Why are PC sales declining ? (Skybuck thoughts on it too)

[Skybuck Flying]

Hello,

I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I wondered
and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! ;) :):

Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:

1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely sick of
it ;))
5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still better for
many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.

What are your thoughts on the decline ?

Bye,
Skybuck.

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"

5)

Most people don't need a computer, because they don't compute. A tablet does
email, twitter, facebook, browsing, and games. It's quiet, portable, reliable,
and doesn't have a tangle of cables, monitors, power strips, all that junk under
your desk. The decline is probably long-term. HP, Microsoft, Dell, maybe Oracle
are dinosaurs.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

[Bulkhead]

On 04/18/2013 09:45 AM, John Larkin wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
> <Window...@DreamPC2006.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I wondered
>> and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! ;) :):
>>
>> Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:
>>
>> 1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
>> 2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
>> 3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
>> 4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely sick of
>> it ;))
>> 5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still better for
>> many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)
>>
>> Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.
>>
>> What are your thoughts on the decline ?
>>
>> Bye,
>> Skybuck.
>
>
> 5)

5 + 3 = 8

PC sales plunge as Windows 8 flops

<http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/04/10/business-computers-shipments-tablets-smartphones.html>

[Martin Brown]

On 18/04/2013 17:45, John Larkin wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
> <Window...@DreamPC2006.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I wondered
>> and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! ;) :):
>>
>> Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:
>>
>> 1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
>> 2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
>> 3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
>> 4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely sick of
>> it ;))
>> 5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still better for
>> many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)
>>
>> Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.
>>
>> What are your thoughts on the decline ?
>>
>> Bye,
>> Skybuck.
>
> 5)
>
> Most people don't need a computer, because they don't compute. A tablet does
> email, twitter, facebook, browsing, and games. It's quiet, portable, reliable,
> and doesn't have a tangle of cables, monitors, power strips, all that junk under
> your desk. The decline is probably long-term. HP, Microsoft, Dell, maybe Oracle
> are dinosaurs.

I am with you on this. Tablets are rapidly taking over at home.
Given you can get an Android tablet for under $100 they are going to
make a very large dent in the sales of new PCs and low end laptops.

Apart from video editing and gaming there is precious little that a home
user these days needs the full power of a desktop PC for.

Windows8 naffness has perhaps accelerated the decline but the main
problem is that PCs are now good enough to do anything that a home user
is ever likely to want to do and quickly too. There are no more killer
applications that require a massive new hardware upgrade any more.

Time was when just to run the newest OS you needed yet another memory
upgrade - those days are long gone despite the tendency to bloatware.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Mike Perkins]

A decade ago, the rate of improvement in computing speed was such that
you had to buy a new PCs every year to keep up.

In the past few years I haven't seen quite the same change. One
consequence it is now worth investing in a good PC which might
realistically maintain its market position for a few years rather than
months!

--
Mike Perkins
Video Solutions Ltd
www.videosolutions.ltd.uk

[Joerg]

Yup. I believe abandoning XP was a major mistake.

http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/licensing/sblicensing/pages/downgrade_rights.aspx#fbid=SEeKwchI-MO
https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9230815/Microsoft_will_allow_downgrades_from_Windows_8_to_Windows_7_Vista

Quote "Not surprisingly, users may not downgrade to the
still-used-but-slated-for-retirement Windows XP".

Big mistake.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

[Doug McIntyre]

"Skybuck Flying" <Window...@DreamPC2006.com> writes:
>Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:

>1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
>2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
>3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
>4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely sick of
>it ;))
>5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still better for
>many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

..

>What are your thoughts on the decline ?

Unlike in the past, where a 3-4 year old computer was rapidly
outclassed by new hardware, and the new OSes drove upgrade cycles, the
latest OS refresh cycle from Microsoft actually requires less resources,
and the computing power of even a 5 year old computer is perfectly
adequate for most users. Swap out the older hard drive with a new one,
or even a hybrid or SSD, and a 5 year old computer will feel as fast
as the newest ones on the shelf. At least the average (ie. 90%) of
customers would be unable to tell.

Plus #5 on your list. Many users are getting by for their needs off
their tablet/smartphone, and having to turn on a computer just to
check email and take 5 minutes booting whereas you can use your
smartphone to get email in seconds is a bonus.

[Spehro Pefhany]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:27:55 -0700, Joerg <inv...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

Perhaps, but allowing downgrading to Win7-64 means there's a chance I
might buy a Win8 computer in the next year or two. Otherwise, there is
approximately zero chance.

[Joerg]

I was tempted a few times to buy a new one because I can get roughly 2x
the simulation speed with more cores. But right now I cannot risk a
major interruption because some OS-incompatibility precludes me from
running SW or connected hardware that I really need. With some SW I was
explicitly told that there's issues with Win-7.

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:14:45 +0100, Mike Perkins <sp...@spam.com>
wrote:

>A decade ago, the rate of improvement in computing speed was such that
>you had to buy a new PCs every year to keep up.

That's because every improvement in hardware performance has been
negated by software bloat, software speed, and software complexity. In
effect, overall usability has been stable since about 2002. Sure, the
new software looks more artistic, and probably has some improvements,
but neither art nor obscure features get my attention.

Software also tends to grow faster than the bugs get fixed. That's
because features and functions sell upgrades, while bug fixes are
expected to be free. Eventually, the software grows bloated and is
still full of bugs.

Sign in the window of a local computer store:
<http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/drivel/slides/Win7-downgrade.html>

>In the past few years I haven't seen quite the same change. One
>consequence it is now worth investing in a good PC which might
>realistically maintain its market position for a few years rather than
>months!

I have never considered a PC an investment, and don't believe that it
ever will become one. The price attrition on PC's is just too
radical. In general, for the money I save by purchasing a used PC, I
can later use to purchase it's replacement. A decent high end laptop
is about $1000, but a 5 year old dual core used laptop does for about
$350. In addition, there are changes on the horizon, such as bigger
better and faster SSD drives.

Incidentally, most of my working machines run XP. My various weather
stations run Windoze 2000 and Linux. My customers run Windoze 7 and
8, but I don't have any of those to fight with.



--
Jeff Liebermann je...@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

[Tom Del Rosso]

This is an intelligent post. Who are you? Where is Skybuck? What have you
done with him?


--

Reply in group, but if emailing remove the last word.

[Skybuck Flying]

Hmm speaking of laptops... my mother claims her toshiba ? laptop's harddisk
died one month after it was out of warrenty...

I probably posted which laptop she bought somewhere on usenet in the past...

Just thought I'd let you guys know that... so even laptops can fail... yes
even expensive ones... and yes toshiba too :)

Not really surprising for me... I told her this would happen after she
bought it ;) my half-sister takes care of it and has seized control since
the start...

Perhaps she believes I could not hack it and take over... I could but I
won't it's too risky in many ways.

So I let her have her fun or in this case stress and annoyances with it !
LOL.

HI SISTER ! in case you ever read this ?! ;) =D Having fun yet ? ;) =D

Bye,
Bye,
Skybuck.

P.S.: I told my mother maybe she needs a tablet ;) =D

P.S.2: Maybe all this doom thinking is become self-forfilling-prophecy

PS.3: Neh probably not ;) :) walls and all that ;) :)

[Skybuck Flying]

Maybe new strategy of Microsoft:

Screw hardware, we want to earn money with software !

Make software run on more systems and profit ! ;)

Has it worked out yet ? Maybe not... maybe yes... and maybe it will in
future...

Blizzard games are quite impressive quality wise... and yet they run on
modest systems.

Maybe Blizzard earns lots of money from their software, instead of requiring
gamers to buy new hardware ;)

Maybe Microsoft got inspired by Blizzard and decided to go the Blizzard way
;) :)

Blaming Microsoft for making their operating system more efficient is pretty
insane isn't it ? LOL.

Bye,
Skybyck =D

[George Herold]

On Apr 18, 10:09 am, "Skybuck Flying" <Windows7I...@DreamPC2006.com>
wrote:

I think it's the mobile/ tablets that are doing it.

I wonder if I could divert this thread a bit?
I've got an old desktop at home that I'd like to upgrade.
My 'boy' (a 12 year old) really would like a better gaming machine.
We've got a newer laptop that we use for gaming (I think minecraft is
our favorite game.)
but it tends to over heat and slow down during the games.

So I've been looking at a new desktop from Dell.
Several questions then,
1.) should I buy from Dell? (I've used them in the past.)
2.) Which operating system. I was thinking of win8... but now you've
all made me nervous, but I wouold like some newer version of windows
(running XP at home and work.) moslty becasue the kids will be using
the newer version in school. So maybe Win7?
3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.
4.) Do I need the fancy graphics cards for gaming? (My thought was I
could let my son pitch in for a better card if that's needed.)

Thanks for any advice or wisdom,

George H.

[Melzzzzz]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200

1. and 2.
Games where main drive force behind PC sales, and now
they are mainly produced for Consoles which have
long life expectancy period. Hack you don;t need
more than 2gb of RAM... (have you saw game that needs
more than 2gigs?)
You can do everything else with hardware from 2003.

[halong]

On Apr 18, 11:45 am, John Larkin

> John Larkin                  Highland Technology Incwww.highlandtechnology.com  jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

>
> Precision electronic instrumentation
> Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
> Custom timing and laser controllers
> Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
> VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
> Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

I think 5 also...

The main reason is that we have only 24 hours a day...no time for PC

[John Devereux]

Yes, Win7. I regard myself pretty experienced at computing, I have ended
up supporting a couple of dozen others, been a "power user" since DOS
and have run linux for 10+ years. Done countless reinstalls and
cleanups.

The first time I got hold of a windows 8 machine, I was stumped. I
literally had to do a google search every time (from another machine!)
just to do the simplest thing. It is really, really, bad.

(trimmed to s.e.d.)

> 3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.
> 4.) Do I need the fancy graphics cards for gaming? (My thought was I
> could let my son pitch in for a better card if that's needed.)
>
> Thanks for any advice or wisdom,
>
> George H.
>

--

John Devereux

[Melzzzzz]

Don't know I assemble PC myself.

> 2.) Which operating system. I was thinking of win8... but now you've
> all made me nervous, but I wouold like some newer version of windows
> (running XP at home and work.) moslty becasue the kids will be using
> the newer version in school. So maybe Win7?

Yes, Win 7.

> 3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.

4GB would be enough but 8GB would be comfortable.
Memory is cheap.

> 4.) Do I need the fancy graphics cards for gaming? (My thought was I
> could let my son pitch in for a better card if that's needed.)

Depends on games also... but if you need to play in higher resolutions
everything on high, this would be most important.
IMO medium strength card is enough.

[Spehro Pefhany]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:16:49 -0700, Joerg <inv...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

>
>I was tempted a few times to buy a new one because I can get roughly 2x
>the simulation speed with more cores. But right now I cannot risk a
>major interruption because some OS-incompatibility precludes me from
>running SW or connected hardware that I really need. With some SW I was
>explicitly told that there's issues with Win-7.
>
>--
>Regards, Joerg

Yup.

I try to maintain exactly two major versions of Microsoft operating
systems on my machines at any given moment. I'm not ready yet to give
up entirely on XP, so Win7-64 and XP-32 are the two. There's a real
advantage to having a 64-bit O/S with lots of usable RAM for some
stuff- and XP will no longer be supported for many pieces of
engineering sofware such as Solidworks (beyond 2013) and Solid Edge
(current version ST5 will not install on XP).

Win8 strikes me as perhaps ending up more of a stepping stone, like ME
or Vista, that might be best stepped over, but (other people's) time
will tell. I sure don't want (nor do I want anyone else) to touch my
monitors with slimy greasy fingers, so the tablet features are not
very interesting for a desktop system.

[Martin Brown]

On 18/04/2013 18:58, Spehro Pefhany wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:27:55 -0700, Joerg <inv...@invalid.invalid>
> wrote:
>
>> Bulkhead wrote:
>>> On 04/18/2013 09:45 AM, John Larkin wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
>>>>

>>>>> What are your thoughts on the decline ?
>>>>>
>>>>> Bye,
>>>>> Skybuck.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 5)
>>>
>>> 5 + 3 = 8
>>>
>>> PC sales plunge as Windows 8 flops
>>>
>>> <http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/04/10/business-computers-shipments-tablets-smartphones.html>
>>>
>>
>> Yup. I believe abandoning XP was a major mistake.
>>
>> http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/licensing/sblicensing/pages/downgrade_rights.aspx#fbid=SEeKwchI-MO
>> https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9230815/Microsoft_will_allow_downgrades_from_Windows_8_to_Windows_7_Vista
>>
>> Quote "Not surprisingly, users may not downgrade to the
>> still-used-but-slated-for-retirement Windows XP".

They have to retire it at some point and Win7 is perfectly stable
(unlike Vista) and Vista was never quite as bad as it was painted. MS
Office 2007 was far more of a dog's dinner at initial release but didn't
take anything like the same amount of heat.

Corporates that I know are only just now upgrading to Win7 as MS is
trying to push Win8. They are stuck on some prehistoric browser because
some other MS intranet product is wildly incompatible with newer ones!

>> Big mistake.
>
> Perhaps, but allowing downgrading to Win7-64 means there's a chance I
> might buy a Win8 computer in the next year or two. Otherwise, there is
> approximately zero chance.

Buy one while you can still get the downgrade to Win7-64 Pro.

Do the sums to decide which CPU has the best bang per buck when you
decide to buy. My current PC is a nominally games machine with an
i7-3770K and *no* graphics card installed - just using the CPUs fast 2D
graphics. It is astonishingly frugal on power unless working very hard.
Plenty fast enough for any simulations and the 4 core i5-3570 would be
almost as good for programs that don't use hyperthreading efficiently.

The law of diminishing returns sets in for >4 processing units anyway.

If you don't want realtime 3d rendering for action games animation the
graphics card isn't strictly necessary. The manufacturer had some
difficulty believing the specification that I requested.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Mike Perkins]

On 18/04/2013 20:21, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:14:45 +0100, Mike Perkins <sp...@spam.com>
> wrote:
>
>> A decade ago, the rate of improvement in computing speed was such
>> that you had to buy a new PCs every year to keep up.
>
> That's because every improvement in hardware performance has been
> negated by software bloat, software speed, and software complexity.
> In effect, overall usability has been stable since about 2002. Sure,
> the new software looks more artistic, and probably has some
> improvements, but neither art nor obscure features get my attention.

This perhaps where I will disagree with you. I recall doing a serious
FPGA synthesis 10 years ago where times were halved when I purchased my
next PC.

I also have Windows XP running on a 5 year dual-core PC and the boot
times and general pleasure of use is nowhere near as good as this
year-old quad-core running Windows 7.

> Software also tends to grow faster than the bugs get fixed. That's
> because features and functions sell upgrades, while bug fixes are
> expected to be free. Eventually, the software grows bloated and is
> still full of bugs.
>
> Sign in the window of a local computer store:
> <http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/drivel/slides/Win7-downgrade.html>
>
>> In the past few years I haven't seen quite the same change. One
>> consequence it is now worth investing in a good PC which might
>> realistically maintain its market position for a few years rather
>> than months!
>
> I have never considered a PC an investment, and don't believe that
> it ever will become one. The price attrition on PC's is just too
> radical. In general, for the money I save by purchasing a used PC,
> I can later use to purchase it's replacement. A decent high end
> laptop is about $1000, but a 5 year old dual core used laptop does
> for about $350. In addition, there are changes on the horizon, such
> as bigger better and faster SSD drives.

I would agree regarding "investment". I was making the point that PC
"inflation" has nearly halted such that a good PC bought 2 years ago, is
still a pretty good PC today. Unlike a PC bought 10 years ago.

I would also agree that I may consider changing my RAID disk for a SSD.
In the past I might have used the upgrade as an excuse to buy a new PC,
but now I would be more tempted to just change the insides of my box.

