New PC rant

[Thomas Rogers]

Yup...I think your point was proven Michelle. Those that think Dell is junk and you can beat their prices with custom build are building $1200 to $1500 high end setups that Dell would charge almost twice that for. But MANY people simply need a base systems, and those are hard to build at that same Dell price and quality standpoint. I think Dell quality and service is pretty good. They are the Toyota in the PC market to me.

 

[Michelle Widell]

...as I type this on my AMD Athlon home-built machine with neon lights

 

[Michelle Widell]

When I built the machine I use now, I paid dearly for a top-of-the-line HP CD/DVD recorder. When it failed (6 months later), I had ALOT of trouble dealing with HP tech support - they didn't even have the serial number on their file. I had to remove the drive, photocopy the bottom of it to prove I owned the darn thing, fax it in, then wait another few days for them to put it into their system. After all that, I had to call back and was hung up on several times.



I finally gave up and bought a cheap external from Sam's Club.



I wonder how many people just give up on tech support.

 

[Rich Stern]

More RAM does not mean bloat, Rich. It means being sensible.

Ignore obvious wrongs and throw money at the problem. Q, you should run for congress.

If she ever wants to get a big program like Office or start really using her computer, she's going to need that ram. Better get it while it's cheap and available!

Oops, there you go. To you, she's not "really using her computer". She doesn't share that view. Neither do I.

I didn't say I was leaving the PC unprotected. I just said I got rid of a lot of useless crap.

Hmmmm...then why did you include "Anti-virus and anti-spyware" in your list of "useless crap" Now you're recanting the fact that you didn't uninstall the "marketing crap " of the free AV and Anti-Spyware?

She's an AOL user, which means she automatically gets anti-virus and -spy software and updates. The marketing crap part is the installation of tools that demand credit card numbers in exchange for continued protection, and the annoying, constant reminders of that fact.

Tell us then exactly what were the 6 "other" gigantic programs taking up resident memory? Let's see: AOL has a shortcut, and that's not in memory, Realplayer is nice for some people, and that is in memory, although a very small part. What otheres were there?

I didn't say gigantic. Don't put words in my mount. Programs removed:



AOL Faststart

AOL Search toolbar

AOL Port manager

AOL Dial tool

AOL Host manager

A desktop text/speller assistant (don't recall the name)

Compaq organizer

MS Office Trial Version fast start

Quicktime task scheduler

Real Player start and registration agents

Norton Firewall

Norton Anti-Virus

Norton Live Update

Norton Scheduler

Anti-spyware tool (don't recall the name)

Anti-spyware updater

A display utility

...and probably others that I can't remember at the moment.



Get the point?

A What you really shoulda done was first, get rid of the useless and vulnerable services Windows starts automatically, such as: Zero wireless configuration, Server, Remote registry, remote desktop, SSDP, terminal services, webclient....blah blah blah the list goes on. Now THERE's an idea!

Yep, I can do that over time, but it's riskier to do that from a stability standpoint until I know what software is dependent on those services. In the 30 minutes I had to do this, wanting to leave my mother-in-law with a stable PC as I walked out the door, I went for the low hanging fruit. I freed up about 100MB of RAM, with no loss of needed functionality or safety. And the PC was left in a condition very suitable for her purposes. So, I guess it worked.

 

[Tom Schindler]

Let us not forget, the "idiot" Rich Stern is with PC's is somehow able to design, manage, build, and upgrade mysporttrac.com.



I really think that "idiot" doesn't have a clue.





Tom



ps. Rich I am not calling you an idiot. I am using the term in quotes to prove a point.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Yeah, Rich, but you could have walked in with a 512MB DIMM, cracked the case, put it in, and been up and running faster in less than 30 minutes, and at a cost of under $40.



This has turned into a tastes great, less filling debate. Part of what is wrong with the industry is the bloat issue. Bill Gates himself once said a PC will never need more than 640KB of memory. Well, now conventional wisdom is you need at least 256MB and preferrably 512MB, or even 1GB.



If you want to see a PC/platform that used memory effectively, take a look at the old Commodore Amiga computers. Great, high-res GUI with 3d graphis, drag/drop interfaces, stereo sounds, etc...all on the early models that had 512Kb to 1MB of memory.



