you end up with something that's almost identical to what you had in the first place?
Is a 1 GB MicroDrive enough...? I have a 340 MB one on my 3MP digital camera and it can hold up to 1000 pictures in medium / high quality. Show me any photographer that carries that much film around.
As to losing data, well, with digital photography you can make exact copies. With chemical photography if you screw the negative, it's not coming back. I know several photographers that use regular film cameras but then store everything in digital format (using high-resolution film scanners).
The problem with digital cameras is they're just not good enough yet for large prints. The Nikon D1X comes pretty close, but it still doesn't have the resolution of good film. When they reach resolutions of about 6K horizontally (ie, >25 MP) with no "halos" like current CCDs produce, then "professional" (artistic, commercial, etc.) photography will probably move to 100%-digital. Until then, professionals will continue to use film cameras for their "final" work.
By default, Opera identifies itself as MSIE, so some of those MSIE users may have been using Opera. I've been using it for quite some time now and slowly it has become my main browser. IMO, its strongest point is that it's made to serve the user, not the websites. You can always break out of frames, see the URLs, the windows don't clutter your taskbar, you can zoom in and out of pages, there's a separate window with all active transfers, you can control it with mouse gestures, etc. Now if only they'd add an option to block onClose and onLoad pop-ups...
RMN
~~~
One thing is removing the heatshink while the CPU is running. If this happens accidentally (ex., the clip breaks and the heatsink falls off), it'll probably hit graphics card, short-circuiting it. So even if the CPU survives, your system still crashes. But the chances of this happenning are very, very slim.
A different thing (rather more likey) is the fan stopping while the heatsink remains on the CPU. This has happened to me once, with an Athlon @ 1GHz, when a cable got stuck in the fan (whoever designed those Titan Majesty coolers didn't remember there are cables inside the case). After about 1 minute the motherboard started beeping and the system froze (I don't know if it this was a safety measure taken by the board - an Asus A7Pro - or a consequence of some error). I turned the power off, pulled the cable from the fan, let it cool for a couple of minutes and turned it back on. It still beeped for a while (it was at about 90 C) but booted normally, and it's been working fine since.
Anyway, an appropriate heatsink is a requirement of the CPU, just like a proper electrical supply. If you feed a CPU 220 volts instead of 1.7, it probably won't last long either...
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I remember running Corel DRAW in Windows 3.11 on a 386 with 4 MB RAM. When Windows 95 was released, MS said it was faster and more optimised than Windows 3.11. When Windows 98 was released, they said it was faster and more optimised than Windows 95. Same goes for Windows Me and now XP. If all this is true, then why is it that if I try to start Windows XP on a 386 with 4 MB of RAM it won't even make it past the M$ logo...? And if my CPU is 100 times as fast, why does everthing take more or less the same time?
By now it should be using a negative amount of memory and running on a Z80!
I've never had 95, 98 or Me installed on any of the computers I use regularly. I went from DOS to NT (3.51, then 4.0) and now 2000 Pro. And each of these changes was made for a reason.
From DOS to NT because of the native multitasking and GUI (and because some programs had become Windows-only).
From NT to 2000 for the plug-&-Play and because of DX (ie, games).
Now the question when considering the upgrade to XP is not "will it be much worse?", but rather "will it be much better?". What's the point in paying for an upgrade, installing everything all over again, going back to beta drivers, etc., if, in the end, you end up with something that's almost identical to what you had in the first place?
A black hole without a donut...? I'm not impressed. The other day I saw something much stranger: a donut without a hole.
Is a 1 GB MicroDrive enough...? I have a 340 MB one on my 3MP digital camera and it can hold up to 1000 pictures in medium / high quality. Show me any photographer that carries that much film around.
As to losing data, well, with digital photography you can make exact copies. With chemical photography if you screw the negative, it's not coming back. I know several photographers that use regular film cameras but then store everything in digital format (using high-resolution film scanners).
The problem with digital cameras is they're just not good enough yet for large prints. The Nikon D1X comes pretty close, but it still doesn't have the resolution of good film. When they reach resolutions of about 6K horizontally (ie, >25 MP) with no "halos" like current CCDs produce, then "professional" (artistic, commercial, etc.) photography will probably move to 100%-digital. Until then, professionals will continue to use film cameras for their "final" work.
By default, Opera identifies itself as MSIE, so some of those MSIE users may have been using Opera. I've been using it for quite some time now and slowly it has become my main browser. IMO, its strongest point is that it's made to serve the user, not the websites. You can always break out of frames, see the URLs, the windows don't clutter your taskbar, you can zoom in and out of pages, there's a separate window with all active transfers, you can control it with mouse gestures, etc. Now if only they'd add an option to block onClose and onLoad pop-ups... RMN ~~~
One thing is removing the heatshink while the CPU is running. If this happens accidentally (ex., the clip breaks and the heatsink falls off), it'll probably hit graphics card, short-circuiting it. So even if the CPU survives, your system still crashes. But the chances of this happenning are very, very slim.
A different thing (rather more likey) is the fan stopping while the heatsink remains on the CPU. This has happened to me once, with an Athlon @ 1GHz, when a cable got stuck in the fan (whoever designed those Titan Majesty coolers didn't remember there are cables inside the case). After about 1 minute the motherboard started beeping and the system froze (I don't know if it this was a safety measure taken by the board - an Asus A7Pro - or a consequence of some error). I turned the power off, pulled the cable from the fan, let it cool for a couple of minutes and turned it back on. It still beeped for a while (it was at about 90 C) but booted normally, and it's been working fine since.
Anyway, an appropriate heatsink is a requirement of the CPU, just like a proper electrical supply. If you feed a CPU 220 volts instead of 1.7, it probably won't last long either...