On 3/30/2017 2:19 PM, wrote:
On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 12:18:35 -0400,
wrote:

Even in the corporate mainframe world users eventually become forced
into hardware and software upgrades. It's too expensive for the
vendors to make and support software that is backwards compatible with
older hardware, and the hardware vendors have no market incentive to
do more than is absolutely necessary. Eventually the increased
reliability and environmental efficiency of the newer CPUs becomes
compelling and that triggers both hardware and software upgrades.
The same is true with PCs if you want to take advantage of better
graphics, network speeds, larger hard drives, energy efficiency, etc.

I understand that but if I was running a data center, I would still
stay one or two levels back. Let the pioneers catch the arrows.
XP does not seem to have a problem handling any network speed or hard
drive I throw at it and it is hard to find a PC that uses less power
than an old laptop. It is certainly not going to be that I7 sports car
John is looking at. If energy is an issue, you want the smallest,
slowest machine that will get the job done hence my W/98 server and my
WYSE "thin client" machines.



I still have a small XP based laptop that I used on the boat and RV from
time to time. Bought it back in 2002 or 2003. Still works but spends
it's retirement sitting on a closet shelf.

I took it out and fired it up shortly before we moved last year. I
liked XP when it was the current OS for Windows ... it was very stable
.... but I noticed right away (after using Win7 for quite a while) that
for the general use I use a computer for it doesn't come close to Win7
in terms of overall performance. It's just slower at everything.

On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 18:32:45 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

wrote:
On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 11:58:44 -0400 (EDT), justan wrote:

Wrote in message:
On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 08:39:39 -0400 (EDT), justan wrote:

Without going into details, powerline hits can cause unpredictable
things to happen. Recovery can be easy or it can be
difficult.

Power hits can be fairly easily mitigated if you have decent surge
protection and UPS. Working with 1000 customers who refused to turn
off their computers and unplug them every afternoon when we had a
thunderstorm got us pretty good with surge protection. Most of that
knowledge world wide came from Florida.


The only recent hardware failuresI could attribute to powerline
are a gfi outlet and a device that had some operational issues
even after a factory reset and reconfiguration. The only surge
protection we have is built into the mains panel. Most of my
devices are inexpensive and easily replaceable. I can't justify
the cost of individual surge protectors.

Surge protection goes farther than simply plugging in a few
protectors. For most of the country, that may work for you but we get
an ass kicking thunderstorm just about every day for half the year.


Our biggest problems in the 80's was Colorado. Lots of lighting, and the
disk controller we had had a **** power supply. Pass transistors that
passed ever line glitch through.

We never really had a problem in the computer room. It was always cash
registers, ATMs and remote terminals that got fried. Pretty much
anything with a wire coming in from outside or long unprotected wires
in the building.
Motels, mall stores with multiple locations in the mall and terminals
running between buildings were the worst.

2:28 PMMr. Luddite
- show quoted text -
I still have a small XP based laptop that I used on the boat and RV from
time to time. Bought it back in 2002 or 2003. Still works but spends
it's retirement sitting on a closet shelf.

I took it out and fired it up shortly before we moved last year. I
liked XP when it was the current OS for Windows ... it was very stable
.... but I noticed right away (after using Win7 for quite a while) that
for the general use I use a computer for it doesn't come close to Win7
in terms of overall performance. It's just slower at everything.
.....

My wife has a retired Lappy that here company bought for her some X bomber years ago. It had Netscape for a browser and AOL 3.0. That's when AOL paid good money to have computer mfj's load their stuff on every machine trying to bait potential customers. At the time it was state of the art. Of course that was then(over 20 years ago) and this is now...

wrote:
On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 18:32:45 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

wrote:
On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 11:58:44 -0400 (EDT), justan wrote:

Wrote in message:
On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 08:39:39 -0400 (EDT), justan wrote:

Without going into details, powerline hits can cause unpredictable
things to happen. Recovery can be easy or it can be
difficult.

Power hits can be fairly easily mitigated if you have decent surge
protection and UPS. Working with 1000 customers who refused to turn
off their computers and unplug them every afternoon when we had a
thunderstorm got us pretty good with surge protection. Most of that
knowledge world wide came from Florida.


The only recent hardware failuresI could attribute to powerline
are a gfi outlet and a device that had some operational issues
even after a factory reset and reconfiguration. The only surge
protection we have is built into the mains panel. Most of my
devices are inexpensive and easily replaceable. I can't justify
the cost of individual surge protectors.

Surge protection goes farther than simply plugging in a few
protectors. For most of the country, that may work for you but we get
an ass kicking thunderstorm just about every day for half the year.


Our biggest problems in the 80's was Colorado. Lots of lighting, and the
disk controller we had had a **** power supply. Pass transistors that
passed ever line glitch through.

We never really had a problem in the computer room. It was always cash
registers, ATMs and remote terminals that got fried. Pretty much
anything with a wire coming in from outside or long unprotected wires
in the building.
Motels, mall stores with multiple locations in the mall and terminals
running between buildings were the worst.


We lost Macy's California Point of Sale terminals to IBM because your sales
guy was smarter. Our sales guy tole Macy's that the data lines had to go
via conduit because of the fluorescent lights. IBM guy said their did not
need conduit. He knew the fire department required conduit. Smarter.

On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 14:52:34 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 14:24:59 -0400,
wrote:

On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 13:48:17 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 11:12:32 -0400 (EDT), justan wrote:

Yet you don't mind learning a new OS every time Bill Gates wants a new
car. The hardware is the easy part


Sure I mind but some of the new hardware and software doesn't play
well with Win 3.1

The main limitation with W3.1 is in graphics and full motion video.
DOS (the engine under W3 and lower) does a good job with music,
pictures and excels with text based applications. There are DOS tools
that handle text far better than any windows program in a much tighter
package.
I still use "CE3", a subset of the IBM E editor, when I want to select
data and manipulate it from HTML tables or anything else I can paste
from a windows file.

