Doesn't flash memory only work reliably for a few thousand or tens of thousands of cycles, or is this a new kind? (Just starting to RTFA)
If not, it could get worn out very quickly - exceptionally good stuff for a read-only database, for example, but not so good for OLTP or other situations where you're changing data a lot.
It's just the 3.2GHz one, the oldest and slowest.
Now the 3.4 and 3.6 are out, it's natural to retire the slowpoke of the bunch.
There's no mention whatever of the whole Extreme Edition line being stopped, in fact they recently said they would be making further new ones in the near future...
This is mentioned (with new FSB and clock speeds) here and here and here, for instance - and all quite recently.
The default install of Windows Server 2003 is much, *much* better in this respect - not even file sharing is enabled until you explicitly enable it, and the IE is tied down tight as well.
If this is an indication of where they're going with XP SP2 and onwards, things are going to seriously improve. We're actually considering rolling out Windows Server 2003 Web Edition on laptops - from a security point of view it's well worth the extra 50 UKP it costs, and the hardware compatibility is excellent to...
If this thing really takes off (reading up on it now), and if it's not been done yet, the Black Sun (as in the coolest online hangout in 'Snow Crash') might be a cool idea...
Wow, you have a machine from before Windows 98 that's capable of running XP Pro? What on earth is it?
As for your problem, it's strange. You certainly should have been able to do it... I've upgraded many PCs and laptops from 2000 Pro to XP Pro, with very few issues. I think, though, that all the 2000 Pro machines had started that way and not been upgraded to it.
In fact the only problems that spring to mind are old/obscure hardware which XP doesn't know how to deal with at the upgrade stage. This is usually solved by reinstalling the 2000 drivers once XP has settled down and the chipset has been found.
I don't see the need for swap any more. It's *so* much slower than RAM, even with U320 RAID arrays, and unnecessarily thrashes the disks when they could be doing more useful things or just 'resting'. I have two main machines, a laptop and a desktop. They both have 1GB of RAM and no swap - in Linux (Gentoo) and in Windows XP. With these setups, I have never, repeat *never* had a problem running out of RAM. I set them up like this after spending a year with 512 MB RAM and 512 MB swap in each - and as I'd never run out of swap then, I figured a GB of RAM would be better. It is.
My dekstop hasn't been rebooted in a couple of weeks, and I've had a couple of sessions of Far Cry each day, Azureus running the whole time, watched a couple of DVDs, used Outlook, Zircon, Nero, Celestia and quite a few other apps. Task Manager tells me I haven't been over 840 MB used. If/when apps and games push it over 1GB, RAM is cheap and both machines can take 2 GB.
At work, I make sure the servers I build are specced with enough RAM for the job (Windows Server 2003, SQL Server and IIS mainly). When first installed, I give them 1 GB of swap and then do protracted burn-in tests including unfeasably high test loads. Generally tehy don't go above the RAM they have, and once I've proved it I turn off the swap. If they run out of RAM, we get more RAM. We now have a few on 4 GB and 8 GB, so those 64-bit extensions are coming at an ideal time!
In summary, RAM is fast and cheap enough, disk is slow and mechanically vunerable to failure. Don't swap!
I only last week downloaded Project Gutenberg as an ISO - it has 9,500 books on it and weighs in at about 3.85 GB. All the books are as plain text within a ZIP file, accessed through a set of basic web pages also on the disc.
It's great - I now have that on my laptop hard drive, mountable by Alcohol, so I'll never be short of anything to read, especially when the web's not available...
I can't find the torrent file I got it through, but if it helps the filename is pgdvd.iso and the size is 4,139,646,976 bytes.
I've used several different PDAs over the years, and read a lot of books on them.
The best one I ever had was on old HP Jornada which has a decent enough colour screen, a (removable) metal cover flap that protected the screen well and doubled as a sunshade while reading came with the Acrobat Reader and MS Reader, and had free/shareware readers for other files (it was an early Windows CE machine).
Unfortunately nowadays the battery is suffering from old age, making it a bit less useful.
The key useful bit was the wheel at the top of the left-hand side. It made it extremely useable for reading - just nudge the wheel down to scroll to the next screenful.
Newer Ipaqs have lost this functionality - both the cover flap and the wheel are gone. My latest one, an Ipaq 5550, is great except for reading - you have to scroll with the front joypad button. Annoyingly there are volume buttons where the wheel should be, with up/down - if they could be made into next/previous page buttons, I would be very happy indeed, but alas it seems impossible.
It's a pity, as apart from that the 5550 is a joy to use, the screen is wonderful and the battery life very impressive, the Bluetooth/GPRS/VPN combo is incredibly useful and the version of Worms for Windows CE is too much fun!