That's part of the reason why Linux, especially RedHat which attempts to polish the rough edges and present a more friendly experience is as popular as it is...no bloat.



Too bad Commodore folded...

 

[Rich Stern]

Yeah, Rich, but you could have walked in with a 512MB DIMM, cracked the case, put it in, and been up and running faster in less than 30 minutes, and at a cost of under $40.

Yes!



And my mother-in-law then calls every week saying, "Rich, something popped up on the computer screen telling me I had to [download/renew/update/register/install/provide a credit card number/etc.]. What is this? What should I do?



I love my mother-in-law, but I don't want to receive those phone calls.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Oh, another "safety" measure and performance increaser for the "not faint of heart" is to block ads, especially Flash based ads and other ads that might attempt to put spyware on your PC by "simply" adding spoof entries to your hosts file for all the well known domains hosting the adware. Read the link for more info...

 

[Bill V]

TJR-- I'm no math major, but last time I checked, both 256 and 512 are less than 640...

 

[Dre L]

Nobleman, I would'nt touch that computer you'd build with a 10-foot pole! WHat a piece of junk. What that's board got on it? 32 MB Video? LOL!



Q out.

That's actually not too bad of a budget PC, I'm surprised myself. It has up to 64MB of shared video RAM.



What do you think, Dell uses Asus boards and top of the line hardware?? :lol: They'd be out of business.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Yeah, BillV, 640KB, not MB.

 

[Richard L]

Again, I must agree with Rich Stern. I am running XP-Proffessional on my 1.4Ghz AMD laptop that only has 256 MB RAM and it runs just fine. I also have an AMD 2.4Ghz PC with 512MB RAM, also running XP-Proffesional that I built and the speed difference is hardly noticable on most applications.



...Rich

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Wow, almost twice the speed and twice the memory and a "hardly noticeable" performance increase.

 

[Richard L]

TJR,

Yep. That's what I said. Much of the performance of the system that we see is related to the speed of the harddrive and the type of software you are runnning.



Many people expect a PC with a CPU that runs 2 time faster and twice the RAM to run twice as fast, but it never works that way. :wacko:



...Rich

 

[Dale Carlson]

TJR,



God I miss my Amiga - had one configured like yours,. REALLY, really wanted the add-on 40MB (woohoo!) harddrive, but at $700 (in 1988), couldn't afford it.



dale

 

[scott r]

There's no way I'd run XP with less than 512mb of RAM.

You folks are so stuck on WinXP though! There ARE alternatives though! FREE alternatives!

They're not free because they don't work. In fact, some of the distributions of Linux work BETTER than Winblowz in my opinion.

Some of the ones that anyone can check out are PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu and Mandrake/Mandriva. They are easy enough for ANYONE to use/install now days. The days of linux being clunky and useless to the average person are over. There are DOZENS of "flavors" of linux out there for people who know virtually nothing about computers! You can even try them without having to destroy your windows system. If this is something that any of you are interested in, I can show you where to get the CDs from, so you can give Linux a try. It's not nearly as scary as you think.

 

[Gavin Allan]

This thread:

 

[Richard L]

baron,

After you said it XP could not be run on any PC without at least 512 MB, numerous individuals have proven you wrong including computer manufacturers that are selling XP systems with only 256MB RAM and they run and work just fine. In fact I am posting this response on an 256MB XP-Professional laptop. I am an IT professional and find that this PC does pretty much everything I need it to do very well, and that's likely more than most Home PC will ever need to do.



So now you say that you would never run XP with anything less than 512 MB of RAM, but do not say why?



Then you just switch the subject to saying that Linux is better than Windows but again you don't say why?



You may be right, but many people would disagree.



...Rich

 

[Phill R]

I have a computer that runs XP with 96MB RAM. It works fine with everthing I have on it. The only thing that slows it down is the norton antivirus and that's only on start up. I would've left it as a W98 but it was for my daughters MP3 that needed it.



I do have one beef with Dell computers. The antivrus that they come with is only for a trial time and then they want you to pay for it. It makes more sense for me to go out and buy a virus program and then I can install it on all my computers.

 

[Michelle Widell]

Heck.. I remember when XP first came out, the company I used to work for sold new PC's with 128mb of ram.