===

I'd argue that the main limitation with Win 3.1 was the lack of
working memory, and I/O bandwidth. I used to get frequent memory
crashes back in the day if I tried to have more than a couple of
windows open at the same time that I was browsing the web with
Netscape. Windows 98 and Win NT fixed some of that but it really
wasn't until Win 7 that things really stabilized. I push my machines
fairly hard with a number of different apps running more or less
continuously. I was never able to do that reliably prior to Win 7.

I never really used W3.1 that much. I was a DOS guy and there were
software work arounds that got past Bill Gates thinking 640K was
enough for anyone. DOS dBase IV was smart enough to use all the memory
you could throw at it. I found the diminishing returns came at around
2 meg. I had 6.5m on my AT machine and I kept 4m in a Ram Drive. If I
was in a hurry, I loaded the whole directory, program, data etc to the
ram drive and executed it there. dBase really screams if it is all in
RAM, even on an old 8 mz 286.

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/Woodiy%20AT.jpg

I would have been happy if they'd stuck with Win 3.1 for Workgroups forever. I loved it.

On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 19:56:37 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

We lost Macy's California Point of Sale terminals to IBM because your sales
guy was smarter. Our sales guy tole Macy's that the data lines had to go
via conduit because of the fluorescent lights. IBM guy said their did not
need conduit. He knew the fire department required conduit. Smarter.

That must be a California thing. If you use plenum rated cable,
properly supported, I know of no fire reg that requires conduit for
low voltage ... and we never had a problem with fluorescent lights, in
spite of the urban legend that would not die. All of our signal cables
were balanced pairs, pretty much immune to the switcher in an
electronic ballast. Sixty hz was never a problem (magnet ballast). I
had 100' of UTP Cat 5 coiled above my desk right on a fluorescent and
I could patch it into any LAN, 3270, S-loop or whatever at the panel
to prove it to the non believers.
You could also watch the data going by on a scope if you wanted.
There were lots of urban legends that got dispelled in the late 80s
when IBM got serious about selling data cabling, LAN management and
communication contracts. Some of us went to school on it. They had a
very cool lab in Dallas where we could learn about just about anything
that goes down a wire. That part was mostly how to do the phone
company's job (breaking the finger pointing tie). That was followed up
by BICSI training for the guys like me who were actually trained for
writing wiring contracts.

On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 16:23:12 -0400, Poco Deplorevole
wrote:


I would have been happy if they'd stuck with Win 3.1 for Workgroups forever. I loved it.

W/95 was the release that brought LAN management to the masses. That
replaced W3.11 WFWG. I admit it was easier to set up a network. That
also morphed to NT which has it's share of fans. W/98 was really the
bug fix as much as anything and SE made it very solid if you had all
of the patches. Most of the crashes were actually caused by things you
loaded on top of SE. Memory management has always been shaky with MS
and they let too many people have the keys to the kingdom. They kept
stepping on each other's patch.
XP was supposed to fix that and it actually works a whole lot better.
The best I can figure 7 was supposed to address security holes in WiFi
(I know networking got more cumbersome). W/8 added tablet support and
10 is aimed at taking MS to a subscription model according to the
chatter I hear.

Poco Deplorevole wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 18:52:36 -0400, "Mr. Luddite" wrote:

On 3/29/2017 6:29 PM, Poco Deplorevole wrote:
I'll let you know what I finally get, but I'm leaning towards that HP now. Thousand bucks for all
that seems like a decent deal.

https://www.costco.com/HP-ENVY-17t-L...100317268.html


Looks like a nice one. Now that a few of us have suggested HP, you'll
probably have all kinds of problems with it. :-)

I am also starting to shop for a new laptop. This one is getting a bit
long in the tooth although it still works fine. Not too excited about
Win 10 though, but I suppose I'll get used to it.

I've not had any problems with W10, but it does have some things I'm not wild about, like the 'apps'
window. I've still not figured that thing out.

Ignore it. I don't use it either.

Poco Deplorevole wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2017 16:54:41 -0700 (PDT), True North wrote:

Mr. Luddite
- show quoted text -
"Looks like a nice one. Now that a few of us have suggested HP, you'll
probably have all kinds of problems with it. :-)

I am also starting to shop for a new laptop. This one is getting a bit
long in the tooth although it still works fine. Not too excited about
Win 10 though, but I suppose I'll get used to it."


One good thing about the two trips my HP NoteBook made to the repair center...it came back with Windows 8 after the 2nd trip and that's what I've been using on it since last July.
When I bought my desktop, Win 8 was just out a few months. The dealer told me he'd load Win 7 and
that I should wait until the next version *after* Win 8 came out. You must be one of the lucky ones!


What does this have to do with guns?

wrote:
On Thu, 30 Mar 2017 12:25:06 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:


Having only a laptop, an iPad, and a networked printer I can't justify
having a UPS either. The laptop and iPad battery last plenty long
enough and the printer has never lost it's connection to the network.

I haven't bought a UPS in years but I have a bunch. Most people just
chuck them when the battery dies. If you buy batteries from the
manufacturer, they cost almost as much as a new one but they are
commodity items on the net that sell for a fraction of what APC wants.
We have most of the stuff in the living room on UPS (TV, sat box, this
PC etc). I have had power failures and not even noticed until I
noticed the kitchen light went out ;-)
Most are just blips that last a few seconds until the recloser can
operate. That will still put you in the penalty box for 5-10 minutes
until everything reboots and gets going again. Your DVR loses what it
was doing etc.

We have six in the house to protect the computers, DVR, etc. The
batteries are much cheaper at Batteries Plus or online.