New Laptop - which flavour of Windows? (and other issues)
in [Laptops]
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From: Invisible Man on 12 Mar 2010 11:14 On 12/03/2010 15:49, Rod wrote: > On 12/03/2010 15:12, D.M.Chapman wrote: >> In article<7vv2rbFst9U1(a)mid.individual.net>, >> Roger Mills<watt.tyler(a)googlemail.com> wrote: >> >>> My current - rather elderly - laptop is running Win XP Home Sp3 and >>> lots of >>> essential applications - many of which came free with various PC >>> magazines, >>> and would cost a fortune to replace or upgrade - so my 'new' laptop >>> needs to >>> be able to run all of these. I've also got a number of USB devices - >>> printers, scanners, MIDI interfaces, etc. - which need to work with >>> the new >>> laptop. >>> >>> Most new laptops seem to come with Windows 7 - and I'm hearing comments >>> suggesting that elderly software applications (e.g. Quicken 98, >>> Design CAD >>> 3000, etc.) which work perfectly well under XP may refuse to work >>> under 7. >>> Is this likely? >> >> It's possible, yes. Some might work under the compatibility options in >> Win 7. Some may just never work. >> >>> Is there a solution? Would I also need new drivers for all my USB-based >>> devices? >> >> Depends. Some will just work under Win 7 (probably). Some might have new >> drivers available. Some won't. It's all a bit hit and miss. >> >>> Would I be any better off with Vista (which I've so far managed to >>> avoid!) >> >> No, no one is *ever* better off with Vista IMO. >> >>> or would I face the same issues as with 7? >> >> Yes, but with less chance of being able to fix them. Win 7 is largely >> Vista >> but fixed. It's far from perfect but a whole lot better than Vista. >> >>> How easy is it to 'downgrade' a Vista or Win7 PC to XP - and would that >>> solve my problems? [I have a valid XP-Home licence from a PC which I >>> scrapped - and some original (may just be SP1) media - but not the >>> latest >>> version.] >> >> Getting harder and harder particuarly for laptops. We have plenty of >> laptops >> here that just won't run properly with XP as there are no drivers >> available >> for the hardware. >> >>> Other Issues: >>> How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have >>> floppy >>> drives? In my current setup, I have Norton Ghost 2003 which needs to >>> boot >>> into DOS from a floppy - and can then clone a drive or partition to >>> another >>> internal or external (or network) drive. It doesn't provide the >>> option of >>> creating a bootable CD. Come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that it >>> would recognise SATA disks! I get the impression that later versions of >>> Ghost can backup the system disk while Windows is actually running. >>> Is this >>> correct? Also, they seem to come with a bootable 'recovery' CD from >>> which to >>> boot in order to restore a backup. Does this work ok? Is so, it looks >>> like >>> I'm going to have to invest in the latest version of Ghost! >> >> This isn't really my area, but running an image of your old XP machine >> under >> a virtual environment is a possible option if your new laptop is powerful >> enough. VMware (can't remember what the free version is) or the >> Sun^WOracle >> Virtualbox might be worth a look. You'd need something that offers the >> physical to virtual migration tools. Get a laptop with decent amount >> of RAM >> and if your existing machine isn't huge it might just work. >> >> I have an XP, a Solaris and a Win 7 VM on my macbook and it works fine >> under VMware for what I need. >> >>> Your comments - particularly regarding the best choice of OS for my >>> particular circumstances - will be greatly appreciated. >> >> I'm writing this as a Solaris and MacOS user - but windows 7 is much >> better >> than Vista. As for XP on new hardware - it's getting harder and harder. >> >> Darren >> > Generally agree with you Darren. > > For compatibility, you might need to stick to the 32-bit version of W7. > > Do remember that with W7 Pro you get a full copy of XP as a virtual > machine in with W7 itself. (You might have to download it, but you are > immediately licensed for that virtual copy of XP.) Make sure you have > plenty of memory and processor power if you wish to use virtual machines. > > Another option might be to leave your main computer (of whatever sort) > at one location and use another to remotely access it - whether using > LogMeIn, RDP, VNC or something else to do so. It could leave you free to > get a lightweight (physically and in terms of performance) laptop to > take with you. And no need to sync as everything is really on the main > computer. WIth Wake-on-LAN facilities the remote machine doesn't even > have to be running all the time. Might be totally useless to you, but a > thought. > > Indeed, if you have some things that won't run any other way, you could > remote access your current computer. > I have just gone from XP SP3 on my old PC to Windows 7 64 bit on my new one. Only had problem was with Alk co-pilot 7 which apparently is not and will not be supported for Windows 7 64. I eventually googled enough to find a workaround via a registry hack. What I do find aggravating are the pop-up thumbnails from the taskbar. I haven't managed to find a way to turn them off but have now set the delay until they appear to 20000 (milli seconds). Also disabled one of the security options in IE (which I very rarely use) to save me having to override warnings every time I open digiguide from a link in the taskbar. One day I will find time to take a look at ubuntu but for the moment I find windows 7 stable and quite good. Just a battle to do things my way instead of how ms think everyone should do things. I have got an overclocked core 7 cpu and 6gb of ram which probably helps.
