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Archive for February, 2010

Since I now have a spare machine lying around I contemplated what to do with it. It’s an old Dell Dimension P4 with 4GB of ram and the 640GB drive that used to be in my new AMD Dell, before I pulled it out and replaced it with something bigger. I thought about using the machine as a massive paperweight – stylish and effective, but not very practical. The idea of a flowpot came to mind, but I figured it would start leaking. I could take it out back and shoot it – fun and exciting, but not very long lasting.

So I decided to go completely radical and install Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) on to it! I tried the 7.x series a few years back and found it rather convoluted when trying to install additional components. The OS itself worked great but adding additional components didn’t work so well. It seems the 9.x series has changed a lot of that so I think it’s time to jump in again.

Windows 7 is far from impressive and with new products like the iPad, Chrome OS, Mac OSX, Ubuntu and other yet unannounced products coming out later this year it seems the Windows revolution is coming to an end. And I have to say I’m not sad to see it go. I’m not going to be able to just quit using Windows, there’s still quite a few apps I still use like Paint Shop Pro, Live Writer, OneNote, Quicken, that just don’t have a Unix equivalent. However, I think Unix flavors will gain speed this upcoming year and I’m curious to have a look for myself. With the speed and memory of this new machine I could easily run Virtualbox with Windows 7 running inside. That probably seems redundant and maybe for the next year or so it will be, but I feel the winds of change coming on. Personally, I really hope Windows 7 is the last version of Windows I use. I find Win7 to be bloated, annoying, insanely expensive and short on real useful features. Plus, if everyone is moving to "cloud computing" what does it matter what OS I’m using? If I just need a browser why should I spend $150-400 on Windows?

I have my boot disc and a machine ready to go.This should be interesting!

I’ve been working on the new machine and I have to say the frustration level has gone through the roof a couple of times. However, after much gnashing of teeth and vulgarities that embarrass even me, I figured out the problem. My mind has always been my Achilles heel and in this case it was more than evident.

It seems that both Windows and the AMD motherboard aren’t too keen on the two video cards I put in my new system. Although they are both recognized and the drivers were loaded, the second card was causing some problems and the machine would repeatedly freeze. The mouse would still move, but nothing would respond when you clicked on it. After dozens of reboots and threats of sending the machine back to Dell (in pieces) or at least out the window, I took a moment to pause and reflect on the situation. I’m not sure where my happy place is, but I was searching for it.

I eventually turned off the second video card through Device Manager and low and behold the problem went away. (That’s what you get for thinking!) Funny, this same config worked perfectly under Windows XP and a Dell Dimension, both of which are at least 5 years old. But alas, the modern hardware and modern OS soils itself and can’t make it work.

Disappointing to be sure, but at least I have two monitors working and the stupid thing isn’t locking up all the time. I’ll have to figure out how to get that card back up and running. I do have the drivers loaded for both cards, but there might be a BIOS setting I need to check. You know me, I just put both cards in there and turned the thing on. Why would I bother to check any settings? Manual? What manual?

I pressed on and got quite a few apps reinstalled, and with the video issue worked out the machine runs very well. Apps load very quickly although every time there was a slight hesitation I thought the machine had lost its mind again. But I have my photo and video apps back in place as well as the insanely bloated Office 2007.

It’s funny how the only 64bit app I have is Lightroom. It’s still a 32bit world out there. Although seriously, is a 64bit version of Word even necessary? Is copy and paste really going to be noticeably faster?

I also spent a ton of time rooting through old directories deleting files I haven’t touched since 2004. I’m pretty sure that HMTL 1.0 tutorial isn’t going to do me much good these days. I found old apps and zip files I didn’t even think I had. Who knows what else I’m going to find?

There’s still a long way to go before I feel comfortable with this machine. Codecs are still missing and there’s all those little apps you forget about until you need them. But, at the least the machine is running and I got my own stupidity in check. At least for now.