> Incidentally, most of my working machines run XP. My various
> weather stations run Windoze 2000 and Linux. My customers run
> Windoze 7 and 8, but I don't have any of those to fight with.

I'm guessing but I would have thought the PC processing power you
require is perhaps not the same as current gaming or video decompression
etc might require.

I would also say if it's not broke, don't mend it!!

[Timothy Daniels]

"George Herold" wrote:
> I wonder if I could divert this thread a bit?

That is considered rude on Usenet. Why not just
start a new thread? If you do, others who don't
want to read opinions about why PC sales are
declining would spot your inquiry and might
reply.

*TimDaniels*

[Gadfly]

The fact that a desktop and laptop PC lasts much longer than it used to plus
people wanting to have tablets is probably the main reason.
They don't need new PCs and laptops.

I have a desktop PC that I built in 2005 that has an AMD Athlon X2 dual-core
CPU and 1GB memory and it runs Windows 8 beautifully.
And I have a laptop that could do likewise, but I have left it with Windows
7.

Previously, to run a major new release of Windows would have at least
required a motherboard upgrade for a system builder or a new PC
or laptop for the man in the street.

"Skybuck Flying" <Window...@DreamPC2006.com> wrote in message
news:e3163$51701ede$5419b3e4$94...@cache1.tilbu1.nb.home.nl...

[mike]

The underlying driving force for the computer business is Moore's law.
It DEPENDS on more and more and more.
Once you have 10X the computing power you need, there's no incentive to
buy new stuff.

Apple realized this early and created a (paid) content delivery vehicle.
Android made it available at lower cost.
You don't buy stuff any more...you pay a continuing ongoing, ever-increasing
subscription for the privilege of connecting to the network and for what
you use when you get there.

M$ is trying to rent you "office". Reception hasn't been warm, but it's
coming.

Won't be long before you won't need a user name and password to log in.
Inserting your credit card will take care of all that...accompanied
by the gentle "ding-ding" of the cash register app totaling up the
charges in the background. The kids who grew up with a cellphone
in each hand won't even blink...they'll just pay the bill and keep
on tweeting.

Microsoft must FORCE you, kicking and screaming, into that paradigm.
I'd bet that "pressing the XP kill switch" comes up at every strategy
meeting. As soon as the perceived backlash is acceptable, it will
happen. "The XP activation site is no longer available. Your XP
license has expired...your computer will be crippled in 30 days.
Click here to purchase and update to windows 12...
sorry for any inconvenience."
...
...
Your hardware is incompatible with Windows 12. Click here to purchase
"Surface"...we're still sorry...

Windows 8 is inevitable. Their problem was not doing it earlier.
That's gonna cost 'em.

[Joerg]

Not with me :-)

> M$ is trying to rent you "office". Reception hasn't been warm, but it's
> coming.
>
> Won't be long before you won't need a user name and password to log in.
> Inserting your credit card will take care of all that...accompanied
> by the gentle "ding-ding" of the cash register app totaling up the
> charges in the background. The kids who grew up with a cellphone
> in each hand won't even blink...they'll just pay the bill and keep
> on tweeting.
>

Nope, their mom and dad pay the bills. Then when the kids come of age
it'll hit them. "Oh s..t! I can't make ends meet". Pretty soon they move
back in with their parents. I see it left and right, happens more and
more. 40- and 50-year olds living with mom and dad. Why? Because they
"need" a $60/mo cell plan, a $150/mo gym membership, a $80/mo cable TV
package, Netflix, TiVo, Apps, Tunes, car payments, and on and on. It
eats them alive and they have no clue what is eating them alive.

> Microsoft must FORCE you, kicking and screaming, into that paradigm.
> I'd bet that "pressing the XP kill switch" comes up at every strategy
> meeting. As soon as the perceived backlash is acceptable, it will
> happen. "The XP activation site is no longer available. Your XP
> license has expired...your computer will be crippled in 30 days.
> Click here to purchase and update to windows 12...
> sorry for any inconvenience."

Then it could be like with servers. They lost a big chunk of that market.

> ...
> ...
> Your hardware is incompatible with Windows 12. Click here to purchase
> "Surface"...we're still sorry...
>
> Windows 8 is inevitable. Their problem was not doing it earlier.
> That's gonna cost 'em.

It started in the 90's. We were hardcore in the market for an RTOS.
Windows was touting CE but at the Embedded Conference they were unable
to answer the bulk of our technical questions, instead constantly
pointing to "partners", some of whom weren't there. So we picked another
OS. And so did lots of others. They could have had it all back then but
really blew it IMHO. CE fizzled, which was not at all a surprise to me.

Then they had the golden opportunity to build a phone, together with
Nokia, that could have been largely compatible with a PC. We all know
the results. If I needed a smart phone and there was one that could run
most of my regularly used PC programs I'd buy. That feature alone could
actually convince me to "need" one because it finally would enbale
people to leave their netbooks at home on short trips.

As a company one should cling to products that simply work and then
build upon them instead of tossing everything for a brand new design.
For Microsoft that is (or was) XP. Just like the Rabbit or Golf for
Volkswagen. Except that Volkswagen was smarter and kept it.

If a tech company's stock price is more or less flat for well over 10
years then people in there should put on their thinking caps.

[Quadibloc]

On Apr 18, 8:09 am, "Skybuck Flying" <Windows7I...@DreamPC2006.com>
wrote:

> 3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)

Good reason: if you already have a computer that runs 7 well.

John Savard

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 22:02:54 +0100, Mike Perkins <sp...@spam.com>

wrote:

>On 18/04/2013 20:21, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>> On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:14:45 +0100, Mike Perkins <sp...@spam.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> A decade ago, the rate of improvement in computing speed was such
>>> that you had to buy a new PCs every year to keep up.
>>
>> That's because every improvement in hardware performance has been
>> negated by software bloat, software speed, and software complexity.
>> In effect, overall usability has been stable since about 2002. Sure,
>> the new software looks more artistic, and probably has some
>> improvements, but neither art nor obscure features get my attention.
>
>This perhaps where I will disagree with you. I recall doing a serious
>FPGA synthesis 10 years ago where times were halved when I purchased my
>next PC.

10 years ago, my typical machine was running on 512MBytes of RAM on an
Athelon 64, early Pentium 4, or G5 CPU. I still have machines in this
class running and they are depressingly slow. However, there's an
oddity which somewhat substantiates my claim. If you load a P4 with
512MB, and install XP SP1, it runs just fine and with quite usable
speed. However, as you install all the numerous updates, the machine
slows down. I've tried running XP SP3 machines on 512MB and it's
really really really slow. 1GB would be a good minimum and 3.5GB
would make it more usable. What happened is that the OS became
bloated, grew considerably, and slowed down. With updates, Microsoft
certainly doesn't care about performance on a 12 year old OS that will
soon be obsolete. I also see similar issues with old OS/X and Linux
distributions. The OS and applications were designed for the CPU and
memory footprint of their day. As the hardware improved, the software
writers simply took advantage of the added horsepower and RAM
inevitably resulting in bloat. Can you name any OS or program that
grew smaller over time?

To be uncharacteristically honest, it's impossible to generalize over
a 10 year period. Some things became faster, while others slowed
down. Some software was cleaned up, while other remains buggy and
unstable. Progress is not a straight line. Still, it took me about
5 minutes to boot my 1983 IBM XT from its 10MBytes HD. 30 years
later, it still takes about 5 minutes to boot my XP SP3 machine. This
is not progress.

>I also have Windows XP running on a 5 year dual-core PC and the boot
>times and general pleasure of use is nowhere near as good as this
>year-old quad-core running Windows 7.

Try running XP SP3 in a virtual machine on a computer with lots of
RAM. The OS ends up residing mostly in RAM, rather than bashing the
hard disk. It's quite a performance boost (after the initial load).

>I would agree regarding "investment". I was making the point that PC
>"inflation" has nearly halted such that a good PC bought 2 years ago, is
>still a pretty good PC today. Unlike a PC bought 10 years ago.

I'm still using PIII machines for weather stations and data loggers.
The main attraction is low power consumption. I could do better with
a modern SBC, but I already had the working machines.

For myself, I buy the old and used machines from my customers when
they get new machines. I'm perfectly happy to use an older machine. I
used to put yellow post-it notes on the machine indicating how much
capital expense I deferred by NOT buying a new machine.

>I would also agree that I may consider changing my RAID disk for a SSD.
>In the past I might have used the upgrade as an excuse to buy a new PC,
>but now I would be more tempted to just change the insides of my box.

I've had severe difficulties and surprises with RAID. I can see it
for performance (striping), but not for reliability. If the drives
are identical, they tend to blow up all at the same time.

SSD has the potential of giving me an ulcer. I monitor the error rate
and bad sector allocations for my customers. So far, so good.
However, they're now buying SSD's from strange sounding company names
that I can neither locate or pronounce. I smell trouble as the NAND
memory starts to fail. Same with LED backlighting displays, which
will eventually produce a backlighting color balance problem as one of
the 3 color led's drops in output.

Long term investments aren't really possible with todays component
selection, which is often intended to target product life to a
specific number of years. If the operating conditions are well
defined, it is possible to predict the lifetime of many components.
Electrolytic capacitors are a good example. The result are products
that have components where everything blows up after about 5 years.
They can sometimes be fixed, but who wants to replace ALL the
electrolytics in their new computah?

>> Incidentally, most of my working machines run XP. My various
>> weather stations run Windoze 2000 and Linux. My customers run
>> Windoze 7 and 8, but I don't have any of those to fight with.
>
>I'm guessing but I would have thought the PC processing power you
>require is perhaps not the same as current gaming or video decompression
>etc might require.

The weather station spews data at 2400 baud. I could process that
with a PIC controller. There's nothing even close to real time, and
everything is done in small batches. For output, it creates web
pages, pretty JPG's, and ftp's them to a public web server. The only
CPU killer is the web camera, which we decided really didn't justify
an upgrade. Incidentally, I lied. I have one running XP SP3 because
the packet radio drivers and software wanted Dot Nyet 3(?), which
doesn't officially run on Windoze 2000.
<http://bd-wx.k6hju.com/BonnyDoon.htm>
<http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/wx/index.html>
These are old photos. It's a much bigger mess today.

>I would also say if it's not broke, don't mend it!!

If it ain't broke, you're not trying.
<http://www.motifake.com/facebookview.php?id=142183>

[amdx]

Chilling picture you have painted with this "paid content delivery
vehicle".
I complain about the $45 dollar internet "month after month after
month" bill.
Then there's the cable TV bill, and the phone, the water/sewer/garbage,
insurance, etc.
I have acquaintance to a lot of bums, The only stress they have is
getting there next meal or beer, and where are they going to sleep.
Kinda like early man, except their not slaying animals for food.

Oh, I think the slide in PC sales has to do with mobile.
I have a friend that got a smart phone from his daughter and now
he rarely uses his home computer. My daughter has a smart phone
and use her laptop only if she has a long email to type. Her hubby
still uses the laptop, but for Youtube videos mostly. And as you know
Youtube videos can be accessed on many TV's now and more in the future.

Mikek

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:34:57 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"

<Window...@DreamPC2006.com> wrote:

>Hmm speaking of laptops... my mother claims her toshiba ? laptop's harddisk
>died one month after it was out of warrenty...

Perfect timing. My compliments to the drive designer and manufacturer
for meeting the desired time-to-fail specification so closely. The
next model will be better and fail a day or two after the warranty has
expired.

>I probably posted which laptop she bought somewhere on usenet in the past...

Yep, and you can search for it yourself.

>Just thought I'd let you guys know that... so even laptops can fail... yes
>even expensive ones... and yes toshiba too :)

What you pay has very little to do with quality. There was a
connection at one time, but not any more. You can spend outrageous
amounts of cash for absolute junk. Even worse, in some product areas,
you can't buy quality at any price because all the good manufacturers
have been bought and nobody is willing to pay sky high prices for
quality.

>P.S.: I told my mother maybe she needs a tablet ;)

You are not a doctor and should be prescribing pills.

Or, perhaps you're recommending this tablet:
<https://www.google.com/search?q=etch a sketch&tbm=isch>

>P.S.2: Maybe all this doom thinking is become self-forfilling-prophecy

With computer buyers like your, it is very difficult to be optimistic
about the state of the industry. When you defenestrate your
computers, find some other hobby, and go away, then the industry and
my attitude will surely recover.

[Michael A. Terrell]

amdx wrote:
>
> Oh, I think the slide in PC sales has to do with mobile.

Along with so many people out of work, and no decent job on the
horizon.

[George Herold]

On Apr 18, 4:09 pm, John Devereux <j...@devereux.me.uk> wrote:

> John Devereux- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Thanks John,
George H.

[George Herold]

That's my thought... gain is cheap too!

George H.

>
> > 4.) Do I need the fancy graphics cards for gaming?  (My thought was I
> > could let my son pitch in for a better card if that's needed.)
>
> Depends on games also... but if you need to play in higher resolutions
> everything on high, this would be most important.

> IMO medium strength card is enough.- Hide quoted text -

[George Herold]

On Apr 18, 5:56 pm, "Timothy Daniels" <SpamMe...@NoSuchDomain.com>
wrote:

Really? I was trying to be polite.
I guess if I start my own thread, then I'm
sorta responsible and have to follow through.

If I just hijack something.. then I can stop paying attention
if it turns into a pissing contest.

Do you have any thoughts about a new desktop?

(Wow.. I just saw the cross-posting list. Sorry I thought I was just
asking on SED.)

George H.

[mike]

On 4/18/2013 6:02 PM, George Herold wrote:

>>
>> Yes, Win 7.
>>
>>> 3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.
>>
>> 4GB would be enough but 8GB would be comfortable.
>> Memory is cheap.
> That's my thought... gain is cheap too!
>

What the heck are you guys doing with all that RAM?

I have win7-32bit running on a P4 with 2GB ram.
I ran it that way with no swap file for months.
I did decide to re-enable the swap file when I discovered
that I couldn't run XP and Linux simultaneously in virtualbox.

I've got more ram. Just can't see any reason to crawl under
the table to install it.
I don't normally hibernate, but I've had laptops where big
ram made it take longer to return from hibernation than to boot
in the first place.

I've also got a dual-core system with twice the horsepower
and 4GB of ram. I'm sure you can come up with an example,
but
for what I do, I can't feel enough improvement make it worth
switching computers.

[miso]

I never had to resort to it, but when you use the Pro or higher version
of Win 7, you get the right to download a VM of XP.

This should be the link:
> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8002

I don't know of anyone who regretted switching to win7. The
incompatibility issues are more like pilot error. You run into confusion
with the virtual stores, so installation sometimes can be tricky. For
some programs, I don't allow them to be stored in the default location.
Once you leave that default location, the programs install like
"normal." Win7 doesn't like binaries plopped into the Program Files
directory in some cases. So you create a "bin" directory for programs
that don't have an installer.

This isn't rocket science.

[miso]

You wish they would turn off XP, but they won't. Come April 2014, the
remaining XP machines will be pwned. Then starts the attack of the 'bot
net.

There are still people out there with win95! The virus writers depend on
junk OSs to infect.

[John Devereux]

mike <ham...@netzero.net> writes:

> On 4/18/2013 6:02 PM, George Herold wrote:
>
>>>
>>> Yes, Win 7.
>>>
>>>> 3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.
>>>
>>> 4GB would be enough but 8GB would be comfortable.
>>> Memory is cheap.
>> That's my thought... gain is cheap too!
>>
> What the heck are you guys doing with all that RAM?

> I have win7-32bit running on a P4 with 2GB ram.
> I ran it that way with no swap file for months.
> I did decide to re-enable the swap file when I discovered
> that I couldn't run XP and Linux simultaneously in virtualbox.

