I've tasted the darkside (windoze xp2) and i like it

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
This post is not so much a trolling as a confessional. Well, windows XP pro installed, and i'm running a 1gb athlon-64 3000+ venice 1.8ghz with 7200rpm 2mb cache ATA drive, MSI nvidia 6600gt.



i've tasted the dark side, and i like it. 720p windows media high def is no problem on this set up.



asus a8n SLI mobo for when i SLI-up myself somewhere down the line.



well, this windows stuff is not too bad, antivirus is running and i'm behind the wireless router firewall which has SPI and some other thingymajigs.



waaaayy too complicated for average joe though, and definitely apple will continue to make strong inroads into the home.



i think once they have the macintel sorted they will then begin assault on the enterprise desktop scene.



in the meantime, i'm not too sure if i can handle this power 6600gt is nice, i hope to get some ONS-Torlan UT2004 action on it soon.



there goes whatever remains of my social life



in any case, have no fear, for serious work and life-organising stuff i have my trusty iBook g4



AMD is fun i got the Venice 90nm which has shown to be a good overclocking thing



i hope i don't get banned from appleinsider now after this confession



oh total damage is equivalent of us$500-$550

1.400w power supply

2.amd athlon64 venice 3000+

3.msi nvidia 6600gt pci express

4.kingston valueram 512mb x 2 ddr400

5.asus a8n sli (not deluxe)

..........................



edit: socket939

edit2: i continue to believe that apple will remain highly competitive and gain market share (at a very gradual pace) in the next 5 years

edit3: shhh... i used the windows genuine advantage made-in-24-hours-hack to upgrade from sp1 to sp2
«1345

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 83
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Why not install a 64 bit Linux there and see if that increases your performance? You can always dual-boot in the dark side.
  • Reply 2 of 83
    Is Linux as bright as OS X or is it only slightly grey? The answer that that is based on whether you are anti-microsoft or pro-mac?
  • Reply 3 of 83
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Jwink3101

    Is Linux as bright as OS X or is it only slightly grey? The answer that that is based on whether you are anti-microsoft or pro-mac?



    You know, it really depends. But saying that the answer depends on wether you are anti-microsoft or pro-mac, is really naive.



    Linux is used by people that are neither. I use XP and Linux regularly and don't have a problem with them.



    Since he has a 64bit x86 machine, I proposed that he use that 64bitness. Nothing more, nothing less.
  • Reply 4 of 83
    HEATHEN!
  • Reply 5 of 83
    ipeonipeon Posts: 1,122member
    Well congrats. Hardware good, OS bad. I use windows at work. I can never get pass using that clunky OS called Windows, even the latest and greatest XP still has the feel of an unfinished, half thought out mess starring me in the face and getting in my way.



    But hey, has they say to each his own.
  • Reply 6 of 83
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iPeon

    Well congrats. Hardware good, OS bad. I use windows at work. I can never get pass using that clunky OS called Windows, even the latest and greatest XP still has the feel of an unfinished, half thought out mess starring me in the face and getting in my way.



    But hey, has they say to each his own.




    heh

    linux is grey. i am scared of linux.



    hardware good. OS --> like i said confusing. i use firefox for web, nvidia for tuning/drivers, adobe/macro for stuff, and i'll use VLC and azureus.



    itunes for tunes



    i tried playing with windows media player 10 and honestly, i was hella confused after 10 seconds. i was like WTF is going on.



    as a base operating system, windows xp2 is ok.



    usability wise, microsoft is really off base, something is just not there....



    i really need a new monitor now, this 10year old 15" crt is gonna make me go blind



    64-bitnesS? i just got the cheapest socket939 amd thingy for now can upgrade later when i figure out what the hell i would do with 64-bit anyway
  • Reply 7 of 83
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sunilraman

    i am scared of linux.



    Why?





    Quote:

    64-bitnesS? i just got the cheapest socket939 amd thingy for now can upgrade later when i figure out what the hell i would do with 64-bit anyway



    Well, you have an Athlon64, so why not just give it a shot? It doesn't mean you should use it as your primary system. Just see if there's any performance increase.



    Still, your call.
  • Reply 8 of 83
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gene Clean

    Why?.....



    its impossible to find a driver for wireless pci adaptor that i have, dlink dwl-g520+



    also i am a lazy bastard
  • Reply 9 of 83
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Not impossible. Not automatic as in XP or OS X, but not impossible. Ndiswrapper is your answer, but if you're lazy...



