Computer makeover day

[deeaa]

Well, I guess it's time to do a yearly changeover of the computers in the house. This year it's straightforward though. I thought I'd just jot it down here being bored at work :-)

My main laptop is now 3 years old, so it's time to replace. The new one is also a Fujitsu-Siemens one, but I just realized it's got a SMALLER resolution than the old one! That spells trouble. It's a nice i5 laptop w/64bit win 7 enterprise and 8 gigs mem, internal 21MBit cellular network access etc. but for some reason they dropped the panel res. Go figure. What I'm worried is how will it look with external monitor which will have to scan to a non-native resolution now. Sigh, may need to acquire a new monitor for it. All that is required for the move is copy the infos and docs to an external drive for backup, which I have always at the ready for the purpose.

Then I'll upgrade my main desktop machine's C: drive from 64GB SSD to 120GB SSD, and a little faster too with 500+ mb/s for both read and write. The oldest spinners in it are only 2 years old right now so I don't have to get any other new HD's for it yet.(I always try to change drives within 3 years from my main machine to less critical ones for another three in rotation until I sell them or they become obsolete.)

I'm considering updating my livingroom PC's OS to Win7 32bit - 32 only because it's got only 2gb of memory anyway. It's only 8 euros for the upgrade so I'll likely do it...but then again Xp Pro works well for a media machine, there's no real _need_ to upgrade so I might just save the 8 euros too :-)

Finally the mini-laptop upgrade; got a 2-gig memory chip for it instead of just one, and adjusted the bios to assign 128mb to display, so it should be good for w7 32bit now instead of Xp Pro. I'll also change the 160GB internal drive to the 64GB SSD that I'm retiring from my main desktop, having served there for 2 years now.

The new parts should be here tomorrow night so I can go ahead with the upgrades - if I can get my hands on a couple of w7 upgrade versions by then.

Okay, proceed with the usual programme...

[Katastrophe]

Dude... save the 8 euros and buy some beer. XP is a good, stable platform. OTOH, Microsoft may not support the platform any longer (if they haven't already stopped). In one of my computer classes, we loaded Linux Ubuntu, and it was fantastic... A GUI environment very similar to Windows that was extremely well done and user friendly... and free! I've got an older XP machine here that I might clean out and convert over to Ubuntu one day.

[deeaa]

Ubuntu is a good platform for basic use, yeah. But it's nowhere near Windows in ease of adjusting etc...I had an Ubuntu machine for a surfboard for several years, tried to get into how it's used. Indeed it was quite fast etc. even on an old machine , a Pentium 4 with just 2 gigs of mem, but...well whenever there were some issues I never could get them sorted. Firewire wouldn't work, could not get the monitor's native resolution, 3G network was impossible to get working, and since I haven't much knowledge of Linux use many simple tasks such as getting videos on websites to show was a PITA to say the least. And then I managed to get it so messed up a few times I had to reinstall the system completely.

Still, it was fast. You just need to learn some, well quite a few terminal commands and how to edit some config files etc. and such if you want to be able to use it for most uses. Also it's got some features from Macs that are exactly the things I hate about Macs, such as stuff appearing on desktop upon connecting and the difficulty of putting stuff on different drives etc. where YOU want them as opposed to where the OS wants the files. Just not my kind of OS.

I think I'll stick with Xp for the media machine since it works fine with it. On that machine I don't need w7's improvements over Xp really so I won't bother. It just works as a media server and a download hub/NAS for now...the only thing that should be easier with w7 would be proper remote desktop access, but I basically only use that machine for watching films, videos off Youtube etc, and listening to Spotify and such.

[Eric]

You're right that for advanced use, ubuntu still requires a lot of familiarity. It's probably like that for any system, but for those raised on windows it can be a real chore to switch over.

I decided several years ago that it's a transition I was willing to make, but I realize it's not for everyone. It has been interesting to see ubuntu improve in useability in the time that I've used it though. I think that by this point, it's probably a viable option for basic use for your average user, and it's kind of encouraging to see such growth in the computer world.

[deeaa]

Yep.

I'm looking forward to w8 myself...not the metro interface which I'll likely disable, like I don't use aero either...but mostly for super easy integration of ftp, remote desktop and cloud services into the search and filemanager system.

That was likely the first thing I started missing in Xp after I'd used w7 for a while..the ease of searches and FTP integration that really works..as well as the general speed.

In fact I'm pretty close to perfection for my use now as far as the OS goes I think...all I really need is the filemanager showing all my drives, both networked and local, and I've distributed different files to different locations like this which are all physically their own drives too for easy changing of stuff:

C: is for OS and main programs only
D: is for unimportant stuff like games and programs I'm trying out, downloads, temps, etc.
E: is a 1TB drive for documents only, plus my music collection
F: is a 1TB drive for making music, and project files etc. stuff
G: is mapped to livingroom PC so I can transfer files directly
T: is a work folder in my workplace network so I can transfer for instance audio and video directly to language lab machine use
V: is for video projects and data, 1TB as well
Z: and X: are DVD drives
Y: is an emulated drive for loading ISO files to use

In addition to this I have over 100GB of online storage, SkyDrive, iSoG, Dropbox etc. and three FTP sites which are also integrated to Windows browser, and three 1-2TB external (eSata and USB) drives I use for backups etc.

They're all indexed and whatever I need I just start typing what the name contains and it'll show me where I have the stuff. Easy.
The windows filemanager is pretty much the only thing I use, and the quick launch buttons in the taskbar.

Combined with Chrome browser's integrated search etc. functions, I can't really think of any way I could make usage better, only faster in some cases.

[deeaa]

Rippin'apart the tiny laptop for upgrades...

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-i9ip0L4j20I/T5aqXMfggGI/AAAAAAAAE_w/GH7VviUSUlE/s720/IMG_20120424_160149.jpg