Only thing I know of is indeed for running virtual machines. Which I
would absolutely be doing a lot of if I was stuck with windows :)

I suppose editing a big video or something but I don't do that.

> I've got more ram. Just can't see any reason to crawl under
> the table to install it.
> I don't normally hibernate, but I've had laptops where big
> ram made it take longer to return from hibernation than to boot
> in the first place.
>
> I've also got a dual-core system with twice the horsepower
> and 4GB of ram. I'm sure you can come up with an example,
> but
> for what I do, I can't feel enough improvement make it worth
> switching computers.

--

John Devereux

[Martin Brown]

On 19/04/2013 00:21, amdx wrote:
>
>> The underlying driving force for the computer business is Moore's law.
>> It DEPENDS on more and more and more.
>> Once you have 10X the computing power you need, there's no incentive to
>> buy new stuff.
>>
>> Apple realized this early and created a (paid) content delivery vehicle.
>> Android made it available at lower cost.
>> You don't buy stuff any more...you pay a continuing ongoing,
>> ever-increasing
>> subscription for the privilege of connecting to the network and for what
>> you use when you get there.
>>
>> M$ is trying to rent you "office". Reception hasn't been warm, but it's
>> coming.

Reception in the UK to that move by Microsoft has been pretty hostile.
I don't know of any corporates even thinking about it.

>> Won't be long before you won't need a user name and password to log in.
>> Inserting your credit card will take care of all that...accompanied
>> by the gentle "ding-ding" of the cash register app totaling up the
>> charges in the background. The kids who grew up with a cellphone
>> in each hand won't even blink...they'll just pay the bill and keep
>> on tweeting.
>>
>> Microsoft must FORCE you, kicking and screaming, into that paradigm.
>> I'd bet that "pressing the XP kill switch" comes up at every strategy
>> meeting. As soon as the perceived backlash is acceptable, it will
>> happen. "The XP activation site is no longer available. Your XP
>> license has expired...your computer will be crippled in 30 days.
>> Click here to purchase and update to windows 12...
>> sorry for any inconvenience."
>> ...
>> ...
>> Your hardware is incompatible with Windows 12. Click here to purchase
>> "Surface"...we're still sorry...

I think Microsoft will probably have to relent again on the XP
discontinuation - there are just too many really big corporates dragging
their heals on it. Otherwise they will find third party hackers
supporting it - and/or they will get the blame for the wild botnets on a
large unmaintained rump of hackable XP computers on the net. Stats today
show a high proportion of XP still in web traffic.

Weblogs for connections show something like:

Win7 33%, iPad 20%, XP 20%, Unknown 15%
iPhone, Vista, Linux 5% NT, Android 2%

Win8 might be hiding in "unknown" I suppose, or is not on the radar.

Browsers are similar.

IE 33%, Safari 25%, Unknown 20%, Chrome 15%, Firefox 10%, ...

> Chilling picture you have painted with this "paid content delivery
> vehicle".
> I complain about the $45 dollar internet "month after month after
> month" bill.

What do you get for that? Unlimited use of dedicated fibre back to the
cabinet? A typical price in the UK would be $30+ for business or as low
as $5 for a home user. The early adopter price was about $25 way back.

BT Infinity 38Mbps including TV and all phone calls is about £40 pcm.

> Oh, I think the slide in PC sales has to do with mobile.
> I have a friend that got a smart phone from his daughter and now
> he rarely uses his home computer. My daughter has a smart phone
> and use her laptop only if she has a long email to type. Her hubby
> still uses the laptop, but for Youtube videos mostly. And as you know
> Youtube videos can be accessed on many TV's now and more in the future.
>
> Mikek

I think the desktop or under desk PC is largely dead for consumers now.
They may buy some sort of quiet media centre box to store programmes and
stream music on but they don't need to use it for general computing.

Laptops still hold some market share but Android is making rapid inroads
into the market with small cheap sexy tablets.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Martin Brown]

On 18/04/2013 21:09, John Devereux wrote:
> George Herold <ghe...@teachspin.com> writes:
>
>> On Apr 18, 10:09 am, "Skybuck Flying" <Windows7I...@DreamPC2006.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I wondered
>>> and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! ;) :):
>>>
>>> Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:
>>

>> I think it's the mobile/ tablets that are doing it.
>>
>> I wonder if I could divert this thread a bit?
>> I've got an old desktop at home that I'd like to upgrade.
>> My 'boy' (a 12 year old) really would like a better gaming machine.
>> We've got a newer laptop that we use for gaming (I think minecraft is
>> our favorite game.)
>> but it tends to over heat and slow down during the games.
>>
>> So I've been looking at a new desktop from Dell.

There are probably better makers of a gaming machine and it is well
worthwhile looking at the local computer magazine reviews. You could put
one together from parts with your son depending on what level of
aptitude he shows for electronics. Decent project for a keen teenager
with knowledgable adult supervision (ie unlike the OP).

>> Several questions then,
>> 1.) should I buy from Dell? (I've used them in the past.)
>> 2.) Which operating system. I was thinking of win8... but now you've
>> all made me nervous, but I wouold like some newer version of windows
>> (running XP at home and work.) moslty becasue the kids will be using
>> the newer version in school. So maybe Win7?
>
> Yes, Win7. I regard myself pretty experienced at computing, I have ended
> up supporting a couple of dozen others, been a "power user" since DOS
> and have run linux for 10+ years. Done countless reinstalls and
> cleanups.

I agree. Win8 is a PITA for experts and beginners alike. If you enjoy a
frustrating user interface designed by an acid crazed cubist go ahead.
Otherwise insist on a downgrade to Win7 64bit and perhaps Mickeysoft
will eventually get the message (but I seriously doubt it).

> The first time I got hold of a windows 8 machine, I was stumped. I
> literally had to do a google search every time (from another machine!)
> just to do the simplest thing. It is really, really, bad.
>
> (trimmed to s.e.d.)

Snap! Glad it wasn't just me that found it impossible to navigate. The
problem I was trying to fix was that my neighbours brand new machine
wasn't getting internet routing. This made all the helpful "helps" and
wizards that go off connecting to the net extremely annoying!

>
>
>> 3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.

8G and don't waste your money on the faster parts. Memory is always
getting cheaper so you can add some more later iff you need it.

>> 4.) Do I need the fancy graphics cards for gaming? (My thought was I
>> could let my son pitch in for a better card if that's needed.)

Absolutely and possibly a heftier power supply to feed it with juice.
The graphics card in gaming machines frequently has more dissipation and
CPU computing power than the main for the right sorts of problems.

You can actually buy software libraries to use certain GPUs as array
processors for scientific simulation problems and cryptography.

There are dedicated makers of gaming machines who at least in the UK are
competitive as high end PC makers. Provided you don't mind having a
computer invoice for a Ice Warrior MegaDeath or something equally crazy
they can be pretty good value for money and very high performance.

And very reliable indeed if you take a machine that is designed to be
overclocked and run it at the stock speed, cool and quiet. I opted for
one with *no* graphics card and they took a lot of persuading...

>> Thanks for any advice or wisdom,
>>
>> George H.
>>
>


--

Regards,
Martin Brown

[Martin Brown]

On 19/04/2013 03:56, mike wrote:
> On 4/18/2013 6:02 PM, George Herold wrote:
>
>>>
>>> Yes, Win 7.
>>>
>>>> 3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.
>>>
>>> 4GB would be enough but 8GB would be comfortable.
>>> Memory is cheap.
>> That's my thought... gain is cheap too!
>>
> What the heck are you guys doing with all that RAM?

Video editing, large photographic images, computer chess. All of these
benefit from having lots of fast memory available to work in. 8G will
let me do any two of these simultaneously with normal work. I often have
a chess analysis running in the background whilst I am working.

>
> I have win7-32bit running on a P4 with 2GB ram.
> I ran it that way with no swap file for months.
> I did decide to re-enable the swap file when I discovered
> that I couldn't run XP and Linux simultaneously in virtualbox.

If you only ever read emails or do simple things then you can get by
with a lot less. Never tried Win7 on anything less than 4G and these
days I wouldn't even consider installing the 32bit version.

> I've got more ram. Just can't see any reason to crawl under
> the table to install it.
> I don't normally hibernate, but I've had laptops where big
> ram made it take longer to return from hibernation than to boot
> in the first place.
>
> I've also got a dual-core system with twice the horsepower
> and 4GB of ram. I'm sure you can come up with an example,
> but
> for what I do, I can't feel enough improvement make it worth
> switching computers.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Martin Brown]

There also some problems with older programs that baulk at spaces inside
directory names and file permissions in the Program Files sub
directories if they insist on having write access to files in there.

>
> This isn't rocket science.
>

No but I can see why it can be confusing where certain installers of
major programs failed spectacularly on Win7 at the outset.

Win7 64bit seems to be a bit more tetchy about running elderly programs
with legacy quirks outside of a virtual XP environment - thatis why it
is worth having the Pro version if you have important old software.
(a surprising amount actually works without problems, but not all)

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[JW]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:23:14 -0700 mike <ham...@netzero.net> wrote in
Message id: <kkprjo$nju$1...@dont-email.me>:

>Microsoft must FORCE you, kicking and screaming, into that paradigm.
>I'd bet that "pressing the XP kill switch" comes up at every strategy
>meeting. As soon as the perceived backlash is acceptable, it will
>happen. "The XP activation site is no longer available. Your XP
>license has expired...your computer will be crippled in 30 days.
>Click here to purchase and update to windows 12...
>sorry for any inconvenience."

That's not going to happen. Microsoft has stated publicly that when they
shut down the activation servers for XP, that a patch will be released
that will removes the activation requirement.

[Martin Brown]

That should see the number of installed copies of XP double overnight!

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[mike]

On 4/19/2013 4:25 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 19/04/2013 11:28, JW wrote:
>> On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:23:14 -0700 mike <ham...@netzero.net> wrote in
>> Message id: <kkprjo$nju$1...@dont-email.me>:
>>
>>> Microsoft must FORCE you, kicking and screaming, into that paradigm.
>>> I'd bet that "pressing the XP kill switch" comes up at every strategy
>>> meeting. As soon as the perceived backlash is acceptable, it will
>>> happen. "The XP activation site is no longer available. Your XP
>>> license has expired...your computer will be crippled in 30 days.
>>> Click here to purchase and update to windows 12...
>>> sorry for any inconvenience."
>>
>> That's not going to happen. Microsoft has stated publicly that when they
>> shut down the activation servers for XP, that a patch will be released
>> that will removes the activation requirement.

I understand that it's what they said. But you sniped the rest of the
scenario. If software you want won't run on xp, you're still screwed.
Win8 obsoleted 90% of my computers (P4) by requiring NX-bit support.
They did it in the name of security, but it was a conscious decision
to force hardware upgrades. Pre-release win8 ran fine without it.
That also starts another ripple that seeks to inhibit other OS's
with the secure boot stuff. It's all about spin.

Bottom line is that the old way of faster and faster has run out of
steam. The game user is the only part of the end-user desktop
demographic that still needs faster and faster.

They gotta force obsolescence on the rest of us. They will find a way.

>
> That should see the number of installed copies of XP double overnight!

Good point!
But the ping-pong advances in hardware and software make it unprofitable
for hardware vendors to update drivers. It's a win-win for everybody but
the end user.

I'd still be using Win2K if it had hardware drivers.
>

[mike]

On 4/19/2013 12:46 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
Never tried Win7 on anything less than 4G and these
> days I wouldn't even consider installing the 32bit version.

Kinda hard to put 64-bit on a 32-bit computer.
Your hardware budget must be bigger than mine. :-)

$1 and under garage sale 64-bit dual-core systems are
just becoming available, but the damn things don't have
enough hardware I/O ports or PCI slots to keep everything running.

[Uwe Hercksen]

John Larkin schrieb:

> Most people don't need a computer, because they don't compute. A tablet does
> email, twitter, facebook, browsing, and games. It's quiet, portable, reliable,
> and doesn't have a tangle of cables, monitors, power strips, all that junk under
> your desk. The decline is probably long-term. HP, Microsoft, Dell, maybe Oracle
> are dinosaurs.

Hello,

some time ago, the dinosaurs were Control Data, Cray, Vax and other
mainframes. Now the time for the next generation of dinosaurs has come.

Bye

[Martin Brown]

I used to have a rule of thumb that I would buy a new PC or laptop
whenever the performance of a new one was more than three times the old.
This was typically about every three years since 1985. Back then they
typically cost around £2k+ and were decidedly specialist kit.

Moore's law has basically run out of steam at a clock speed at 4GHz
without increasing the core count. And the processors have now become so
powerful that domestic users have no need of any more horsepower.

OTOH Gamers, scientists and engineers will always find a way to use ever
more computing power.

The gamers have practically driven the evolution of high end realtime
graphics cards with powerful rendering engines and texture maps. They
will probably continue to do so but are reaching the laws of diminishing
returns once you get above 80fps at full HD resolution.

>
> They gotta force obsolescence on the rest of us. They will find a way.

I think they will struggle to do that.

>> That should see the number of installed copies of XP double overnight!
> Good point!

> But the ping-pong advances in hardware and software make it unprofitable
> for hardware vendors to update drivers. It's a win-win for everybody but
> the end user.

The end user is there only to be exploited.

> I'd still be using Win2K if it had hardware drivers.

Better than Win ME I suppose, but only just.

I can run versions right back to Win95 if I have to but these days it is
rare to need to test on anything before XP.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Mike Perkins]

Nope - but that in part due to the increased capability of the software.

> To be uncharacteristically honest, it's impossible to generalize
> over a 10 year period. Some things became faster, while others
> slowed down. Some software was cleaned up, while other remains buggy
> and unstable. Progress is not a straight line. Still, it took me
> about 5 minutes to boot my 1983 IBM XT from its 10MBytes HD. 30
> years later, it still takes about 5 minutes to boot my XP SP3
> machine. This is not progress.

I'm more concerned that I can't see conventional computing power getting
much faster!

>> I also have Windows XP running on a 5 year dual-core PC and the
>> boot times and general pleasure of use is nowhere near as good as
>> this year-old quad-core running Windows 7.
>
> Try running XP SP3 in a virtual machine on a computer with lots of
> RAM. The OS ends up residing mostly in RAM, rather than bashing the
> hard disk. It's quite a performance boost (after the initial load).

I think the old PC has 2GB of RAM.

>> I would agree regarding "investment". I was making the point that
>> PC "inflation" has nearly halted such that a good PC bought 2 years
>> ago, is still a pretty good PC today. Unlike a PC bought 10 years
>> ago.
>
> I'm still using PIII machines for weather stations and data loggers.
> The main attraction is low power consumption. I could do better
> with a modern SBC, but I already had the working machines.

One thing that puts me off using a PC 24/7 is the power consumption and
the associated cost. Have you looked into this? And compared with an
ARM SBC running Linux?

> For myself, I buy the old and used machines from my customers when
> they get new machines. I'm perfectly happy to use an older machine.
> I used to put yellow post-it notes on the machine indicating how
> much capital expense I deferred by NOT buying a new machine.
>
>> I would also agree that I may consider changing my RAID disk for a
>> SSD. In the past I might have used the upgrade as an excuse to buy
>> a new PC, but now I would be more tempted to just change the
>> insides of my box.
>
> I've had severe difficulties and surprises with RAID. I can see it
> for performance (striping), but not for reliability. If the drives
> are identical, they tend to blow up all at the same time.

So far I've been lucky! I used a striped drive and another drive it's
quick to backup to.

> SSD has the potential of giving me an ulcer. I monitor the error
> rate and bad sector allocations for my customers. So far, so good.
> However, they're now buying SSD's from strange sounding company
> names that I can neither locate or pronounce. I smell trouble as the
> NAND memory starts to fail. Same with LED backlighting displays,
> which will eventually produce a backlighting color balance problem as
> one of the 3 color led's drops in output.