    ...
  • Reply 10 of 83
    aquamacaquamac Posts: 585member
    Good Luck, trying to avoid the Viruses, Spywear and email Worms. Oh yea, and hitting Control-alt-delete all day.

    I use these at work. I would buy my own 2.7 dual G5 and install it myself if my boss would let me.
  • Reply 11 of 83
    kcmackcmac Posts: 1,051member
    Will be interesting to hear what you think after a few months. My machine at work just keeps getting buggier and buggier. And that's with an IT staff. XP ain't so bad at first (well, I still hate the dialog windows, etc.) but it seems to go downward after awhile.



    YMMV.
  • Reply 12 of 83
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Jwink3101

    Is Linux as bright as OS X or is it only slightly grey? The answer that that is based on whether you are anti-microsoft or pro-mac?



    Linux has been and will continue to be a toy for geeks to play with. With OSX and the iApps, Apple killed any hopes the Linux crowd had of widespread use in households.
  • Reply 13 of 83
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ThinkingDifferent

    Linux has been and will continue to be a toy for geeks to play with. With OSX and the iApps, Apple killed any hopes the Linux crowd had of widespread use in households.



    Agreed



    I've been playing with linux for over 5 years and the only really decent thing that has hit linux in that time is the 2.6 kernel

    Linux has it's uses and can be used as a homeusers desktop but it lacks the ease of use and innovation of OS X.



    Edit: this paragraph is intended for the original poster about XP



    As Kcmac has pointed out, It may seem all nice and cuddlely at first, maybe because it's kind of new for you, but after a while it does go tits up and system slow down is inevitable. Nice gaming platform though but then so is the ps2 at a fraction of the price
  • Reply 14 of 83
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ThinkingDifferent

    Linux has been and will continue to be a toy for geeks to play with. With OSX and the iApps, Apple killed any hopes the Linux crowd had of widespread use in households.



    Hear hear. Linux is *great*... as a hobbyist OS on the desktop, or a nice solid OS in the server room. It's 'ease of use' is really pretty pathetic, since that's not really the focus of it.



    I like Linux, and I'm glad to see it in the marketplace, but I'm not deluded that it's the best thing since sliced bread. I think it should be required for CS majors, so they can see how an OS works from top to bottom, and how to do (and how *NOT* to do) a lot of things. (A buddy of mine who is a Unix guru from way back just today said: "Linux is a lot of fun - like the '56 Chevy on blocks in the garage that you work on on weekends - you have it only because you like to tinker, not because you want something reliable for everyday use.") It has its place.



    However, just yesterday I helped my in-laws buy their first home computer ever, a 14" iBook. My mother-in-law has literally, and I mean literally, *never* used a computer. She didn't know what a 'window' was, or what a hard drive did. It's been computer 101 this weekend. Can you imagine trying to explain to her how to recompile the kernel to get it to recognize her networking card, like said Unix guru friend had to do this past week on his laptop? Right. Never. Gonna. Happen. (She loves the thing already though. She practically giggled when she saw the pulsing sleep light... and she's this amazingly stoic woman. "It's like it's snoring!")



    Linux is a tinkerer's OS, a tool for the hobbyist and student. That isn't to say it isn't very good - I think it's fantastic for servers and the like where it's set-and-forget... because the 'set' part is the area where Linux just falls on its face, and in the backroom, you only have to do it once, and it runs forever. Unfortunately, that's not how most people use their computers. Linux has severely disappointed me for the potential it had, and seems to have squandered.



    It's a welcome mix to the market though. Helps keep the other guys in line.
  • Reply 15 of 83
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Linux is NOT an OS. Linux is the kernel. GNU/Linux, on the other hand, constitutes an OS, but when you talk about GNU/Linux, you also need to talk about different flavors of it, in which case, I say to you that if you think ease of use of say, Linspire, or SuSE is 'pretty pathetic', then you simply do not know what you're talking about.



    If you have Gentoo in mind, and say that Linux is not user friendly, well then, that goes to show that you are comparing apples with oranges. Gentoo's goal is NOT to be user friendly, therefore, when talking about Linux, please give examples of which flavor of Linux or GNU/Linux.



    But screw it. The guy doesn't want it, and that's that.
  • Reply 16 of 83
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ThinkingDifferent

    With OSX and the iApps, Apple killed any hopes the Linux crowd had of widespread use in households.