From: Jules Richardson on 12 Mar 2010 11:39 On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:52:56 +0000, Roger Mills wrote: > Much as I would like to get away from the clutches of Microsoft, I > *need* Windows because I've got lots of software which won't run on > anything else. Personally, I run Linux as the host OS and Windows in a VM for when I absultely have to use it for something (extremely rarely in my case). I really wouldn't trust Windows as the host, in part due to poor design and in part simply due to it being the target of most security threats. Having it in a VM makes it very easy to back up the raw data and restore from a previous point if some nasty does get in. > How the heck do you backup and restore systems which no longer have > floppy drives? I've used g4l (ghost for linux) before, booting from a CD, to do a raw backup of a Windows machine. Make sure that your target backup machine can handle the size of the file (I need to tweak my current Linux desktop as by default it won't create anything over 2GB in size) and that if you're using FTP to transfer the data, your target FTP server can cope with the size (some Windows flavours seem to quietly stop accepting data beyond 4GB) cheers Jules
From: Roger Mills on 12 Mar 2010 12:08 In an earlier contribution to this discussion, Rod <polygonum(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: > > Do remember that with W7 Pro you get a full copy of XP as a virtual > machine in with W7 itself. (You might have to download it, but you are > immediately licensed for that virtual copy of XP.) Make sure you have > plenty of memory and processor power if you wish to use virtual > machines. Can you run USB-connected physical devices in a VM, or only software applications? I'm thinking of things like my Midiman Uno MIDI interface, for which there doesn't appear to be a W7 driver. > Another option might be to leave your main computer (of whatever sort) > at one location and use another to remotely access it - whether using > LogMeIn, RDP, VNC or something else to do so. It could leave you free > to get a lightweight (physically and in terms of performance) laptop > to take with you. And no need to sync as everything is really on the > main computer. WIth Wake-on-LAN facilities the remote machine doesn't > even have to be running all the time. Might be totally useless to > you, but a thought. > That would presumably require a fairly fast internet connection at both ends? At my main location, I have wired BB with a D/L speed of about 2Mbps (U/L much slower) and at the other location, I'm currently using '3' mobile internet, which struggles to get up to 500kbps (D/L) and 100kbps (U/L) - so I guess that remote access would be pretty dire! -- Cheers, Roger _______ Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom checked.
From: Rod on 12 Mar 2010 13:45 On 12/03/2010 17:08, Roger Mills wrote: > In an earlier contribution to this discussion, Rod > <polygonum(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: >> >> Do remember that with W7 Pro you get a full copy of XP as a virtual >> machine in with W7 itself. (You might have to download it, but you are >> immediately licensed for that virtual copy of XP.) Make sure you have >> plenty of memory and processor power if you wish to use virtual >> machines. > Can you run USB-connected physical devices in a VM, or only software > applications? I'm thinking of things like my Midiman Uno MIDI interface, for > which there doesn't appear to be a W7 driver. > >> Another option might be to leave your main computer (of whatever sort) >> at one location and use another to remotely access it - whether using >> LogMeIn, RDP, VNC or something else to do so. It could leave you free >> to get a lightweight (physically and in terms of performance) laptop >> to take with you. And no need to sync as everything is really on the >> main computer. WIth Wake-on-LAN facilities the remote machine doesn't >> even have to be running all the time. Might be totally useless to >> you, but a thought. >> > > That would presumably require a fairly fast internet connection at both > ends? At my main location, I have wired BB with a D/L speed of about 2Mbps > (U/L much slower) and at the other location, I'm currently using '3' mobile > internet, which struggles to get up to 500kbps (D/L) and 100kbps (U/L) - so > I guess that remote access would be pretty dire! I spend a considerable proportion of my working life connected to various machines across the country. No control over the net connection at the far end. Varies from brilliant, through mostly fine, to a few which are not much fun. At a guess, the ones that are not good are on bottom end ADSL connections which are being used for many purposes other than my access to that location. Wish I had some real numbers to give you but we don't actually measure anything like traffic. Perhaps someone else could advise? The best technologies minimise traffic by caching and all sorts of clever tricks. For me the best user experience is with RDP over a VPN. (I just don't like the effect of connecting and disconnecting VPN connections all day. But if it is all day to one location that is not much of an issue.) Main reason is that RDP will set itself to use the size of monitor you are connecting with (quite large in my case) whereas LogMeIn and VNC use the real monitor size - and some sites I connect to have postage stamps for monitors. But it is also quite fast and fluid. I'd suggest you simply try it. For simplicity set up free LogMeIn on your computer and try to access it from somewhere else. (That will need a browser plugin on the computer you connect from. Works fine in IE and Firefox.) -- Rod
From: jkn on 12 Mar 2010 14:01
On Mar 12, 3:31 pm, Huge <H...(a)nowhere.much.invalid> wrote: [...] > FWIW, I run Windows XP, Solaris, Ubuntu(*) and Plan9(+) under VirtualBox under > Ubuntu. Out of interest, what do you run Plan9 for? Thanks J^n |