I thought they had algorithms to rotate any memory changes throughout
the disk? They have now been out a while and still haven't heard any
horror stories. I'm in the habit of maintaining a couple of backups to
minimise any disruption.

I am impressed, my only concern would be overall power consumption and
its cost. A hard disk takes more power than a system built around a
micro. Some of the NXP ARM processors are very affordable and can run
Linux.

>> I would also say if it's not broke, don't mend it!!
>
> If it ain't broke, you're not trying.
> <http://www.motifake.com/facebookview.php?id=142183>
>

--

Mike Perkins
Video Solutions Ltd
www.videosolutions.ltd.uk

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

On 4/18/2013 10:09 PM, Skybuck Flying wrote:
> Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:

> What are your thoughts on the decline ?

I would say people are just happy with the games on mobile devices! They
want mobility rather than a sitting duck, though the duck is a lot more
powerful.

--
@~@ Remain silent. Nothing from soldiers and magicians is real!
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and farces be with you!
/( _ )\ (Fedora 18 i686) Linux 3.8.7-201.fc18.i686
^ ^ 21:21:01 up 5:20 0 users load average: 0.01 0.02 0.05
不借貸! 不詐騙! 不援交! 不打交! 不打劫! 不自殺! 請考慮綜援 (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

[George Herold]

On Apr 19, 3:39 am, Martin Brown <|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk>
wrote:

> Martin Brown- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

Great, Thanks for all that Martin.

George H.

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:25:00 +0100, Mike Perkins <sp...@spam.com>
wrote:

>> Can you name any
>> OS or program that grew smaller over time?
>
>Nope - but that in part due to the increased capability of the software.

How much of the added capabilities do you actually use? When I
upgrade to a newer version, it's rarely to obtain some much needed
feature, but rather in an apparently futile hope that the latest
version will have fewer bugs and crash less often. After about 30
years of personal computing, one would think that I should have
learned the bigger isn't better, but that hasn't happened.
Occasionally, some vendor accidentally produces a relatively bug free
release, that is also fairly useful. XP would be a good example.
That's really bad because if there are no bugs, users would just stay
with the current release forever, not be inspired to upgrade. So, the
next release is full of bugs (and features), so that the upgrade cycle
can be restarted. Sometimes, I suspect that they even introduce bugs
intentionally in order to sell upgrades. Of course, if you complain
about bugs, the standard answer is to wait for the next release which
"should have that fixed". Right.

I am tech support, and I know it all.
I anxiously wait for your latest call.
You've only to play, the game of voice mail,
I'll be there shortly, I'm working my tail.
Now tell me your problem, and what did you do?
This cannot have happened. I haven't a clue.
I may have the answer, though it's slightly late,
Just buy the next version, release, or update.
Next, tell me your problem, no matter how small,
I am tech support, and I know it all...

>I'm more concerned that I can't see conventional computing power getting
>much faster!

I have customers that bought i7 based machines on the assumption that
it would be faster only to discover that only a limited number of
applications can take advantage of 4 cores and a total of 8
(hyperthreaded) processors. I can bring up the task manager, with the
pretty graphs, and demonstrate that most of the cores are doing
nothing. For more mundane applications, there's very little that
multiple cores can do for something like a word processor. For games,
graphics, big arrays, video editing, and CAD, I can see the benefits,
but not for a simple word processor. It's much like a high powered
automobile, capable of doing 200 mph, but stuck in traffic at 10 mph
waiting for other drivers (jobs) to finish so it can lurch forward
quickly and then wait again. Capability does not equal performance.

Much of the CPU time is also spent waiting for I/O. The hard disk is
the current bottleneck. One answer, which is going to be very common
are hybrid drives. That's a multi-gigabloat drive with a
multi-gigabloat flash cache. Kinda like an SSD glued to rotating
memory. For computing that tends to stay in a cache, it's great.
Booting the OS uses the same files every time, so that's a big win.
However, streaming data, that gets read exactly once, can actually be
slower on a hybrid drive than on a conventional drive. However, it's
the latest fashion in computing, and I'll have to endure these until
the prices on SSD drives drops sufficiently to kill them off.

Your quest for more computing power is somewhat futile. Again, if
you're stuck in traffic, a bigger engine is not going to get you there
any faster. Often, you're going at the speed of the slowest vehicle,
or in computing, at the speed of the slowest bus or peripheral. This
month, it's the hard disk that's the bottleneck. For gaming, it's the
video processor. For virtualization and big array crunching, it's the
RAM that slows things down. Put a jet engine in a Volkswagen, and you
still have a Volkswagen.

>> Try running XP SP3 in a virtual machine on a computer with lots of
>> RAM. The OS ends up residing mostly in RAM, rather than bashing the
>> hard disk. It's quite a performance boost (after the initial load).
>
>I think the old PC has 2GB of RAM.

You'll need more to run a VM. The ability to address more than
3.5GBytes of RAM is where 64 bit operating systems shine. Windoze XP
is 32 bits, so you're RAM limited. There was a 64 bit version of XP,
but it seems to have problems. Windoze 7, 8, and Linux on 64 bit
CPU's with 8GB or more RAM works well for XP in a VM.

>One thing that puts me off using a PC 24/7 is the power consumption and
>the associated cost. Have you looked into this? And compared with an
>ARM SBC running Linux?

I have not investigated the power consumption issue. I simply use
what is available and cheap. I'm sure that a lower power SBC and SSD
would draw less power. If I were manufacturing weather stations, it
would be a very different story. I'm currently looking into running a
weather station on a $100 Android tablet, which would certainly be an
improvement in power consumption. It can be done, but it's not
reliable. The LiIon battery does not like to sit forever at 100%
charge and rapidly decays. Android is also not designed for maximum
uptime and tends to reboot, hang, or kill processes over time. Even a
daily midnight reboot doesn't seem to help. However, I'm still hoping
that single application tablet based "servers" will eventually become
a useful idea.

>I thought they had algorithms to rotate any memory changes throughout
>the disk?

Most SSD's have such an algorithm and more. What it does is detect
errors, and reassign alternate blocks in its place. When access time
to any block on the drive is the same, such a system makes good sense.
Some operating systems also have mechanisms to equalize the wear (wear
leveling) on the cells over the entire drive. I killed off several CF
(compact flash) camera cards, that lacked this feature, so I know it's
a real problem:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_file_system>
Still, I worry. When I see the bad sector count climb, I simply
assume that it will continue and eventually kill the drive. This
hasn't happened, but with my customers slipshod (image) backup
frequency, it's a real concern. After a few years of no failures, I
may stop worrying.

>They have now been out a while and still haven't heard any
>horror stories.

Google for "SSD horror stories". The first few hits are worth
reading.

>I'm in the habit of maintaining a couple of backups to
>minimise any disruption.

I do image backups which backs up literally everything. It's faster
and better than any other method I've tried. However, the image
backup software seems universally crude and strange. The least
disgusting of the lot seems to be Acronis True Image, which is my
current favorite. Run it from a boot CDROM, not while the operating
is running, and it will work better and much faster. (Typically 1 - 2
GB/min to USB 2 or 4 GB/min to USB 3).

>I am impressed, my only concern would be overall power consumption and
>its cost.

The computers in the photo were salvaged at the recyclers and cost me
about $30/ea. Pentium III, 3.5" HD, about 2GB RAM, running Windoze
2000. Nothing really special except that they're totally reliable.
Well, I have been killing off cooling fans, but that doesn't really
count. About 55 watts average consumption measure on a kill-a-watt
meter. At $0.20/kw-hr, that's 481 kw-hrs/year or $96/year. Not
great, but also not worth spending several years electricity budget to
reduce the cost. Replacing the 3.5" HD with a flash drive will save
about 10 watts, which I think will be the biggest improvement.

>A hard disk takes more power than a system built around a
>micro. Some of the NXP ARM processors are very affordable and can run
>Linux.

True. The software we're using:
<http://www.weather-display.com>
also runs on Linux. However, we have other services running on these
machines, such as a ham radio packet email gateway. Much as I would
like to run Linux, the packet stuff is Windoze only at this time.

[marc]

Skybuck Flying wrote:

> 4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely sick of
> it ;))

"When the water is cooling, the universe will expand".

"the universe will expand, when the water is cooling"


--
--
What's on Shortwave guide: choose an hour, go!
http://shortwave.tk
700+ Radio Stations on SW http://swstations.tk
300+ languages on SW http://radiolanguages.tk

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno]

In the '80s Goodwill Industries was getting bids by steel scrap haulers
on donated mainframe racks... hoards of 'em. Literally tons of big
computer grade caps and fans and other stuff could have been salvaged.

That was way back then.

[Jasen Betts]

On 2013-04-19, mike <ham...@netzero.net> wrote:
> On 4/18/2013 6:02 PM, George Herold wrote:
>
>>>
>>> Yes, Win 7.
>>>
>>>> 3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.
>>>
>>> 4GB would be enough but 8GB would be comfortable.
>>> Memory is cheap.
>> That's my thought... gain is cheap too!
>>
> What the heck are you guys doing with all that RAM?

disk cache!


--
⚂⚃ 100% natural

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ne...@netfront.net ---

[MrTallyman]

On 20 Apr 2013 03:35:24 GMT, Jasen Betts <ja...@xnet.co.nz> wrote:

>On 2013-04-19, mike <ham...@netzero.net> wrote:
>> On 4/18/2013 6:02 PM, George Herold wrote:
>>
>>>>
>>>> Yes, Win 7.
>>>>
>>>>> 3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.
>>>>
>>>> 4GB would be enough but 8GB would be comfortable.
>>>> Memory is cheap.
>>> That's my thought... gain is cheap too!
>>>
>> What the heck are you guys doing with all that RAM?
>
>disk cache!

Muy estupido.

cache? not.

I used "speeddisk" back when software based caching actually had
benefit (286/386 days). It does not with today's drives and I/O buses.

I used a whole, considered huge at the time 16MB hardware based caching
hard drive controller back when *that* had benefit.

It no longer does or there would be cards still being made.

Even big cloud racks full of hard drives use the hard drives themselves
to get max throughput and there is no caching.

My cheap ACER laptop with a Seagate SATA 6GB/s 750GB HD+ 8GB SSD boots
in 15 seconds flat to Win7.

Oh and what THIRD PARTY application are you using to 'create' a
'RAM_Disk' with?

[Skybuck Flying]

Hiya George,

Building a good gaming rig is not easy, I tried myself, and you can google
for the results, it was a pain in the ass.

Problems faced: overheat, dust collection.

Having said that.

The latest and greatest graphics card is the nvidia titan. Even a super
computer was named after it.

However one would have to make sure the power supply can handle it and
perhaps the motherboard as well.

The titan probably gets hot though, so a passively cooled graphics card is
interesting too though they not as powerfull.

Perhaps a mid range card is safest.

Also a good case is needed for ventilation.

You mentioned upgrading an old desktop and then you mention buying a new one
?

I am a bit confused about that.

If truely upgrading have to be carefull that all components can handle it.

If buying a new one, perhaps being a computer from a specialized gaming rig
company is an idea.

Perhaps they can throw it some nice water cooling... or just a decently
designed air cooled PC.

It all depends on the budget ;) :)

Minecraft is probably not the most demanding game but you also mentioned
overheat of laptop... so you are familiar with the overheat topic ;) :)

Dell is probably crap, HP is probably crap too... a little bit less crap
though just cheap... at least my mothers HP still running barely... it
little used though... my sister bought a Dell it died :)

All computers seem to die lately ;) :)

1.) should I buy from Dell? (I've used them in the past.)

If you lazy perhaps yes, or give Alien Ware a try or so ;) :) <- they
selling gaming rigs if I am not mistaken ;)

2.) Which operating system. I was thinking of win8... but now you've
all made me nervous, but I wouold like some newer version of windows
(running XP at home and work.) moslty becasue the kids will be using
the newer version in school. So maybe Win7?

Perhaps wait a bit for the new windows 8.1 operating system.

It would suck having to buy windows 7 with all those services packs and
patches... it would be patching 2 days at least.

Also it's on the way out so not really future ready ?! More and more games
will start focussing on windows 8...

3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.

It's a bit overkill but always good to have more.

Even my system with 4 GB ram only uses 3.2 and it works fine.

If you want to be future proof get 8GB otherwise spent the money on
something else.

4.) Do I need the fancy graphics cards for gaming? (My thought was I
could let my son pitch in for a better card if that's needed.)

Yes for good gaming a graphics card is needed/essential.

I see more and more games using CUDA, so getting an NVIDIA card would be
wise ;) :) plus I am a slight nvidia fan so I may be biased ;) :)

I hope to have been of some help, trust me it not easy ;) :)

Bye,
Skybuck.

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno]

On Sat, 20 Apr 2013 11:33:06 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"

<Window...@DreamPC2006.com> wrote:

>Hiya George,
>
>Building a good gaming rig is not easy, I tried myself, and you can google
>for the results, it was a pain in the ass.

You are an idiot. you proved it yourself. Time and time again.

>
>Problems faced: overheat, dust collection.

You are an idiot... proven with your retarded posts... Time and time
again.

>Having said that.

You didn't say anything, dumbass.

>The latest and greatest graphics card is the nvidia titan. Even a super
>computer was named after it.

And it is the last thing a dumbass like you needs to be trying to get
installed. and working.

>However one would have to make sure the power supply can handle it and
>perhaps the motherboard as well.

Perhaps? Perhaps you are a clueless twit who should not be attempting
to guide anyone's PC build endeavors.

>The titan probably gets hot though, so a passively cooled graphics card is
>interesting too though they not as powerfull.

And we need you to deliver these common sense bits of info? No. We
can see perfectly fine when we choose our video cards. We can weigh all
the factors just fine. We do not need an utter idiot, who can't even
keep a single machine running, trying to tell folks about computer parts.
One repost of one of your stupid rants where you blame things on stupid
reasons which were not even true and folks would see that your brain is
no more than eleven years of age in term of maturity, and your knowledge
is not much more advanced than that.

>
>Perhaps a mid range card is safest.
>
>Also a good case is needed for ventilation.
>
>You mentioned upgrading an old desktop and then you mention buying a new one
>?
>
>I am a bit confused about that.

And that never happens, right?

>If truely upgrading have to be carefull that all components can handle it.

Really? can't just buy a bunch of parts that will not work together
and mash them together anyway?

Do you ever say anything that isn't already an obvious requisite?

>If buying a new one, perhaps being a computer from a specialized gaming rig
>company is an idea.

Only for dorks like you, where Mommy is signing the check.

>Perhaps they can throw it some nice water cooling... or just a decently
>designed air cooled PC.
>
>It all depends on the budget ;) :)
>

And locking it in a cage so YOU can't lay your hands on it and break
it, like all the others you touched.

>Minecraft is probably not the most demanding game but you also mentioned
>overheat of laptop... so you are familiar with the overheat topic ;) :)

There are plenty of games that fully tax the PC.

>Dell is probably crap, HP is probably crap too... a little bit less crap
>though just cheap... at least my mothers HP still running barely... it
>little used though... my sister bought a Dell it died :)
>

Before or after you touched it?

>All computers seem to die lately ;) :)

Before or after you touch them?

>1.) should I buy from Dell? (I've used them in the past.)
>
>If you lazy perhaps yes, or give Alien Ware a try or so ;) :) <- they
>selling gaming rigs if I am not mistaken ;)

So, do you act like you are guessing your way through life, or are you
really actually guessing your way through life?

>2.) Which operating system. I was thinking of win8... but now you've
>all made me nervous, but I wouold like some newer version of windows
>(running XP at home and work.) moslty becasue the kids will be using
>the newer version in school. So maybe Win7?
>
>Perhaps wait a bit for the new windows 8.1 operating system.
>
>It would suck having to buy windows 7 with all those services packs and
>patches... it would be patching 2 days at least.

