[dba-Tech] So long, Norman

Let's be honest, without mincing words; the hardware you are talking about
was a cheap unpowered piece of junk. It was physically falling apart and was
suffering from a dozen pieces of game software... Nothing frys a system like
high resource demanding game software on flaky low-end hardware.

My personal experiences have been quite different. I bought a good solid
laptop, not cheap but definitely not over priced. That laptop is six years
old and it has virtual every communications, web-design and software
building product, graphic design and manipulation software, database and
testing software running on it. It has been dragged to every office, in a
dozen towns, that I have worked in and it has been used to setup servers,
stations, router, switches, burn software, connect remote techs, testing
software, storing data and manage documents. I work on this computer 8 to 12
hours a day, almost every day. It is a little unpowered for the new age as
it is Tosiba Satellite, only has a dual core, has two GB of RAM and 120 GB
HD.  

It runs like it always has; solid as a rock.

When it comes to Windows computers you are a really a terrible tech and I
think it is more willful than by accident. ;-)

Jim
 
-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Hans-Christian
Andersen
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2012 9:02 AM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] So long, Norman


John,

These are mostly just observations of other people lately and my experience
supporting it at my company. I haven't been a Windows user since 2005 or so,
but it was also the reason I left Windows back then.

I'm not sure it is specific to gaming. As a recent example, my wife's Win7
laptop had very few games installed (its graphics card was the Intel GMA
sort, not powerful enough to run most games) and really only just a handful
of additional applications. She mostly used it for surfing, but its now
un-usable. No blue screening, just lots of pausing, freezing and general
slowness to the point of frustration for her, but there is nothing obviously
wrong with it.

This is probably the 4th reinstall of Windows on that laptop (HP) in the
last 4 or so years, but she's got a new laptop now, so I may just throw
Linux onto this machine to extend its life.

I'm not saying that every Windows machine will eventually be completely
crippled, but I always known them to develop quirks over time and become a
less stable system overall (not stability in terms of blue screening, but in
the sense that it is not behaving as expected ie. applications not starting,
freezing or crashing), often for no identifiable reason.

If this hasn't been an issue for you, then you are obviously doing something
right, but it's not clear to me what is being done wrong in the cases I have
witnessed/experienced.

Hans