| Author |
Message |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, June 27, 2008 - 7:09 am: | |
Bought myself a new pc tower the other day. A bargain basement job: £289 from Comet, a Chinese make Acer: but it is surprisingly high spec. This is a modest but very fast little games machine. The nearest equivalent I could find was £450 from Dell, but that included a monitor, which I didn't need. I have noticed that if you watch the market carefully you can pick your moment and get a loss leader. Just thought I'd share that with y'all. I love computers. This one even still plays my favourite game! despite the game being designed for Windows 98. |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, July 07, 2008 - 10:55 am: | |
Yep, my little pc: let me record its eye-popping stats for posterity. Windows Vista Home Premium, Intel Core 2 Duo processor E4500, 2GB RAM & 250GB hard drive (which is actually two hard drives of 125 each); 250 MB dedicated nVidia 8400 graphics card. They no longer seem to give you the operating system on a back-up disc. I bought my first system about 1997/8. a pentium 2 with 64 MB RAM. It is amazing how they have evolved and continue to evolve. In five years the present system will seem like a horse drawn cart again. |
dan
Username: dan
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, July 07, 2008 - 3:18 pm: | |
I'd be interested to hear PC-using folks' views on Vista (don't need to hear Mac-using folks' views - I can guess what they'll be).
I bought a new Vista PC about 6 months ago. Was initally very impressed with most aspects of it, but I've recently started using XP pretty heavily at work and at a friend's flat where I'm staying during the week - XP seems *so* much quicker and less bloated than Vista. Also, when I put my home PC into standby mode, 2 times out of 3 it starts going into standby but never quite gets there, with the result that I have to hold the power button in for 5 seconds and then reboot (rebooting also seems to take about 10 times as long under Vista as under XP).
I'm in the market for a new laptop soon, and am starting to think that I should buy an XP one (bad timing though - Microsoft just withdrew the option to get new kit installed with XP, although there is a loophole to this). |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, July 07, 2008 - 4:11 pm: | |
I think Vista is just a somewhat flowery version of XP, that takes up more power and alot more hard drive; and which seems to be about it. All the visual extras don't really add to functionality, so it seems to be an intermediate OS. It will eventually evolve but at the moment it is mostly notional - in effect more an idea than a reality of touch-screen 3D software technology. It does have more security than XP however and it is current. If you have a reasonably good specification; ie Intel dual core and plenty of RAM ie at least 2 Gigabites and a dedicated graphics card of at least 250 MB RAM - Vista operates fast. Also remember to get as big a hard drive as possible because it seems to eat up space very quickly. |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, July 11, 2008 - 8:38 pm: | |
dan by the way. You say you have a problem with Standby mode on Vista. One thing I notice about Vista is that things which were easily findable on XP are more hidden away on Vista. I suspect the standby problem is that what you are doing is putting the PC to sleep; which is a mere power saving device that allows the machine to wake up at the slightest input from mouse or keyboard. What you actually want to do is HIBERNATE the machine. You will find this in Power options in Control Panel (classic view). It isn't obvious how to get there but click on the blue highlighted text below 'balanced settings' and then in the window where it says Power buttons and lid select Start menu power button and from the pull down menu select Hibernate instead of Sleep. Next time you use the screen power button on the start menu it should put the machine off fully but return you to where ever you left off when you restart. It means a quicker restart and allows you to leave work still running on the screen same as in sleep mode. |
dan
Username: dan
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, July 21, 2008 - 5:43 pm: | |
It's not not sleep mode, it's hibernation. I get to by clicking the start menu and then what used to be the shut-down button.
About 60% of the time when I click on this, the machine goes into a low-power state - hard disks etc off, power LED flashing instead of being constantly on - I can get it back by pressing the main power switch, and it takes about 5 seconds to resume where I left off.
The other 40% of the time, I do exactly the same thing, and it starts off in the same way (screen goes blue), but it never quite makes it into hibernation. The hard disks keep on spinning eternally, making a hell of a din, but nothing (keyboard/mouse input or power switch) brings the machine back online, so my only option is to force a reboot by holding the power button down for 5 seconds.
Presumably it's some driver software or somesuch which is preventing the system from hibernating. Haven't had time to work out what, and it's quite unpredictable when it will happen (although it seems to be getting more frequent). |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 - 6:28 am: | |
Hi dan - two points. 1) Unless you changed the stock settings the machine is set for sleep mode when you click on the on-screen shut-down button. That this is so is is confirmed by the blue flashing light you get, which indicates that the machine is still on. Hibernate is a complete hardware shutdown. In Hibernate no electricity is being used at all. (I imagine microsoft hid it because it can present problems for auto-updating software.) 2) What you have sounds quite nasty, what you describe. I am surprised that this is on a new system. Probably there is a bad software conflict. To diagnose it, go to Control Panel, choose Classic View, and click on the System icon. In System, supposing the software is fully updated, you will need to further click on Device Manager. Open that and it will show you your system drivers. In the system drivers you will probably see either an exclamation mark next to one or two items or a question mark. What this - probably - means is that the corresponding software hasn't been installed or needs updating. To update/install click on the icon that it is next to. |
dan
Username: dan
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 - 11:44 am: | |
I may well have changed the settings to hibernate - never seen much point in sleep mode.
It's not entirely a new system install - no system of mine can be considered pristine beyond about 5 minutes into our time together. But it has had this problem since pretty soon after I bought it. I suspect the problem may be something to do with the BirdieSync software I use to keep my mobile settings the same as in Thunderbird, although anti-virus software and graphics drivers are also always prime suspects. |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 - 3:46 pm: | |
Any system conflicts showing in Device Manager? ... This is a dweebish conversation we are having, I know. I used to have a friend into motorbikes (he also took smack with his brother as a sort of leisure pursuit or holiday; and then one fine day disappeared into a kind of spotty grey wallpaper effect). Anyway, this friend talked motorbikes non-stop. Nothing about motorbikes was too slight or uninteresting a topic that he couldn't spend several hours talking about it. He used to make me laugh alot. Well, here we are with computers, doing the same thing. Mine's got this shiny pipe sticking out the side that emits large quantities of smoke and a loud noise if I go too fast when I am playing First Eagles: 1918. Those fields of France look like a huge undulating tablecloth picked out with wooden trees and dusty white roads, and grey rivers. There is a corner of a small town where I'd like to smoke my pipe and live staring up at these weird machines whirring in different directions -imperfect mechanical birds perfected in electricity's pure stream. |
dan
Username: dan
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 - 2:37 pm: | |
Hmmm, zen and the art of computer maintenance. Ah well, at least we have our own "nuts & bolts" ghetto for discussing this stuff.
I will try and remember to check Device Manager this weekend (I'm in London Monday to Friday, so not actually using the PC very much - in fact, I'm taking delivery of a shiny new laptop tomorrow - XP installed!)
Although I've a feeling I've been into Device Manager at some point in the machine's life, and not spotted anything untoward. |