You're an idiot. A complete and utter stooge.

>Also it's on the way out so not really future ready ?! More and more games
>will start focussing on windows 8...
>
>3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.
>
>It's a bit overkill but always good to have more.
>
>Even my system with 4 GB ram only uses 3.2 and it works fine.
>
>If you want to be future proof get 8GB otherwise spent the money on
>something else.

The only thing you have ever said that even comes close to being right.

>
>4.) Do I need the fancy graphics cards for gaming? (My thought was I
>could let my son pitch in for a better card if that's needed.)
>
>Yes for good gaming a graphics card is needed/essential.

For ALL computer use, a graphics card is essential, idiot. For gaming
a "fairly good" graphics card is needed.

>I see more and more games using CUDA, so getting an NVIDIA card would be
>wise ;) :) plus I am a slight nvidia fan so I may be biased ;) :)
>
>I hope to have been of some help, trust me it not easy ;) :)
>

Not with you and all your bent perceptions at the helm.

[Tom Lake]

"DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno" wrote in message
news:ehf5n8tqhclpef25m...@4ax.com...

On Sat, 20 Apr 2013 11:33:06 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
<Window...@DreamPC2006.com> wrote:

>Hiya George,
>
>Building a good gaming rig is not easy, I tried myself, and you can google
>for the results, it was a pain in the ass.

You are an idiot. you proved it yourself. Time and time again.

C'mon, Decadent. Don't hide your feelings. Tell us what you really think of
Skybuck.

[Jasen Betts]

On 2013-04-20, MrTallyman <MrTal...@BananaCountersRUs.org> wrote:
> On 20 Apr 2013 03:35:24 GMT, Jasen Betts <ja...@xnet.co.nz> wrote:
>
>>On 2013-04-19, mike <ham...@netzero.net> wrote:
>>> On 4/18/2013 6:02 PM, George Herold wrote:
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, Win 7.
>>>>>
>>>>>> 3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.
>>>>>
>>>>> 4GB would be enough but 8GB would be comfortable.
>>>>> Memory is cheap.
>>>> That's my thought... gain is cheap too!
>>>>
>>> What the heck are you guys doing with all that RAM?
>>
>>disk cache!

> Muy estupido.
>
> cache? not.
>
> I used "speeddisk" back when software based caching actually had
> benefit (286/386 days). It does not with today's drives and I/O buses.

As always, wrong!

Disk cache is built into modern OS kernels. The OS keeps track of what
you've accessed from, or recent written to the disk in the otherwise
unused memory.

[Joe Gwinn]

In article <kkt2ds$tjh$1...@gonzo.reversiblemaps.ath.cx>, Jasen Betts

<ja...@xnet.co.nz> wrote:

> On 2013-04-19, mike <ham...@netzero.net> wrote:
> > On 4/18/2013 6:02 PM, George Herold wrote:
> >
> >>>
> >>> Yes, Win 7.
> >>>
> >>>> 3.) How much memory? I figured 8 or 12G.
> >>>
> >>> 4GB would be enough but 8GB would be comfortable.
> >>> Memory is cheap.
> >> That's my thought... gain is cheap too!
> >>
> > What the heck are you guys doing with all that RAM?
>
> disk cache!

Faster disk!

A while ago, I put an enterprise-class 10,000 rpm server disk on a
PowerMac, and put the operating system and applications on it. The
effect was dramatic - the computer became about twice as fast for all
but compute-bound tasks.

The disk was a Seagate Cheetah, as I recall. Used differential SCSI.

Joe Gwinn

[miso]

On 4/19/2013 12:53 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
>
> There also some problems with older programs that baulk at spaces inside
> directory names and file permissions in the Program Files sub
> directories if they insist on having write access to files in there.
>

It isn't exactly clear what you mean here, but I suspect what you are
referring to is the virtual store. You get around that by forcing the
program to be installed in a place other than Program Files.

Win7 allows spaces in file names. It is a terrible idea, but it is
allowed for legacy. File permission issues are easily solved.

There is really no reason to run XP. There are plenty of reasons not to
run XP, especially once it is no longer patched. You could probably keep
an XP computer around safely IF you don't install a browser or put email
on it. Otherwise, expect to get fucked eventually.

[Martin Brown]

On 21/04/2013 02:52, miso wrote:
> On 4/19/2013 12:53 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
>>
>> There also some problems with older programs that baulk at spaces inside
>> directory names and file permissions in the Program Files sub
>> directories if they insist on having write access to files in there.
>>
> It isn't exactly clear what you mean here, but I suspect what you are
> referring to is the virtual store. You get around that by forcing the
> program to be installed in a place other than Program Files.
>
> Win7 allows spaces in file names. It is a terrible idea, but it is
> allowed for legacy. File permission issues are easily solved.

It is harder than it sounds when the only thing you have to go on is
some daft error message the software outputs when a situation that the
programmers thought could never arise actually happens.

Plenty of classic installers for major applications fail spectacularly
on Win7 and it is not easy for an end user to do much about it.

>
> There is really no reason to run XP. There are plenty of reasons not to
> run XP, especially once it is no longer patched. You could probably keep
> an XP computer around safely IF you don't install a browser or put email
> on it. Otherwise, expect to get fucked eventually.
>

There are a lot of scientific instruments (quite big ones too) that are
still bound to running Win98 or NT. Probably a few still hanging on with
OS/2 or its later descendants as well. Many now have XP support but not
all. Instrument manufacturers have been slow to release Win7 drivers for
old kit and these are very expensive capital equipment so they tend not
to be replaced just because their OS has gone obsolete.

They do have to be very carefully firewalled off from the outside world
because of their many vulnerabilities. Some are simply not connected to
any networks at all and rely on USB media to move data in and out.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Yousuf Khan]

On 20/04/2013 5:33 AM, Skybuck Flying wrote:
> The latest and greatest graphics card is the nvidia titan. Even a super
> computer was named after it.

You got that wrong, the Titan video card was named after the
supercomputer, to take advantage of the marketing potential from Nvidia
being put into that supercomputer. Interestingly, that same computer has
CPU's made by Nvidia's main rival, AMD. Both could've taken advantage of
Titan as a marketing tool.

Yousuf Khan

[Yousuf Khan]

On 18/04/2013 10:09 AM, Skybuck Flying wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I
> wondered and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! ;) :):
>
> Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:
>

> 1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
> 2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)

No, games have nothing to do with it. It's been shown that only about
10% of PC's are for hard-core gaming. The rest are playing Solitaire, or
Angry Birds, which a computer from 10 years ago could easily play.

As far as hard-core gaming goes, the PC is the only game in town (no pun
intended). They are higher power than all of the gaming consoles (until
the next generation consoles come out, which will ironically be using
AMD CPUs & GPUs, used in PC's as well). So if all a PC was for was for
gaming, then there would be no PC sales decline, as there is always a
market for faster and faster in that market.

Unfortunately, there is no longer a market for faster and faster in the
regular PC market. Most computers from 5 years ago are still more than
powerful enough to run all of today's applications, quite fast. There
was a time where you needed a faster computer just to run the latest
Office. Now you don't.

> 3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)

Yes, that has something to do with it, I'd say that's probably 70% of
the problem. No, you can't simply use Windows 7 as an alternative. When
you buy a new off-the-shelf PC, most of the latest ones are required by
Microsoft to have Windows 8 installed, not Windows 7. This is not a
problem if you're building your own, since you are buying whichever OS
you want, but when you're buying an off-the-shelf computer, you don't
have that choice usually.

So people are avoiding buying the computer rather than holding their
noses and buying it anyway. Combined with the fact that most computers
from 5 years ago are still more than adequate, people can afford to hold
off these days. Microsoft's successful strategy of forcing people to
change for the sake of change, has now backfired.

> 4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely sick
> of it ;))

Not really a huge problem anymore.

> 5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still better
> for many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)

Phones, yes maybe. Tablets, no I don't think so. Everybody needs a
phone, even if you don't do much more than use it to make phonecalls.
Eventually, you'll find that smartphone is also pretty handy for making
quick accesses of the Internet. Tablets are more of a luxury item, not
everyone needs one of these, like they do a phone.

> Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.

>
> What are your thoughts on the decline ?

3 & 5.

Yousuf Khan

[josephkk]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:58:01 -0400, Spehro Pefhany
<spef...@interlogDOTyou.knowwhat> wrote:

>On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:27:55 -0700, Joerg <inv...@invalid.invalid>
>wrote:
>
>>Bulkhead wrote:
>>> On 04/18/2013 09:45 AM, John Larkin wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:26 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"

>>>> <Window...@DreamPC2006.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I
>>>>> wondered
>>>>> and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! ;) :):
>>>>>
>>>>> Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
>>>>> 2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)

>>>>> 3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)

>>>>> 4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely
>>>>> sick of
>>>>> it ;))

>>>>> 5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still
>>>>> better for
>>>>> many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)
>>>>>

>>>>> Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.
>>>>>
>>>>> What are your thoughts on the decline ?
>>>>>

>>>>> Bye,
>>>>> Skybuck.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 5)
>>>
>>> 5 + 3 = 8
>>>
>>> PC sales plunge as Windows 8 flops
>>>
>>> <http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2013/04/10/business-computers-shipments-tablets-smartphones.html>
>>>
>>
>>Yup. I believe abandoning XP was a major mistake.
>>
>>http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/licensing/sblicensing/pages/downgrade_rights.aspx#fbid=SEeKwchI-MO
>>https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9230815/Microsoft_will_allow_downgrades_from_Windows_8_to_Windows_7_Vista
>>
>>Quote "Not surprisingly, users may not downgrade to the
>>still-used-but-slated-for-retirement Windows XP".
>>
>>Big mistake.
>
>Perhaps, but allowing downgrading to Win7-64 means there's a chance I
>might buy a Win8 computer in the next year or two. Otherwise, there is
>approximately zero chance.

I recently bought a new laptop and promptly UPgraded it from Win8 to Win7.

>?;-b

[hamilton]

On 4/21/2013 1:37 PM, josephkk wrote:
>
> I recently bought a new laptop and promptly UPgraded it from Win8 to Win7.
>

Did you pay the Micro$oft tax twice !?!?


> >?;-b
>

[rickman]

On 4/19/2013 3:53 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 19/04/2013 08:02, miso wrote:
>> I never had to resort to it, but when you use the Pro or higher version
>> of Win 7, you get the right to download a VM of XP.
>>
>> This should be the link:
>>> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8002
>>
>> I don't know of anyone who regretted switching to win7. The
>> incompatibility issues are more like pilot error. You run into confusion
>> with the virtual stores, so installation sometimes can be tricky. For
>> some programs, I don't allow them to be stored in the default location.
>> Once you leave that default location, the programs install like
>> "normal." Win7 doesn't like binaries plopped into the Program Files
>> directory in some cases. So you create a "bin" directory for programs
>> that don't have an installer.

>
> There also some problems with older programs that baulk at spaces inside
> directory names and file permissions in the Program Files sub
> directories if they insist on having write access to files in there.
>>

>> This isn't rocket science.
>>
> No but I can see why it can be confusing where certain installers of
> major programs failed spectacularly on Win7 at the outset.
>
> Win7 64bit seems to be a bit more tetchy about running elderly programs
> with legacy quirks outside of a virtual XP environment - thatis why it
> is worth having the Pro version if you have important old software.
> (a surprising amount actually works without problems, but not all)

In another thread someone was complaining that MS doesn't do enough to
promote safety and stability in Windows. This is one of the things they
are doing and no one likes it. I know since XP they have told
developers how to separate programs and data, but no one bothered to
deal with it. Since Vista the default settings have been to enforce
these restrictions and not let programs access data in program
directories... resulting in failed installations. Even when this is
pointed out to many program developers, they choose to blame the OS
rather than recognizing the true issue and going with the flow by
changing the way their programs work.

--

Rick

[rickman]

On 4/19/2013 9:07 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

> On 19/04/2013 12:46, mike wrote:
>>
>> Bottom line is that the old way of faster and faster has run out of
>> steam. The game user is the only part of the end-user desktop
>> demographic that still needs faster and faster.
>
> I used to have a rule of thumb that I would buy a new PC or laptop
> whenever the performance of a new one was more than three times the old.
> This was typically about every three years since 1985. Back then they
> typically cost around �2k+ and were decidedly specialist kit.

Using that rule of thumb you won't buy a new machine for the next 20
years! lol I don't think PCs are actually getting much faster these
days are they? The clock speeds stopped increasing some 12 years ago
and it seems like the only thing they can do now is increase the amount
of on-chip memory.

> Moore's law has basically run out of steam at a clock speed at 4GHz
> without increasing the core count. And the processors have now become so
> powerful that domestic users have no need of any more horsepower.

I wouldn't say there is no need for speed, they just can't deliver any
more. I do need to replace my 4 year old laptop though because it only
has 3 GB and that is just not enough anymore. I'm hoping the price of
flash disks comes down a bit more and I will extend the life of this box
another couple of years by compensating for the lack of memory with
faster disk access.

I saw a mention of some sort of combined disk. I expect it was a
rotating disk with a flash component. That would be very interesting if
it fits a 2.5 inch drive size.

--

Rick

[Paul]

Yousuf Khan wrote:
> On 18/04/2013 10:09 AM, Skybuck Flying wrote:

<<selective snips>>

>> 3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
>
> Yes, that has something to do with it, I'd say that's probably 70% of
> the problem. No, you can't simply use Windows 7 as an alternative. When
> you buy a new off-the-shelf PC, most of the latest ones are required by
> Microsoft to have Windows 8 installed, not Windows 7. This is not a
> problem if you're building your own, since you are buying whichever OS
> you want, but when you're buying an off-the-shelf computer, you don't
> have that choice usually.
>

> Yousuf Khan

When buying a new Windows 8 PC (with its installed OEM OS),
check with the tech support of the company for "downgrade rights".
You may be able to replace Windows 8 OEM, with Windows 7 OEM. Now,
if it was in the actual sales menu, all the better. You can downgrade
a Windows 8 PC with a pre-installed OS, but it does not apply
to a copy of Windows 8 you bought yourself at the store. Downgrade
rights were intended to protect the pre-built PC builder, from
the tastes of the market.

"Downgrading from Windows 8 to 7: What you need to know Nov 20, 2012"

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2015107/downgrading-from-windows-8-to-7-what-you-need-to-know.html

"Hewlett-Packard is typical: It does not support downgrades of
consumer-grade Windows 8 PCs to Windows 7. But if you buy a machine
loaded with Windows 8 Pro, you can make the jump. HP's policy is
based on Microsoft's licensing terms, which support downgrade rights
only to new PCs preloaded with Windows 8 Pro, the version of Windows
designed for business."

I expect the price adder for Pro, probably amounts to effectively
just buying a license for Windows 7 :-( But, do the math and
see for yourself.

"We ran a quick comparison survey of machines from HP, Dell, and Toshiba,
and found that an upgrade to the Pro version of Windows 8 increased
system prices anywhere between $35 and $100."

You probably can't buy 7 that cheaply. At least, a legit copy.

HTH,
Paul

[Roberto Waltman]

rickman wrote:
>I saw a mention of some sort of combined disk. I expect it was a
>rotating disk with a flash component. That would be very interesting if
>it fits a 2.5 inch drive size.

Hybrid hard drives - Such as:
http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/solid-state-hybrid/laptop-solid-state-hybrid-drive/
--
Roberto Waltman

[ Please reply to the group,
return address is invalid ]

[Martin Brown]

On 21/04/2013 21:56, rickman wrote:
> On 4/19/2013 9:07 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
>> On 19/04/2013 12:46, mike wrote:
>>>
>>> Bottom line is that the old way of faster and faster has run out of
>>> steam. The game user is the only part of the end-user desktop
>>> demographic that still needs faster and faster.
>>
>> I used to have a rule of thumb that I would buy a new PC or laptop
>> whenever the performance of a new one was more than three times the old.
>> This was typically about every three years since 1985. Back then they
>> typically cost around £2k+ and were decidedly specialist kit.
>
> Using that rule of thumb you won't buy a new machine for the next 20
> years! lol I don't think PCs are actually getting much faster these
> days are they? The clock speeds stopped increasing some 12 years ago
> and it seems like the only thing they can do now is increase the amount
> of on-chip memory.