    Oh yeah, with OSX and iApps (what a horrible name, by the way) Apple killed Linux's hopes..



    ..the only thing Apple killed was its 5% marketshare around the time OSX was released, which is now around 2.3%. If you call that killing someone else's widespread use in households... then we should really close this argument 'cause somebody didn't read the news lately.
  • Reply 17 of 83
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Yes, if you want to get anal retentive, then Linux is a kernel, blah, blah, blah. Most folks can follow the conversation and the train of thought with the shorthand. And yes, I don't consider *any* Linux distro UI that I have used to be good. 'Adequate', sure. Just not good. They're improving, but they still aren't on par with MacOS X, or god help us, XP. It's like a bunch of little fiefdoms, all squatting on a large and resource-rich land... and all proclaiming that their way is best, when they *should* be doing is collaborating and finding a direction they can all agree on. Hasn't happened yet, which is too bad. There's a lot good in Linux (blah blah blah), but it's being piddled away in the desktop environment arena.



    The only people I see running Linux in the home are the folks who enjoy being a tech hobbyist. That's not exactly a massive amount. Linux isn't growing tremendously in the home market, it's growing in the business market, where a standardized setup is deployed across umpteen hundred desktops, only a fixed set of applications are installed, and users are strongly discouraged (if not penalized) for altering it. For that, Linux... sorry... Linux-kernel-based-OS-distributions-with-any-number-of-adequate-but-average-UIs is a great choice. Fixed environment, set it up once and don't touch it again. In that environment, it truly is a wonderful solution. In that environment, a Mac or Windows box is generally overkill, and can even be a liability with all the work that goes into locking it down. Business droids don't need personal computers, they need appliances.



    That's not how home consumers use their machines. Linux in the home, for most users, is a horrible choice.



    There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Never has been, never will be.
  • Reply 18 of 83
    wingnutwingnut Posts: 197member
    Heh, I don't see any problems with what you're doing. If gaming is your thing--but consoles aren't--then a windows box is the answer. Not only do you have more choices in games (that typically sell for less), you have more choices in hardware. I may be building a WinPC next month for gaming. I have an XBox, but it's just not as fun, and online play costs more money. :/



    I'm curious how much your venice core OCs. Most seem to have very good results, often hitting 2.5-2.6ghz with little effort. The 6600GT is no slouch either!
  • Reply 19 of 83
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Wingnut

    Heh, I don't see any problems with what you're doing. If gaming is your thing--but consoles aren't--then a windows box is the answer. Not only do you have more choices in games (that typically sell for less), you have more choices in hardware. I may be building a WinPC next month for gaming. I have an XBox, but it's just not as fun, and online play costs more money. :/



    I'm curious how much your venice core OCs. Most seem to have very good results, often hitting 2.5-2.6ghz with little effort. The 6600GT is no slouch either!




    my venice core is 1.8ghz stock, so it hits almost up to 2ghz quite well but i think the motherboard (asus a8n sli - not deluxe) holds it back a bit and i'm operating with just a big fan in 90deg ambient temperatures (near the equator, remember? )



    if i get fully into venice overclocking i might figure out how to push it to 2+ghz, right now it gets unstable, like i said, probably i haven't figured out mobo and i don't want to push my RAM to hard.



    my new baby... so baby steps



    6600gt is sweet, hits up to 4000 3dmark using the MSI 'dynamic overclocking' -- this has been the most impressive part, it dynamically ramps core and DDR3! mem speed on the GPU, intelligently avoiding artifacting on heavy scenes



    yes winXP is nice and cuddly i hope to avoid the 'rot' that plagues a lot. reinstall once a month? like i said, router firewall, check, antivirus with auto-protect, check, using firefox, check... no shared folders AT ALL, check. see what happens.



    i was considering a playstation2 but each game is $200 of local currency, plus i can't stand looking at a CRT TV all day, i'd go blind



    i got star wars knights of ol' republic 2 for $15 local currency (dodgy version... shhh) so PC gaming is much more feasible



    anyway, i have not signed any contracts but there is a standing verbal agreement at the moment for me to teach a basic flash class next term (sep-dec) which will be using IIRC flash mx (not 2004) in a PeeCee lab (because some weeks they are doing sound with adobe audition) so i got to prep and test stuff on a PC, might as well have fun doing so...



    also Flash just runs tooooo slow on a mac, it's nice to have a pc to check out the crazy heavier flash stuff, not that i'd be encouraging or advocating this to my students.



