I replaced my MILs computer (huge ass hand-down old gaming machine from her son) with a Atom D410PT with 2GB RAM, 250GB SATA disk and DVD/RW. All fit in a nice shiny "piano black finish" case. She doesn't want or need a laptop and when I installed it for her I got a lot of "oooohs-and-aaahs" because it was pretty and tiny and silent.
It runs Ubuntu 10.04 by the way and from what I gather very well. (My first contact with the Atom platforms was an ION 330, which might be quick on Win32, but was hellishly slow on Ubuntu 9.04 or was it 9.10. NVidia drivers were the cause... My brother uses that one now with XP and it seems to be working perfectly fine)
There are a lot of people who prefer to work at a desk on standard keyboards with big LCD screens, instead of what a laptop has to offer.
I can surf the web (including Slashdot, Facebook and others) just fine with my Asus EEE 701 4G (2GB RAM) using Debian Lenny and Iceweasel... That's a 900MHz Celeron, which isn't even in the same league as a 2.0++GHz P-IV, which is what 6 year old desktop machines are! You're seriously underestimating older hardware.
Disclaimer: I'm a dumpster diver and I know how to get the most out of my "finds".
Wireless support was the only reason to really upgrade to XP for a business. (I'm not sure it Terminal Server on 2000 was present, that would also be a reason) For a home user it was the "Fast User Switching" feature and wireless. For the rest: nothing.
If there are real benefits directly for the end user? 3.11 to 95 had benefits, 2000 to XP or 98/ME to XP had benefits... Technical benefits, that really impacted the user. XP to Vista or 7? Meh... Not so much.
Trust me, I have seen it in the clients I support, the XP users still get viruses and malware 3 or 4x more often than the 7 and Vista users
This really says more about their administrators than the software. Windows XP can be locked down and should be in a business environment. If they can't do that, I doubt they will have much advantage of the "more control" part of the "advantage" you list, as they clearly don't have control at all.
So, it boils down to "new features": the old system is not broken and "whatever" isn't really a reason. Thank you to make my point... The new features don't bring any advantage to the normal user and the business owner.
Lock down the XP machine and develop as a "Limited User". If it runs as "Limited User" on XP it will run just fine on Vista and above.
I have been running XP machines in Limited User for ages... Sometimes you need to adapt some rights, but it's the fault of the misbehaving application. If you're a developer and target XP with "Limited User", you'll be fine and dandy.
It is a non-issue if you lock down the machines and firewall the hell out of them.... Which should be done anyway, regardless what operating system they run.
No, my point is: do not upgrade old systems. If there is no need yet to buy new machines, keep with what works. Upgrade the software with the hardware.
Oh, and I would upgrade if it were free. The extra RAM would still be beneficial if it turns out to be a bad move and you have to roll back. Free products get more slack from me....
Yup, my math was extremely optimistic... I completely agree that a hardware upgrade cycle is in order, to go to 7, unless you have very recent machines that already run Vista.
I'm a dumpster diver for fun and back when Vista came out, I expected the times to become golden. They didn't.... Back then the economy was good. Now those 6 year old P-IVs are indeed showing up in dumpster and if you find enough of them, you can make one decent machine. Won't run Windows 7 well tough. That's why I put Ubuntu on them and give them away to people who want/need them.
With the economy down the drain, my dumpster diving antics have become worse and worse. A few years ago, you could even find an AMD64 with low RAM in the dumpster... Nowadays, not so much...
Which ones? The support for more RAM when you take the 64-bit? Otherwise, what?!?
I'm sorry, but most normal-level employees do not use up a full 2GB RAM.... There are employees who can benefit from more RAM, but they are definitely in the minority.
My own work machine (running Ubuntu 10.04 i386) reports: 31% in use by programs, 36% in use by cache... I have 4GB physically and thus 3.4GB usable by the OS. Thus: 1GB in use by the programs, 1.2GB in cache. I guess, I could come by with 2GB RAM....
Absolutely... That said, I was mostly looking at it from a final consumer standpoint. I just took the cheapest version of 7, I could find in order to avoid the nitpickers that there are cheaper versions around.
Re:We are staying on XP
on
Time To Dump XP?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That still doesn't justify the upgrade if everything works fine....
Re:We are staying on XP
on
Time To Dump XP?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The reason I'm not getting 7 is because.... I already have an XP license which works perfectly fine on my 6 year old P4. It's not exactly cheap to upgrade, since you say: "Just get more RAM". Assuming you want 2GB RAM, with a typical machine having 2 or 3 DDR memory slots, thus needing 2 sticks of 1GB at about 35.99$/piece (Quick search on newegg.com, you might find better deals).
Add in the license for Windows 7 (Upgrade is out, because you're on XP).... 99.99$ for the Systems Builders 32-bit version (source: also newegg)...
Total: 171.97$/seat and that's ignoring workhours....
You have a point. Do keep in mind that 100$ in 1988, is most likely the equivalent of 200$ today.
While not exactly comic books... Nintendo DS or Playstation Portable? Both in the 100$-150$ range. Both can do much more than show comic books. Heck, they could both show comic books if their manufacturers wanted it. (PSP has a built-in browser, I don't think the DS does..)
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Ah, oldie but goodie... Don't think I'd get through with that one....
That "Deco" style case is lovely... My wife would even allow that in the living room, methinks :-)
I replaced my MILs computer (huge ass hand-down old gaming machine from her son) with a Atom D410PT with 2GB RAM, 250GB SATA disk and DVD/RW. All fit in a nice shiny "piano black finish" case. She doesn't want or need a laptop and when I installed it for her I got a lot of "oooohs-and-aaahs" because it was pretty and tiny and silent.