It is about every six years now to get a threefold increase. I generally
buy for the best price performance at the time. Clock speed used to be a
simple metric from the original 4.7MHz right up to some now on offer
brutally overclocked to 4.8GHz that is a 1000x increase since 1981 or
roughly speaking a 25% average improvement annually. Recent improvements
have been largely in CPU utilisation, pipelining and speculative
execution rather than raw clockspeed.

My old Q6600 benchmarks at 2962 and uses ~350W with graphics card
whereas the new i7-3770K benchmarks at 9461 and about ~120W all in.

Actual benchmark speeds are still increasing provided that you have the
right software and can use fully multicore and multithreaded code. The
problem is that after about 6 CPUs the law of diminishing returns sets
in and the code spends an increasing amount of its time sharing the load
between threads or worse still doing work in parallel that will later be
scrapped when the independent thread results are combined.

These days the biggest performance increase can be had by putting
frequently used files onto an SSD with essentially zero seek time and a
transfer speed that maxes out SATA3. The Samsung 830 & now 840 drives
are very impressive - beware that some benchmarks give artificially high
performance figures of merit on highly compressible data.

The SSD upgrade is capable of giving old kit a new lease of life.

>
>
>> Moore's law has basically run out of steam at a clock speed at 4GHz
>> without increasing the core count. And the processors have now become so
>> powerful that domestic users have no need of any more horsepower.
>
> I wouldn't say there is no need for speed, they just can't deliver any
> more. I do need to replace my 4 year old laptop though because it only
> has 3 GB and that is just not enough anymore. I'm hoping the price of
> flash disks comes down a bit more and I will extend the life of this box
> another couple of years by compensating for the lack of memory with
> faster disk access.

You can get the 256GB Samsung 840 for around £180 and the cheaper
consumer grade 250G one for ~£130. Provided that you keep it backed up
just in case the storage medium fails then what are you waiting for? The
prices may fall a bit more but the technology is available and the price
is not outrageous for the performance boost it offers.

Be sure to disable MS lame indexing and never defrag it!

> I saw a mention of some sort of combined disk. I expect it was a
> rotating disk with a flash component. That would be very interesting if
> it fits a 2.5 inch drive size.

My desktop has the Intel SSD cache installed. It does make the thing a
lot more nippy. It also has a dedicated Samsung 830 SSD for bulk high
speed data which makes a big difference for random access lookups.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Martin Brown]

On 21/04/2013 21:45, rickman wrote:
> On 4/19/2013 3:53 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
>> On 19/04/2013 08:02, miso wrote:
>>>
>>> This isn't rocket science.
>>>
>> No but I can see why it can be confusing where certain installers of
>> major programs failed spectacularly on Win7 at the outset.
>>
>> Win7 64bit seems to be a bit more tetchy about running elderly programs
>> with legacy quirks outside of a virtual XP environment - thatis why it
>> is worth having the Pro version if you have important old software.
>> (a surprising amount actually works without problems, but not all)
>
> In another thread someone was complaining that MS doesn't do enough to
> promote safety and stability in Windows. This is one of the things they
> are doing and no one likes it. I know since XP they have told
> developers how to separate programs and data, but no one bothered to

Indeed, also in Win7 they withdrew certain legacy 16bit components that
a well known brand of software installer still relied upon.

> deal with it. Since Vista the default settings have been to enforce
> these restrictions and not let programs access data in program
> directories... resulting in failed installations. Even when this is
> pointed out to many program developers, they choose to blame the OS
> rather than recognizing the true issue and going with the flow by
> changing the way their programs work.

The problem is if you have old and expensive software that you like then
you don't have a lot of choice if their development team decided to
stuff some config files in the program directory. The registry isn't
much better and always reminds me of Zork whenever I have to traverse
its maze of little passages all alike with my flint axe looking for
whatever installation screwup has just occurred.

I can think of several examples where an old version of the software has
the right features and works correctly and a new improved modern
bloatware version is seriously defective - but looks a lot more sexy.

>
Same way you find some programs that insist on having God like
privileges to work at all. My biggest pet hate at the moment is the
number of major manufacturers issuing driver updates and installers that
are not digitally signed so that users get used to pressing the ignore
security concerns about this update button routinely.

And I am talking about PC and peripheral major players here!
(My sword has begun to glow blue)

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Skybuck Flying]

I think this is a pretty good guidance/rule:

For every hertz there should be a byte and vice versa ;) :)

So if you plan on buying a 8.0 GHz processor, for example 4 cores x 2.0 GHz
then do indeed get 8 GB of ram ! ;) :)

Better be safe than sorry ;) :)

Bye,
Skybuck =D

[Skybuck Flying]

Funny thing is my mam already has a samsung tablet...

She already has one for a month now.

She kept it secret from me ! LOL.

Later today I am going to visit her and meet the thing ! LOL =D

Bye,
Skybuck ;) =D

It's a black one btw, a samsung galaxy 10 ! ;) =D

[Skybuck Flying]

Ok,

Yesterday I saw it and played with it...

It was quite an amazing experience.

None the less it remains somewhat of a toy device.

What irritated and annoyed me the most is the way the scrolling is down.

The fingers have to glide over the screen, and if one is not carefull it
might activate
a button.

What also irritated me is that there is only a backward button and not a
forward button.

If I want to return back to were I was that's not possible. I would have to
restart the play store
for example which is very annoying.

Also it's very sensitive... all kinds of buttons will be activated... also
menus in the weirdest places
it's not really centralized at any spot... will be difficult to learn and
remember where all the menus
are located.

Also the device shuts off real fast, and it seems to have some problems with
the lightning of it...
it goes dark... and then bright again... kinda weird.

The device shuts off in like 5 seconds or something... this can probably be
changed.

I also looked at the software... it's mediocre here and there... it reminds
me of my ms-dos days when I wrote all kinds
of crappy little programs.... this is just like that... all kinds of
neato/crappy apps... there are probably also some nice
apps... my mam is way too scared to download anything... so I didnt download
anything.

There were some slightly interesting games but nothing to exciting, also
somewhat mediocre.

I am kinda surprised that this device is already 2 years old... so it seems
they sold her an older one ?

It still looks fancy pancy... I wonder what the latest and greatest is ? ;)
:)

Android will sure give Microsoft a run for it's money... for now I am not
too worried...

I haven't really seen windows 8 yet on a tablet... have seen it in virtual
machine...

Maybe windows blue will make short work of android... time will tell ;) :)

Androad did run extremely fast though, everything was butter smooth, except
for the occasional video
download, that sometimes failed and the device shutdown.

Flash was also not available kinda weird.

Perhaps this model is a bit older and perhaps it's solved in newer version
me dont know, maybe not.

It costed 500 euro or so with 50 euro cut or so.

I ask here about the warranty period she didnt ask :)

Probably dont matter... it will probably die a few days after warranty
expires as usual ;) :)

Though it didn't seem to run hot.. and it made zero noise...

It was a nice experience.... but for me being used to big LCD screens... and
a nice big keyboard and mouse... I'll stick with that ;) :)

Also I like scrollbars way too much ! ;) =D

The pinching and widening to resize pictures was fun...

The sound of the device kinda amazed me... I read before I went over
there... in the specs... that it had surround sound...

I was wondering how such a flat device could achieve that... the sound was
indeed impressive for a flat little thing.

But ofcourse it pales compared to my x-fi + 7.1 surround sound system (even
without the subwoofer) ;) :) lol.

I don't have wireless internet so for me a tablet makes little sense in that
sense ;) :)

Unless I want to keep it a little bit more secure... but it's probably not
really secure... it could end up on random wifi networks.

Though sometimes I wish I had one too for in bed... then I can be lazy in
bed ;) :)

I will wait and see if any windows blue arm tablets arrive... me kinda fan
of microsoft/windows... that's what I know...

That android thing could kinda drive me crazy with all it's weird quircks...
but for newcomers they probably dont mind as much.

The way it swept the screen/menus was kinda fun to look at but not very
convienent hard to find things.

So it's all flashy and eye candy... but little real practical
value/handyness and that kills it for me mostly ;) :)

Though the integrated deeper menus did show some sense and ordering... and
that was more okish ;) :)

The screen was super reflective like a mirror... I could see myself when the
screen went black... it wasn't very pleasent to look at... though I am a
handsome guy ;) :P* ;) :) =D

I like looking at myself... but not when I am trying to look at the screen
lol.

Also the button to take a picture of yourself seems quite annoying... I
offered my mom to remove it... but I am not even sure if it's possible I
would think so...

Also setting before so many cameras makes me feel slightly uneasy.

Plus the added radiation of all that wireless traffic makes me wonder about
liver cancer and all that ;) :) =D the final crazy nail in the coffin ;) :)

Plus also wireless interception/hacks and cracks...

I asker her if she was going to bank with it... she said no... I thought
that was kinda weird.. cause she would do it with the bigger laptop.

I can see her point/argument though... the tablet is more convenient to
quickly catch up with some stuff... she seems to like facebook the most...
watching new pictures of family members and acquintences. I saw some
interesting photos as well, but mostly it bores me.

As a software developer I found watching at the stores the most interesting
;) :)

I took a look at the software development stack needed, it's quite
large/immense... and it uses java for fucks sake ? ;) :)

Though in a few days Delphi XE 4 is coming out and it might have android
support...

Would be fun to make a stupid little app/hello world for my mother's android
device ;) :)

Maybe more but dont count on it... probably not a lot of money being made
with it... but that depends on what you call a lot ;) :) and which store
service one uses.

I have seen stories of cap limits of 30k perhaps 5k per year... also 1m per
month ad stories ;) :) <- crazy/angry birds anybody ? :) LOL.

What pisses me off is that most of this technology does not seem available
for PCs ?!

Can I please have some of this embedded into a PC ?!

Thanks ?!

Perhaps that's a pie dream for now... driving big LCDs requires a bit
more... ;) :)

I don't really believe that though... I think it's already possible...
something is fucked up... too hot processors for desktops... need more cool
ones ;) :) =D

Bye,
Skybuck.

[Skybuck Flying]

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message news:51742c51$1...@news.bnb-lp.com...

I know that... but look at it this way:

What is that super computer without the titan graphics card ? Probably not
much.

So it's the graphics card that probably gives it the most of it's processing
power.

Correct me if I am wrong ;) :)

Bye,
Skybuck.

[George Herold]

On Apr 20, 5:33 am, "Skybuck Flying" <Windows7I...@DreamPC2006.com>
wrote:

Thanks Skybuck, At the moment I'm eyeing an older machine here at
work. Maybe I can just upgrade to a better video card for my son.
It'd be useful for him to get his head inside hardware of a computer
too...

George H.

[Paul]

If you're going to use Windows 7 or Windows 8, there should be
a downloadable "Upgrade Assistant" or "Upgrade Advisor", which
will note any issues. These generally require some version of
.NET to be installed, so if they don't run, that would be
the reason.

W7UpgradeAdvisor (to check existing apps).
"make sure .NET Framework 2.0 is installed..."

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=20

Checking whether W8 will work. Not sure what version of .NET
this one needs. (Programs without .NET detection, die with a
"mscoree" dependency, for software that is too dumb to check.)

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/upgrade-to-windows-8

To run Win8 x32 or x64, first, you need a processor of the
appropriate instruction set. If you wanted to run the x64 version
(machine has more than 4GB installed), then the processor would
have to support the x64 instructions. (Microsoft doesn't allow
desktop OSes to use PAE in a way that extends past 4GB, for program
usage. Only drivers can use PAE on x32, above 4GB.)

The next requirement for Win8, is the CPU must support NX/XD.
That means the processor must be more modern, than the last P4
processors they'd made. The P4 I have, doesn't have XD, so I
can't run Windows 8. I could probably run Windows 7 x32 on it.
On the AMD side, probably an S939, AM2 or later would be OK.
The advisor software from Microsoft should be able to figure this
out.

If you had some old P3 machine, then that probably wouldn't be
a good candidate.

Windows 7 could benefit from having around 2GB of memory. That
would be a comfortable starting point. It will run on less than
that, but with slight performance impact. More than 2GB, you'd
probably be better off with an x64 OS.

An x64 OS install, won't run 16 bit software. That might include
the installer from some of the older games. If you have some
crusty old games in your collection, that might be a potential
issue with an x64 OS install. If the games are 2013 releases,
there should not be a problem.

Paul

[rickman]

On 4/22/2013 2:52 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
>
> It is about every six years now to get a threefold increase. I generally
> buy for the best price performance at the time. Clock speed used to be a
> simple metric from the original 4.7MHz right up to some now on offer
> brutally overclocked to 4.8GHz that is a 1000x increase since 1981 or
> roughly speaking a 25% average improvement annually. Recent improvements
> have been largely in CPU utilisation, pipelining and speculative
> execution rather than raw clockspeed.
>
> My old Q6600 benchmarks at 2962 and uses ~350W with graphics card
> whereas the new i7-3770K benchmarks at 9461 and about ~120W all in.

I can't say I've run any tests, but I don't see how they are getting
more processing other than adding to the cache sizes. Pipelining and
speculative execution should have been mature some 10 years ago. What
exactly is left to improve on?

> Actual benchmark speeds are still increasing provided that you have the
> right software and can use fully multicore and multithreaded code. The
> problem is that after about 6 CPUs the law of diminishing returns sets
> in and the code spends an increasing amount of its time sharing the load
> between threads or worse still doing work in parallel that will later be
> scrapped when the independent thread results are combined.

That assumption is a big one! The study I read said the turn was less
than 4 CPUs. Many apps just won't see much improvement with even two
processors. The observed increase in performance is because the OS
needs elbow room, so a second processor helps get it out of the way of
the user app.

> These days the biggest performance increase can be had by putting
> frequently used files onto an SSD with essentially zero seek time and a
> transfer speed that maxes out SATA3. The Samsung 830 & now 840 drives
> are very impressive - beware that some benchmarks give artificially high
> performance figures of merit on highly compressible data.
>
> The SSD upgrade is capable of giving old kit a new lease of life.

I'm taking a look at the combined drives now. I'm not going to pay an
arm and a leg for one. I can get a SSD for under $200 that is bigger
than what I have now. A combined drive should be close to $100 I am
thinking.

> You can get the 256GB Samsung 840 for around �180 and the cheaper
> consumer grade 250G one for ~�130. Provided that you keep it backed up
> just in case the storage medium fails then what are you waiting for? The
> prices may fall a bit more but the technology is available and the price
> is not outrageous for the performance boost it offers.

I'm not sure I want to go that route. I need to weigh my options.
Also, I have some work to do for the next month or so and can't have any
down time. After that I'll look at this harder.

--

Rick

[rickman]

On 4/22/2013 3:22 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 21/04/2013 21:45, rickman wrote:
>> deal with it. Since Vista the default settings have been to enforce
>> these restrictions and not let programs access data in program
>> directories... resulting in failed installations. Even when this is
>> pointed out to many program developers, they choose to blame the OS
>> rather than recognizing the true issue and going with the flow by
>> changing the way their programs work.
>
> The problem is if you have old and expensive software that you like then
> you don't have a lot of choice if their development team decided to
> stuff some config files in the program directory. The registry isn't
> much better and always reminds me of Zork whenever I have to traverse
> its maze of little passages all alike with my flint axe looking for
> whatever installation screwup has just occurred.

