Re: some further comments...


"mayayana" <mayaXXyana1a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23ngdyOoYIHA.984@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Lastly, as a win98 user, I might also observe that your users
may already be in a "testy mood" at startup, having waited for
a relatively lengthy period for their systems (xp or vista)
to load. It is frankly surprising to me to see a much more
modern software system, on a hardware system that is running
more than 10x faster than my system -- take so much longer
to load...

It's ironic. It wasn't so long ago that we waited
8 seconds for a window to open because we were
waiting for Intel to come out with a faster processor.
Now the cheapest PC has many times the functionality
that most people need, and it's still a long wait. Microsoft
programmers are remarakbly talented at finding a use
for that functionality.

I've been playing with Windows Xtra Problems lately.
(I'm beginning to get a collection of PCs from people
who don't know any better than to replace them every
3 years, but I still do any serious work on 98.)

That last statement is very interesting...

I find that XP is
capable of being quite zippy and of starting up nearly as
fast as 98. But it required a lot of research to get to
that. By removing the ridiculous PCHealth, and turning off
the vast majority of services (I've found 58 that I don't,
needmany of which are risky as well as unnecessary!),
and also turning off all of the kiddie GUI elements, XP is
as fast as 98 and better at handling a load. (I still haven't
decided whether I can get XP to where it's safe enough to
go online.)

I have xp media edition at home and find its performance abysmal. But most
of the unnecessary things burning away resources and "excess" capacity seem
to be the unwanted additional free/demo ware.

One of the worst things I've found about XP is that MS
has got into some rather dubious design ideas. Windows
File Protection (PCHealth) and indexing service both cause
the hard disk to run on a regular basis and both are bad
ideas for most people. In a sense, XP is designed to cause
people to buy new PCs more often. After all, very few people
will fix a PC with a broken hard disk, and that constant activity
should kill the disk well before its time.

Many of the XP additions can be mildly helpful to
inexperienced people. PCHealth and System Restore are two
examples. But both of those things are also good examples
of dubious design ideas. Coming from Win98 and seeing
System Restore, auto. updates, etc. feels like going
from a finished OS to one that's always barely surviving.
It's amazing that people have become accustomed to a
system that's virtually defined as always being in crisis,
with constant patches being applied and the system being
"restored" whenever anything goes wrong.

While it may seem that XP is in a state of constant crisis, our experience
is that when we converted from 98 to XP we got lots of support calls up
front because things were different, but they dwindled quickly. We have
systems out there that have been in virtual continual use for three or four
years with no real problems. The number of technician trips to the desktop
went way down, and we feel that is because of the stability of our
configuration. For one thing, no user is ever given local admin privs.

Vista seems to be a whole different case, well beyond even
the issues with Xtra Problems. I read the other
day that it requires 15GB to install! I don't even know
what to say about that. But I'd bet the hardware people are
happy. If you visit the Vista group you'll find lots of people
who now think they need 2-4GB RAM to read their email. :)

/Al


.

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