Seems when HP and Compaq got together they didn't quite get some of the choices the right way round. Shame.
One slightly successful director did this before!
on
Build Your Own Steadicam
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· Score: 2, Informative
LotR Peter Jackson's first film, Bad Taste, apart from being completely superb, was done on an extremely low budget. The documentary about it, Good Taste Made Bad Taste, shows a lot of things they had to make themselves, including a steadicam. I'm not sure how little money they actually made it for, but it was bugger all and it was back in 1987....
Don't write people who make their own Steadicams off...
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If not, it could get worn out very quickly - exceptionally good stuff for a read-only database, for example, but not so good for OLTP or other situations where you're changing data a lot.
Maybe I'll have more of a clue after reading TFA.
There's no mention whatever of the whole Extreme Edition line being stopped, in fact they recently said they would be making further new ones in the near future... This is mentioned (with new FSB and clock speeds) here and here and here, for instance - and all quite recently.
If this is an indication of where they're going with XP SP2 and onwards, things are going to seriously improve. We're actually considering rolling out Windows Server 2003 Web Edition on laptops - from a security point of view it's well worth the extra 50 UKP it costs, and the hardware compatibility is excellent to...
The post-production touch-up jobs on porn acresses is going to have to get a *lot* better at that kind of resolution!
Please note: first thoughts != best thoughts
If this thing really takes off (reading up on it now), and if it's not been done yet, the Black Sun (as in the coolest online hangout in 'Snow Crash') might be a cool idea...
Wow, you have a machine from before Windows 98 that's capable of running XP Pro? What on earth is it?
As for your problem, it's strange. You certainly should have been able to do it... I've upgraded many PCs and laptops from 2000 Pro to XP Pro, with very few issues. I think, though, that all the 2000 Pro machines had started that way and not been upgraded to it.
In fact the only problems that spring to mind are old/obscure hardware which XP doesn't know how to deal with at the upgrade stage. This is usually solved by reinstalling the 2000 drivers once XP has settled down and the chipset has been found.
My dekstop hasn't been rebooted in a couple of weeks, and I've had a couple of sessions of Far Cry each day, Azureus running the whole time, watched a couple of DVDs, used Outlook, Zircon, Nero, Celestia and quite a few other apps. Task Manager tells me I haven't been over 840 MB used. If/when apps and games push it over 1GB, RAM is cheap and both machines can take 2 GB.
At work, I make sure the servers I build are specced with enough RAM for the job (Windows Server 2003, SQL Server and IIS mainly). When first installed, I give them 1 GB of swap and then do protracted burn-in tests including unfeasably high test loads. Generally tehy don't go above the RAM they have, and once I've proved it I turn off the swap. If they run out of RAM, we get more RAM. We now have a few on 4 GB and 8 GB, so those 64-bit extensions are coming at an ideal time!
In summary, RAM is fast and cheap enough, disk is slow and mechanically vunerable to failure. Don't swap!
It's great - I now have that on my laptop hard drive, mountable by Alcohol, so I'll never be short of anything to read, especially when the web's not available...
I can't find the torrent file I got it through, but if it helps the filename is pgdvd.iso and the size is 4,139,646,976 bytes.
The best one I ever had was on old HP Jornada which has a decent enough colour screen, a (removable) metal cover flap that protected the screen well and doubled as a sunshade while reading came with the Acrobat Reader and MS Reader, and had free/shareware readers for other files (it was an early Windows CE machine).
Unfortunately nowadays the battery is suffering from old age, making it a bit less useful.
The key useful bit was the wheel at the top of the left-hand side. It made it extremely useable for reading - just nudge the wheel down to scroll to the next screenful.
Newer Ipaqs have lost this functionality - both the cover flap and the wheel are gone. My latest one, an Ipaq 5550, is great except for reading - you have to scroll with the front joypad button. Annoyingly there are volume buttons where the wheel should be, with up/down - if they could be made into next/previous page buttons, I would be very happy indeed, but alas it seems impossible.
It's a pity, as apart from that the 5550 is a joy to use, the screen is wonderful and the battery life very impressive, the Bluetooth/GPRS/VPN combo is incredibly useful and the version of Worms for Windows CE is too much fun!
Seems when HP and Compaq got together they didn't quite get some of the choices the right way round. Shame.
LotR Peter Jackson's first film, Bad Taste, apart from being completely superb, was done on an extremely low budget. The documentary about it, Good Taste Made Bad Taste, shows a lot of things they had to make themselves, including a steadicam. I'm not sure how little money they actually made it for, but it was bugger all and it was back in 1987.... Don't write people who make their own Steadicams off...