I get that, but developers have had since XP and possible Win2000 to
learn how to do it *right*. MS has been telling them what to do, they
just won't listen.

> Same way you find some programs that insist on having God like
> privileges to work at all. My biggest pet hate at the moment is the
> number of major manufacturers issuing driver updates and installers that
> are not digitally signed so that users get used to pressing the ignore
> security concerns about this update button routinely.
>
> And I am talking about PC and peripheral major players here!
> (My sword has begun to glow blue)

So who ya gonna call? Well, I don't think Ghostbusters will be of much
help, but no point in blaming MS for the entire industry's problems.

--

Rick

[rickman]

On 4/19/2013 11:56 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:25:00 +0100, Mike Perkins<sp...@spam.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I thought they had algorithms to rotate any memory changes throughout
>> the disk?
>
> Most SSD's have such an algorithm and more. What it does is detect
> errors, and reassign alternate blocks in its place. When access time
> to any block on the drive is the same, such a system makes good sense.

Do they do that with rotating media? I have a problem with my laptop
where it occasionally looks like it is locked up. If I wait long enough
it returns. Usually it is one or two programs that stop, but if I try
to use other programs they can all end up halted. Eventually it returns
to normal operation. The cause seems to be a disk access that ties up
the interface without moving much data as indicated by the Resource
Monitor. The blue line maxes hard at 100% with a low erratic data rate.
When I looked up what the blue line is, it appears to be the disk
interface usage. This says to me the drive it trying to read a sector
which is bad and continues to reread it for some time before it either
gets the data correctly or finally fails.

I was ready to replace the drive at one point, but some of the files are
corrupted and the copy software throws up its hands and says, "What do
you want me to do about it?" I found my recovery disk but haven't taken
the time to fix the corrupted files yet. In the meantime, I've noticed
the SSDs are getting cheaper. This machine only has a 160 GB drive and
I can get a larger SSD replacement for under $200. I'm thinking this
will let me continue to use this machine for another year or two until
Windows 8 is acceptable.

I've always wondered why the hard drive or the OS doesn't automatically
take the bad sectors out of service. It's not like rotating media
doesn't develop problems with age.


> I do image backups which backs up literally everything. It's faster
> and better than any other method I've tried. However, the image
> backup software seems universally crude and strange. The least
> disgusting of the lot seems to be Acronis True Image, which is my
> current favorite. Run it from a boot CDROM, not while the operating
> is running, and it will work better and much faster. (Typically 1 - 2
> GB/min to USB 2 or 4 GB/min to USB 3).

I tend to just copy the parts I know are important. I'd like to do
regular image backups, but as I said above, the software finds corrupt
files (or actually errors while reading) and stops... I think it is
EaseUS I have tried using. It appears to have installed a dual boot
Linux partition on my hard drive.


>> I am impressed, my only concern would be overall power consumption and
>> its cost.
>
> The computers in the photo were salvaged at the recyclers and cost me
> about $30/ea. Pentium III, 3.5" HD, about 2GB RAM, running Windoze
> 2000. Nothing really special except that they're totally reliable.
> Well, I have been killing off cooling fans, but that doesn't really
> count. About 55 watts average consumption measure on a kill-a-watt
> meter. At $0.20/kw-hr, that's 481 kw-hrs/year or $96/year. Not
> great, but also not worth spending several years electricity budget to
> reduce the cost. Replacing the 3.5" HD with a flash drive will save
> about 10 watts, which I think will be the biggest improvement.

I have a couple of desktops with XP that came from FreeCycle. I don't
use them much, but find their presence comforting when I worry about
losing a more often used machine. Actually, one was from FreeCycle, the
other was from the trash in front of a friend's townhouse. Two USB
ports don't work, but otherwise it is a very usable machine.


>> A hard disk takes more power than a system built around a
>> micro. Some of the NXP ARM processors are very affordable and can run
>> Linux.
>
> True. The software we're using:
> <http://www.weather-display.com>
> also runs on Linux. However, we have other services running on these
> machines, such as a ham radio packet email gateway. Much as I would
> like to run Linux, the packet stuff is Windoze only at this time.

Many of the tablets are I/O limited, but there are LOTs of SBCs that are
not only powerful, but very small, very low power and very low cost,
even as cheap as your salvage machines. You have heard of the rPi,
right? The Beagle is another family of boards at higher prices, but
still below $100. I think they are feeling the pressure from the rPi
and are coming out with a new board which might be more price
competitive. I think the dinosaurs will be the desktop computers
managing weather and packet stuff. Get someone to port the packet stuff
to Linux or even Andriod. Life is too short to waste on Windows.

--

Rick

[Paul]

Yes. Rotating media hard drives, have automatic sector sparing.
The long outages (up to fifteen seconds), are attempts at
automatic handling.

You should use HDTune, try the Health tab which shows S.M.A.R.T
statistics for the drive.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

The Data field of "Reallocated Sector Count" and
"Current Pending Sector", should be zero. If is is not,
and there is a significant number there, the Current
field will show remaining life, dialing down from 100%.

But you already know the drive needs to be replaced. Now,
things are bad enough, you need to copy the disk to another
disk, using the program listed at the bottom of this article.
It will scavenge sectors, and try and get as many sectors
off the original drive as possible. Then, you can run
CHKDSK on the copied drive, and hope for the best.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

The procedure recommended, is a two pass copy...
You'd do this from a Linux LiveCD. The first pass,
gets as many sectors as possible, that aren't
complaining. The second pass, fills in the gaps.
I'd try getting "ddrescue" from the package manager,
rather than building it from source. But you could
probably do that, if you were motivated.

./ddrescue -n /dev/old_disk /dev/new_disk rescued.log
./ddrescue -r 1 /dev/old_disk /dev/new_disk rescued.log

If you wanted to, you could zero the target disk first,
before starting the copy. (new_disk is a placeholder for
/dev/hda, /dev/hdb, /dev/sda, or /dev/sdb or the like)

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/new_disk

Once you've done your best, and are happy with whatever
state is recorded in rescued.log, you could boot back
to Windows with the new disk, and run CHKDSK on it.

Before errored sectors start to show up, the disk is
patching out the bad ones, using the spares it has. It's
when the spares run out, that the problems start to
surface.

Paul

[Yousuf Khan]

My only point was which came first, the supercomputer or the video card?
It was the supercomputer. The video cards inside the supercomputer are
actually not Titans, but it's their business version, the Fermis.

Yousuf Khan

[josephkk]

On Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:42:03 -0400, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 4/22/2013 3:22 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
>> On 21/04/2013 21:45, rickman wrote:
>>> deal with it. Since Vista the default settings have been to enforce
>>> these restrictions and not let programs access data in program
>>> directories... resulting in failed installations. Even when this is
>>> pointed out to many program developers, they choose to blame the OS
>>> rather than recognizing the true issue and going with the flow by
>>> changing the way their programs work.
>>
>> The problem is if you have old and expensive software that you like then
>> you don't have a lot of choice if their development team decided to
>> stuff some config files in the program directory. The registry isn't
>> much better and always reminds me of Zork whenever I have to traverse
>> its maze of little passages all alike with my flint axe looking for
>> whatever installation screwup has just occurred.
>
>I get that, but developers have had since XP and possible Win2000 to
>learn how to do it *right*. MS has been telling them what to do, they
>just won't listen.

Worse, the fundamental structure of an 8086 promoted proper data and code
separation back in the DOS 3.0 days. For that matter most of the
compilers did as well.

>
>
>> Same way you find some programs that insist on having God like
>> privileges to work at all. My biggest pet hate at the moment is the
>> number of major manufacturers issuing driver updates and installers that
>> are not digitally signed so that users get used to pressing the ignore
>> security concerns about this update button routinely.

Win7 represents an advance on this front. An ordinary user can install
programs for personal use to their own directory tree. Not many programs
are ready for this but some are (e.g. Amarok), and am i glad.

[josephkk]

No only one and a half times. Not much better, but better.

?-)

[josephkk]

On Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:36:58 -0400, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 4/22/2013 2:52 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
>>
>> It is about every six years now to get a threefold increase. I generally
>> buy for the best price performance at the time. Clock speed used to be a
>> simple metric from the original 4.7MHz right up to some now on offer
>> brutally overclocked to 4.8GHz that is a 1000x increase since 1981 or
>> roughly speaking a 25% average improvement annually. Recent improvements
>> have been largely in CPU utilisation, pipelining and speculative
>> execution rather than raw clockspeed.
>>
>> My old Q6600 benchmarks at 2962 and uses ~350W with graphics card
>> whereas the new i7-3770K benchmarks at 9461 and about ~120W all in.
>
>I can't say I've run any tests, but I don't see how they are getting
>more processing other than adding to the cache sizes. Pipelining and
>speculative execution should have been mature some 10 years ago. What
>exactly is left to improve on?
>

Yes and no. It has taken the past 20 years to move it from multi board
level to chip level.

>
>> Actual benchmark speeds are still increasing provided that you have the
>> right software and can use fully multicore and multithreaded code. The
>> problem is that after about 6 CPUs the law of diminishing returns sets
>> in and the code spends an increasing amount of its time sharing the load
>> between threads or worse still doing work in parallel that will later be
>> scrapped when the independent thread results are combined.
>
>That assumption is a big one! The study I read said the turn was less
>than 4 CPUs. Many apps just won't see much improvement with even two
>processors. The observed increase in performance is because the OS
>needs elbow room, so a second processor helps get it out of the way of
>the user app.
>

Twenty years ago it was hard into the performance limit curve. But that
was multi board level processors. The delay limits are relatively smaller
on chip and 8 way multi core is not as far around the diminishing returns
knee. Still memory bandwidth (even with today's huge multilevel caches)
is the fundamental limiting factor.

>
>> These days the biggest performance increase can be had by putting
>> frequently used files onto an SSD with essentially zero seek time and a
>> transfer speed that maxes out SATA3. The Samsung 830 & now 840 drives
>> are very impressive - beware that some benchmarks give artificially high
>> performance figures of merit on highly compressible data.
>>
>> The SSD upgrade is capable of giving old kit a new lease of life.
>
>I'm taking a look at the combined drives now. I'm not going to pay an
>arm and a leg for one. I can get a SSD for under $200 that is bigger
>than what I have now. A combined drive should be close to $100 I am
>thinking.
>
>
>> You can get the 256GB Samsung 840 for around £180 and the cheaper
>> consumer grade 250G one for ~£130. Provided that you keep it backed up
>> just in case the storage medium fails then what are you waiting for? The
>> prices may fall a bit more but the technology is available and the price
>> is not outrageous for the performance boost it offers.
>
>I'm not sure I want to go that route. I need to weigh my options.
>Also, I have some work to do for the next month or so and can't have any
>down time. After that I'll look at this harder.

Sounds like a good plan. Also a reason i have multiple machines, i can
slog stuff between them mostly. Not everything can be moved though.

?-)

[Andy Valencia]

rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> writes:
> I've always wondered why the hard drive or the OS doesn't automatically
> take the bad sectors out of service. It's not like rotating media
> doesn't develop problems with age.

I was under the impression that modern drives not only take bad sectors
out of service, but attempt to copy failing sector to new locations
and transparently remap the storage location. This process might be
what your drive is doing when your system locks up.

Andy Valencia
Home page: http://www.vsta.org/andy/
To contact me: http://www.vsta.org/contact/andy.html

[Martin Brown]

On 22/04/2013 21:36, rickman wrote:
> On 4/22/2013 2:52 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
>>
>> It is about every six years now to get a threefold increase. I generally
>> buy for the best price performance at the time. Clock speed used to be a
>> simple metric from the original 4.7MHz right up to some now on offer
>> brutally overclocked to 4.8GHz that is a 1000x increase since 1981 or
>> roughly speaking a 25% average improvement annually. Recent improvements
>> have been largely in CPU utilisation, pipelining and speculative
>> execution rather than raw clockspeed.
>>
>> My old Q6600 benchmarks at 2962 and uses ~350W with graphics card
>> whereas the new i7-3770K benchmarks at 9461 and about ~120W all in.
>
> I can't say I've run any tests, but I don't see how they are getting
> more processing other than adding to the cache sizes. Pipelining and
> speculative execution should have been mature some 10 years ago. What
> exactly is left to improve on?

I had to think about that since I largely agree. Although register
colouring and other tricks are comparatively recent as a refinements
that keep the execution pipeline from stalling so easily.

Taking CPUs I have most experience of tormenting:

9630 i7-3770K TDP 77W @ 3.5GHz (peak 3.9GHz) and 4 x 2 cores
8962 i7-2700K TDP 95W @ 3.5GHz and 4x2 cores
7130 i5-3570K TDP 77W @ 3.4GHz (peak 3.8GHz) and 4 cores
6402 i5-2500K TDP 95W @ 3.3GHz and 4 cores
2962 Q6600 TDP 105W @ 2.4GHz and 4 cores

Back of the envelope calculations suggest that the most recent benchmark
improvements have come from on demand turbo boost - that is the
difference between 3770 & 2700 and 3570 & 2500 can be largely explained
by the 10% faster clock when asked to work really hard.

And even my old Q6600 with a toasty 105W TDP if it could be scaled to
the same hardware spec as the new CPU would improve by the ratio of the
clock speeds and a factor of two for hyperthreading (optimistic).

2962 x (3.9/2.4) = 4813 and double that for hyperthread = 9626

Suspiciously close agreement! So arguably they are gaming the standard
benchmarks now to make new chips look more attractive. Underlying
performance is rather similar except when heavily loaded by optimally
designed parallel algorithms designed to use all the cores at once.

>> Actual benchmark speeds are still increasing provided that you have the
>> right software and can use fully multicore and multithreaded code. The
>> problem is that after about 6 CPUs the law of diminishing returns sets
>> in and the code spends an increasing amount of its time sharing the load
>> between threads or worse still doing work in parallel that will later be
>> scrapped when the independent thread results are combined.
>
> That assumption is a big one! The study I read said the turn was less
> than 4 CPUs. Many apps just won't see much improvement with even two
> processors. The observed increase in performance is because the OS
> needs elbow room, so a second processor helps get it out of the way of
> the user app.

It depends on the application. Some things benefit whereas others don't.
Hyatt did a lot of work on optimising chess search algorithms on
multiple processors (and that is a tricky algorithm to parallelise).

N_CPUS 1 2 4 8 16
Naive 1 1.8 3 4.1 4.6
EVP 1 1.9 3.4 5.4 6
DTS 1 2 3.7 6.6 11.1

Taken from his paper
http://www.cis.uab.edu/hyatt/search.html

Naive is typical of what happens if you try and parallelise without
thinking very carefully about the bottlenecks and DTS is more typical of
what you get with a streamlined optimised multiprocessor algorithm.

Most decent multicore code is somewhere between these two extremes ~ EVP
where you do OK on up to 4 cores.

>> These days the biggest performance increase can be had by putting
>> frequently used files onto an SSD with essentially zero seek time and a
>> transfer speed that maxes out SATA3. The Samsung 830 & now 840 drives
>> are very impressive - beware that some benchmarks give artificially high
>> performance figures of merit on highly compressible data.
>>
>> The SSD upgrade is capable of giving old kit a new lease of life.
>
> I'm taking a look at the combined drives now. I'm not going to pay an
> arm and a leg for one. I can get a SSD for under $200 that is bigger
> than what I have now. A combined drive should be close to $100 I am
> thinking.

I found the Samsung drives performed better on incompressible data which
was important to me.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Stephen Fuld]

On 4/23/2013 6:18 AM, Andy Valencia wrote:
> rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> writes:
>> I've always wondered why the hard drive or the OS doesn't automatically
>> take the bad sectors out of service. It's not like rotating media
>> doesn't develop problems with age.
>
> I was under the impression that modern drives not only take bad sectors
> out of service, but attempt to copy failing sector to new locations
> and transparently remap the storage location. This process might be
> what your drive is doing when your system locks up.