    i guess i'm also really curious about this whole overclocking and crazy ass powered GPUs and PCI express, i think i went a bit further than i anticipated also i am curious about this AMD thing, socket939 can upgrade to dual core when the price comes down from the stratosphere



    but of course, rest assured, for serious work, preparing lecture slides with keynote2, organising and iSyncing my life, doing creative/graphics stuff, coding, and for my general sanity, my iBook G4 user account and a .mac account will be critical for the next several months. i'd fucking die if i couldn't use a mac for just a few hours a day... the last full-time contract i signed (end of last year) i would have had to use a PC for 5 or 6 days a week. this, and some other reasons, i bailed from the job after 2 days



    thanks for the frank ideas and thoughts, i gotta go hunt for a nice zero-dead-pixel-warranty LCD 17" now with my Dad



    peace y'all.

    ................



    MACINTELS will be awesome. just wait till mobility versions of ati9800's and 6600/6800's become standard sometime next year, macintel and coreimage will fucking ROCK.
  • Reply 20 of 83
    gene cleangene clean Posts: 3,481member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kickaha

    Yes, if you want to get anal retentive, then Linux is a kernel, blah, blah, blah.



    This is not blah blah blah. Linux has no UI, it's a kernel. You know this, yet you act as if what I said was factually wrong, instead of what you said (which is, technically, even if a lot of people refer to it as 'Linux').



    It's like me refering to OS X as XNU, or something. Not entirely valid, although XNU is a part of it, or it's core kernel, or Darwin, whatever.





    Quote:

    Most folks can follow the conversation and the train of thought with the shorthand.



    Being accurate is always important.



    Quote:

    And yes, I don't consider *any* Linux distro UI that I have used to be good.



    Such as? You may have used a Linux distro in 1995, or 1997, or 2001. Those are not representative. Give examples of distro's.



    Quote:

    'Adequate', sure. Just not good. They're improving, but they still aren't on par with MacOS X, or god help us, XP. It's like a bunch of little fiefdoms, all squatting on a large and resource-rich land... and all proclaiming that their way is best, when they *should* be doing is collaborating and finding a direction they can all agree on.



    That's the point, no? To give users a choice, even if an unnamed individual on AppleInsider doesn't like their UI's. And I'm sorry but, anything Novell/SuSE produces is better than XP. ANYTHING.



    Quote:

    Hasn't happened yet, which is too bad. There's a lot good in Linux (blah blah blah), but it's being piddled away in the desktop environment arena.



    There's no need to be a wisecracker about it; when you talk about UI in Linux, you need to give examples because they all have different UI's. They're not one standard UI with different kernel versions; they're different kernel versions with different UI's.



    Quote:

    The only people I see running Linux in the home are the folks who enjoy being a tech hobbyist. That's not exactly a massive amount. Linux isn't growing tremendously in the home market, it's growing in the business market, where a standardized setup is deployed across umpteen hundred desktops, only a fixed set of applications are installed, and users are strongly discouraged (if not penalized) for altering it.



    Just as Windows first grew on the business market, conquering the desks and serving the needs of businesses, leaving Mac OS/NetWare/Amiga/etc., behind by a big margin. Never understimate the power of business.



    Quote:

    For that, Linux... sorry... Linux-kernel-based-OS-distributions-with-any-number-of-adequate-but-average-UIs is a great choice.



    I never said that Linux is the choice for sunilraman. I just proposed to him that he test to see the performance of a 64bit OS on his 64bit system there. Since I doubt he would buy Windows 64bit Professional, and Tiger doesn't run on Athlon's, I suggested the next big 64bit OS: GNU/Linux. As a test. Not a home machine, not as a perfect UI, and certainly not to replace his primary OS. There's no need to explain to me for what Linux is good and for what isn't, because I'm the one that uses it all the time, and not you, from what I can gather, so I know that.







    Quote:

    Fixed environment, set it up once and don't touch it again. In that environment, it truly is a wonderful solution. In that environment, a Mac or Windows box is generally overkill, and can even be a liability with all the work that goes into locking it down. Business droids don't need personal computers, they need appliances.



    More of the same stuff. Unnecessary.





    Quote:

    That's not how home consumers use their machines. Linux in the home, for most users, is a horrible choice.



    Or so you say. I will simply disagree with you, and let this conversation die out.





    Quote:

    There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Never has been, never will be.



    Thanks for the philosophical ponderings. Really helping here.
Sign In or Register to comment.