It runs Ubuntu 10.04 by the way and from what I gather very well. (My first contact with the Atom platforms was an ION 330, which might be quick on Win32, but was hellishly slow on Ubuntu 9.04 or was it 9.10. NVidia drivers were the cause... My brother uses that one now with XP and it seems to be working perfectly fine)
There are a lot of people who prefer to work at a desk on standard keyboards with big LCD screens, instead of what a laptop has to offer.
I can surf the web (including Slashdot, Facebook and others) just fine with my Asus EEE 701 4G (2GB RAM) using Debian Lenny and Iceweasel... That's a 900MHz Celeron, which isn't even in the same league as a 2.0++GHz P-IV, which is what 6 year old desktop machines are! You're seriously underestimating older hardware.
Disclaimer: I'm a dumpster diver and I know how to get the most out of my "finds".
Wireless support was the only reason to really upgrade to XP for a business. (I'm not sure it Terminal Server on 2000 was present, that would also be a reason) For a home user it was the "Fast User Switching" feature and wireless. For the rest: nothing.
If there are real benefits directly for the end user? 3.11 to 95 had benefits, 2000 to XP or 98/ME to XP had benefits... Technical benefits, that really impacted the user. XP to Vista or 7? Meh... Not so much.
This really says more about their administrators than the software. Windows XP can be locked down and should be in a business environment. If they can't do that, I doubt they will have much advantage of the "more control" part of the "advantage" you list, as they clearly don't have control at all.
None... Lock down Windows machines. Limited user only... Sorry, that's a really old canard and a competent admin knows how to set up XP.
So, it boils down to "new features": the old system is not broken and "whatever" isn't really a reason. Thank you to make my point... The new features don't bring any advantage to the normal user and the business owner.
Lock down the XP machine and develop as a "Limited User". If it runs as "Limited User" on XP it will run just fine on Vista and above.
I have been running XP machines in Limited User for ages... Sometimes you need to adapt some rights, but it's the fault of the misbehaving application. If you're a developer and target XP with "Limited User", you'll be fine and dandy.
It is a non-issue if you lock down the machines and firewall the hell out of them.... Which should be done anyway, regardless what operating system they run.
No, my point is: do not upgrade old systems. If there is no need yet to buy new machines, keep with what works. Upgrade the software with the hardware.
Oh, and I would upgrade if it were free. The extra RAM would still be beneficial if it turns out to be a bad move and you have to roll back. Free products get more slack from me....
Yup, my math was extremely optimistic... I completely agree that a hardware upgrade cycle is in order, to go to 7, unless you have very recent machines that already run Vista.
I'm a dumpster diver for fun and back when Vista came out, I expected the times to become golden. They didn't.... Back then the economy was good. Now those 6 year old P-IVs are indeed showing up in dumpster and if you find enough of them, you can make one decent machine. Won't run Windows 7 well tough. That's why I put Ubuntu on them and give them away to people who want/need them.
With the economy down the drain, my dumpster diving antics have become worse and worse. A few years ago, you could even find an AMD64 with low RAM in the dumpster... Nowadays, not so much...
Which ones? The support for more RAM when you take the 64-bit? Otherwise, what?!?
I'm sorry, but most normal-level employees do not use up a full 2GB RAM.... There are employees who can benefit from more RAM, but they are definitely in the minority.
My own work machine (running Ubuntu 10.04 i386) reports: 31% in use by programs, 36% in use by cache... I have 4GB physically and thus 3.4GB usable by the OS. Thus: 1GB in use by the programs, 1.2GB in cache. I guess, I could come by with 2GB RAM....
Absolutely... That said, I was mostly looking at it from a final consumer standpoint. I just took the cheapest version of 7, I could find in order to avoid the nitpickers that there are cheaper versions around.
That still doesn't justify the upgrade if everything works fine....
The reason I'm not getting 7 is because.... I already have an XP license which works perfectly fine on my 6 year old P4. It's not exactly cheap to upgrade, since you say: "Just get more RAM". Assuming you want 2GB RAM, with a typical machine having 2 or 3 DDR memory slots, thus needing 2 sticks of 1GB at about 35.99$/piece (Quick search on newegg.com, you might find better deals).
Add in the license for Windows 7 (Upgrade is out, because you're on XP).... 99.99$ for the Systems Builders 32-bit version (source: also newegg)...
Total: 171.97$/seat and that's ignoring workhours....
Only to upgrade... Which has zilch benefit....
I can see why she *was* your first wife. I'd kill mine too ;-)
Having driving 250kmh on a public highway, I guess that counts... Got caught at 184kmh, which is definitely not fun.
So what? Raise your hand if you never speeded. Getting caught is not fun...
He found a clever way to "stick it to The Man"... That in itself is great. Crime of no crime.
Interesting.... Seems indeed I chose the wrong career path :-P
No, no, no.... Wrong approach... Allow women to be priests and make it mandatory to attend weekly orgies for clergy.
That would boast priesthood numbers for sure!
It's "sight" for crying out loud! *sigh*
You have a point. Do keep in mind that 100$ in 1988, is most likely the equivalent of 200$ today.
While not exactly comic books... Nintendo DS or Playstation Portable? Both in the 100$-150$ range. Both can do much more than show comic books. Heck, they could both show comic books if their manufacturers wanted it. (PSP has a built-in browser, I don't think the DS does..)
In a way, the device from "Big", exists.
Just got a guy with a tinfoil hat... I found that so amazingly funny and apt for slashdot :-)