Correct. And the attempted recovery could take longer than a "normal"
read as they typically do more retries etc., as a failure here will be
an unrecoverable loss of data so it is more severe than reporting an
unreadable sector to the host (which the host could retry).

Note also that SSDs perform wear leveling, which is different from bad
sector relocation. With wear leveling, the idea is to try to write to
each sector of the media about the same number of times in order to
maximize the devices life in the face of a limited number of writes per
flash cell. Since magnetic disks don't have the same phenomenon, there
is no relocation for wear leveling required.




--
- Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:58:01 -0400, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 4/19/2013 11:56 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>> On Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:25:00 +0100, Mike Perkins<sp...@spam.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I thought they had algorithms to rotate any memory changes throughout
>>> the disk?
>>
>> Most SSD's have such an algorithm and more. What it does is detect
>> errors, and reassign alternate blocks in its place. When access time
>> to any block on the drive is the same, such a system makes good sense.
>
>Do they do that with rotating media?

Yes. Bad track tables and alternate block assignments are very common
with todays disk drives. If you have an S.M.A.R.T. utility available,
you can get a clue as to how your hard disk is doing. For Windoze, I
use:
<http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php>
Be sure to have it generate a report for human decodable diagnostics.
For Linux, it's smartmontools or others:
<http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki>
<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/S.M.A.R.T.>

>I have a problem with my laptop
>where it occasionally looks like it is locked up. If I wait long enough
>it returns.

Can you hear or feel the drive head banging around during this
interval? If yes, it's having problems reading a block and
continuously retrying. You could run a bad track scan, to force it
test the bad block, and hopefully reallocate it to something that
works.

>Usually it is one or two programs that stop, but if I try
>to use other programs they can all end up halted. Eventually it returns
>to normal operation. The cause seems to be a disk access that ties up
>the interface without moving much data as indicated by the Resource
>Monitor.

Resource monitor suggests that you're running Vista, Win 7, or Win 8.
Numbers are always useful when asking questions. The maker and model
of the laptop, drive, and operating system would be helpful.

>The blue line maxes hard at 100% with a low erratic data rate.
>When I looked up what the blue line is, it appears to be the disk
>interface usage. This says to me the drive it trying to read a sector
>which is bad and continues to reread it for some time before it either
>gets the data correctly or finally fails.

That would also be my interpretation. Note that it's showing hard
disk *ACTIVITY* and not data transfer rate. You can find the transfer
rate under disk I/O somewhere in the Resource Monitor. If activity is
high, but nothing is moving, it's busy retrying a bad block.

>I was ready to replace the drive at one point, but some of the files are
>corrupted and the copy software throws up its hands and says, "What do
>you want me to do about it?" I found my recovery disk but haven't taken
>the time to fix the corrupted files yet. In the meantime, I've noticed
>the SSDs are getting cheaper. This machine only has a 160 GB drive and
>I can get a larger SSD replacement for under $200.

Do an image backup NOW. I use Acronis True Image Home ($50) but there
are free image backup programs available.
<http://dottech.org/6194/7-free-software-to-imagebackupghost-your-computer-free-alternatives-to-acronis-true-image-norton-ghost-etc/>
You will get errors along the way, but you disable error checking in
the software. Install a new drive in the machine, restore from the
backup image, and you should get most of the drive back. If it
doesn't boot, do a system repair. You might have to fix a few things,
but what I've found is that it's much less work that loading from
scratch. Get the backup before it's totally dead.

>I'm thinking this
>will let me continue to use this machine for another year or two until
>Windows 8 is acceptable.

Windoze 8 is in my never humble opinion a bad idea. I'm sticking with
XP.

>I've always wondered why the hard drive or the OS doesn't automatically
>take the bad sectors out of service. It's not like rotating media
>doesn't develop problems with age.

It's not the operating systems job to do that. It's a hardware issue
best handled by the firmware on the drive. That's how the SSD drives
work. You can monitor and control the process, but the actually bad
and alternate tracking is done by the drive itself.

>I tend to just copy the parts I know are important. I'd like to do
>regular image backups, but as I said above, the software finds corrupt
>files (or actually errors while reading) and stops... I think it is
>EaseUS I have tried using. It appears to have installed a dual boot
>Linux partition on my hard drive.

Acronis True Image and I think Clonezilla can ignore drive errors and
will not stop. What does *NOT* work are:
1. Image backups that run from the Windoze OS. Acronis and others
have this feature. It's slow, not reliable, and has screwed up badly
for me in the past. Use a flash or CD boot disk.
2. Restore to a smaller drive is sometimes problematic. Some image
backups will refuse to restore to a smaller drive.
3. Restore multiple partitions individually. I don't know why, but
some programs seem to have problems allowing me to decide exactly
where on the drive to restore diagnostic and boot partitions. I
usually have to restore it the way it likes, and then use Gparted to
fix the mess.

>Get someone to port the packet stuff
>to Linux or even Andriod. Life is too short to waste on Windows.

It's been done long ago.
<http://www.dxzone.com/catalog/Software/Linux/>
<http://www.arrl.org/ubuntu-linux-for-hams>
<http://shackbox.net>
<http://www.linuxjournal.com/ham> (see links near bottom of page)
I've tried some and am not thrilled with the results. The PC software
is generally better.

There various weather stations already running on Rasberry Pi. I
haven't had time to look at them. Of course, I could try it this way:
"Raspberry Pi emulation for Windows "
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/rpiqemuwindows/>

--
Jeff Liebermann je...@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

[rickman]

On 4/23/2013 9:18 AM, Andy Valencia wrote:
> rickman<gnu...@gmail.com> writes:
>> I've always wondered why the hard drive or the OS doesn't automatically
>> take the bad sectors out of service. It's not like rotating media
>> doesn't develop problems with age.
>
> I was under the impression that modern drives not only take bad sectors
> out of service, but attempt to copy failing sector to new locations
> and transparently remap the storage location. This process might be
> what your drive is doing when your system locks up.

If that is what is going on, it would have either fixed itself by now or
eaten up the entire disk. What happens if the sector just can't be
read? I seem to see the problem on the same files repeatedly until
something happens that relocates the file. Sometimes I have to delete a
data file and recreate it to get a program to work.

--

Rick

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:22:29 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com>
wrote:

>If you have an S.M.A.R.T. utility available,
>you can get a clue as to how your hard disk is doing. For Windoze, I
>use:
><http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php>
>Be sure to have it generate a report for human decodable diagnostics.
>For Linux, it's smartmontools or others:
><http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki>
><https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/S.M.A.R.T.>

I forgot to mumble something about the manufacturers diagnostic
utilities. Both Seagate and Western Digital ahve programs that you
can run to determine if the drive is failing:
<http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=613&sid=3&lang=en>
<http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/>

[rickman]

On 4/23/2013 4:37 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:22:29 -0700, Jeff Liebermann<je...@cruzio.com>
> wrote:
>
>> If you have an S.M.A.R.T. utility available,
>> you can get a clue as to how your hard disk is doing. For Windoze, I
>> use:
>> <http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php>
>> Be sure to have it generate a report for human decodable diagnostics.
>> For Linux, it's smartmontools or others:
>> <http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki>
>> <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/S.M.A.R.T.>
>
> I forgot to mumble something about the manufacturers diagnostic
> utilities. Both Seagate and Western Digital ahve programs that you
> can run to determine if the drive is failing:
> <http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=613&sid=3&lang=en>
> <http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/>

Thanks a lot for the tips. I don't want to rock any boats until I get
my order out the door in a few weeks, but after that I will try some of
this stuff.... or just break down and get a new laptop. The HD is a
problem, but 3 GB is also a problem. lol

--

Rick

[Dave Platt]

In article <kl4bih$j8e$1...@dont-email.me>, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Most SSD's have such an algorithm and more. What it does is detect
>> errors, and reassign alternate blocks in its place. When access time
>> to any block on the drive is the same, such a system makes good sense.
>
>Do they do that with rotating media? I have a problem with my laptop
>where it occasionally looks like it is locked up. If I wait long enough
>it returns. Usually it is one or two programs that stop, but if I try
>to use other programs they can all end up halted. Eventually it returns
>to normal operation. The cause seems to be a disk access that ties up
>the interface without moving much data as indicated by the Resource
>Monitor. The blue line maxes hard at 100% with a low erratic data rate.
> When I looked up what the blue line is, it appears to be the disk
>interface usage. This says to me the drive it trying to read a sector
>which is bad and continues to reread it for some time before it either
>gets the data correctly or finally fails.

Yes, hard drives do try to "spare out" bad sectors when they can.

In general, if the drive has trouble reading a sector (has to make
multiple retries to get bits good enough for the Reed-Solomon error
correction to work) it flags the sector as "pending reassignment".
The next time you write data to the sector, the drive will (typically)
write it and read-confirm it, and repeat this several times. If it
writes OK each time (i.e. each write results in an easily-readable
sector with a low bit error rate) then the sector is taken out of
"pending reassignment" status.

Otherwise, the drive writes the data into a spare sector nearby (some
spares are reserved in each zone of the platter), and updates some
nonvolatile admin information to say "Hey, the data address for sector
#NNNNNN is actually in spare #QQQQQQ." From that point on, all reads
and writes to the flawed-out sector will be diverted to the spare (at
the cost of an additional seek or two).

High-level "disk management" software will sometimes try to stimulate
this process by reading through the whole disk, looking for delays
during reading, and writing the delayed data back in-place (assuming
it read correctly). This can "push" your data from the failing
sectors to the spares, and make it easier to access.

That being said... if a drive gets to the point of having to reassign
sectors in this fashion more than *very* occasionally, you should
replace it. Soon. In my experience, a drive which has enough
internal damage, degradation, or contamination to start losing sectors
more than once every few months is going to die fairly rapidly, and
cannot be trusted. It sounds as if your drive has reached that point.

If you have a S.M.A.R.T. readout program you can retrieve the health
information from the drive, and look at the "reassigned sector" and
"pending reassignment" counters. On a good drive these really should
be zero.

On each of my systems, I run a S.M.A.R.T. readout every day or so, and
a full surface scan about once a week. Doing so has saved me from
serious trouble... I got an indication that some sectors were becoming
unreadable well before the drive really went south, and was able to
order and install a replacement in time.

--
Dave Platt <dpl...@radagast.org> AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

[Robert Wessel]

Actually the problem is the drivers. 32-bit WS has supported LME
(Large Memory Enabled) drivers for quite some time - and still does.
Basically LME driver support was so horrible for workstation-type
hardware, that it got turned off. Which had the added simplification
of not adding a third type of driver needing to be supported in
consumer space.

But other than some type of bank switching (AWE in Windows), 4GB is a
hardware per-address space limit on x86-32.

>The next requirement for Win8, is the CPU must support NX/XD.
>That means the processor must be more modern, than the last P4
>processors they'd made. The P4 I have, doesn't have XD, so I
>can't run Windows 8. I could probably run Windows 7 x32 on it.
>On the AMD side, probably an S939, AM2 or later would be OK.
>The advisor software from Microsoft should be able to figure this
>out.

I can't give you an exact count, but the latter Prescott P4 spins
supported NX.

>If you had some old P3 machine, then that probably wouldn't be
>a good candidate.
>
>Windows 7 could benefit from having around 2GB of memory. That
>would be a comfortable starting point. It will run on less than
>that, but with slight performance impact. More than 2GB, you'd
>probably be better off with an x64 OS.
>
>An x64 OS install, won't run 16 bit software. That might include
>the installer from some of the older games. If you have some
>crusty old games in your collection, that might be a potential
>issue with an x64 OS install. If the games are 2013 releases,
>there should not be a problem.

If you're using Windows, the "Pro" versions of Vista/Win7/Win8 allow
you to use XP Mode, which is a canned 32-bit XP VM, for both 32 and 64
bit versions of the OS. You can do the same thing with a bit more
effort on other systems.

[Paul]

Robert Wessel wrote:

>
>
> If you're using Windows, the "Pro" versions of Vista/Win7/Win8 allow
> you to use XP Mode, which is a canned 32-bit XP VM, for both 32 and 64
> bit versions of the OS. You can do the same thing with a bit more
> effort on other systems.

I don't think WinXP Mode works on Windows 8.

Windows 8 blacklists Windows Virtual PC, so you can't install it.
(Well, you can install it, but you get a dialog when you go to run it.)
I doubt you can install VPC2007 either. On Windows 8, the available
Microsoft solution is Hyper-V, and that won't install without SLAT (EPT).
(Hyper-V was included on my copy of Windows 8, but it refused to install.)
And even if you install Hyper-V, chances are the WinXP Mode VM won't
run there.

WinXP Mode works in Windows 7. At least we know that works.

And it didn't have to be done that way. Someone at
Microsoft was overly clever. I wish I could figure
out their thinking sometimes. (It reminds me of a few
articles recently, where the article authors dreamed that
Microsoft cared what customers thought. Hilarious. What
comes out of Microsoft, in terms of feature set, is
pure "corporate randomness". Opposing forces within
the company crunch together, and the waste products
of the collision, are what we buy.)

Paul

[Tom]

Very interesting thread re:hard drives and their attempts at error
correction.

I had a Hard drive with Win7Pro that absolutely would not image - either
with the native Win7 image backup or with Acronis. The backup process would
error out at the same percentage completion place every time. have since
put in an SSD for the OS and formatted the suspected old HD. My only
thought that I could not confirm was that I had bad sector(s) that the
backup programs refused to back up. Am currently using the old suspect HD
for date and doing file backups as the spirit moves me.

Based on this thread, is this the reason for my failed image backups?

Tom

"Dave Platt" wrote in message news:o0tj4a-...@radagast.org...

[Stanley Daniel de Liver]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:26:59 +0100, Tom Del Rosso
<tom...@verizon.net.invalid> wrote:

>
> Skybuck Flying wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I was just on the Sega/Company of Heroes Beta feedback forum and I
>> wondered and thought this is a good question for usenet people ! ;)
>> :):
>> Question is: why are PC sales declining ?:
>>
>> 1. Lack of demanding games ? (probably not)
>> 2. Lack of good games ? (maybe)
>> 3. Windows 8 sucks ? (bad reason, can use windows 7 as alternative)
>> 4. Sick of overheat and associated problems ? (maybe... I am surely
>> sick of it ;))
>> 5. Mobile/phones/tablets (I dont believe that... PC/laptop still
>> better for many tasks... though some decline is to be expected)
>>
>> Me thinks: Perhaps 2 and 4 is cause of decline.
>>
>> What are your thoughts on the decline ?
>
>
> This is an intelligent post. Who are you? Where is Skybuck? What have
> you
> done with him?
>
>
Sort of. It's xposted to next Wednesday and back.


--
It's a money /life balance.

[~misfit~]

Somewhere on teh intarwebs Jeff Liebermann wrote:
[...]
> I'm still using PIII machines for weather stations and data loggers.
> The main attraction is low power consumption. I could do better with
> a modern SBC, but I already had the working machines.

I have a bunch of old IBM ThinkPads equipped with Pentium M CPUs that use
very little power yet are powerful - preferably R40/51s, they're quite
common, cheap and reliable.

(Use R52s if you want to load up on RAM as they use DDR2, much cheaper than
the former's DDR. The T-series are thin'n'light and, as such more prone to
failure with age. Either due to planar flexing or due to the fans being so
thin / hi-revving.)

Just my 2c. I have a Compaq SFF desktop that uses a PIII 1.13GHz Tualatin
(2GB RAM) and I'm amazed at how slow it is compared to one of the
above-mentioned ThinkPads. So much so that it's due to go to the dump as
it's worth next-to-nothing. I've not even had takers when I offered it
free - except for people who wanted to rob the RAM and sell it on ebay. I
can do that, I'd just rather see it getting used. <shrug>
--
/Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)