[dba-Tech] So long, Norman

John Bartow john at winhaven.net
Mon Jun 4 15:41:04 CDT 2012


Like I said, I'm not a Windows fanatic, it just works for me. But just to
relate a Mac experience; I have quite a few Mac users on customer sites. I
once was working on the Windows Server 2003 print server in the prepress
department of a printing house, the graphics artist moaned made some comment
and restarted her Mac. I asked her what happened and she said it locked up,
it does that all the time. I asked if she has had someone look at it for
her. She said yes, but they said there was nothing they could do so I just
restart it and it works OK then. So later I  asked the office manager if I
should check it out and she said no, they were told it was just user error
and she won't change how she does things so she just deals with it. Wow! If
one of the front office PCs had done that they would have been all over it.
But some Mac dude had told them it was user error and they just bought into
it and never worried about it. I did have a Mac techie that I subbed with
that I could have check it out but they just didn't care. I was just
flabbergasted. 

-----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 3:23 PM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] So long, Norman


Jim,

You are wrong. I'm looking at the machine as we speak and it has only 4
games installed:
SimCity 4
Diablo 2
Civilization III
CivCity Rome

None of these are resource demanding games, even for a machine like this.

The rest of the software installed is all the usual stuff. CuteFTP,
OpenOffice, PDF Creator, Skype, Canon Printer Utilities, Google Picasa, all
the Microsoft applications like MSN Messenger & Silverlight, Chrome, Firefox
etc, and some paint / photo manipulation software.

The system specs on this machine are:

HP Pavillion DV2714CA

Intel dual core T2330 1.6ghz, 1mb L2 cache, 533mhz FSB
2 gigs of DDR2 ram
160 gb sata hd

You can read the rest here:
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/ca/en/ho/WF06b/12139188-78299199-78299212-782
99212-78299212-81135007-81575996.html?dnr=1

It has only started falling apart in the last year. The chassis frame around
the screen is coming apart, but this is superficial. Hardware-wise it is
still fine. It could probably be fixed and it would be as good as new.

So, the user of this system has neither been installing weird applications
like crazy, nor is this some hacked together cheap laptop from some little
known company.

Hans




On 2012-06-04, at 11:49 AM, Jim Lawrence wrote:

> 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
> 
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