MD

The problem with any i7 machine at the moment is that you will probably pay double the price for only a 50% increase in performance but that will change when it becomes mainstream.

My guess is that Vista will run very well on the i7 although Windows 7 will be better and they won't be giving free upgrades for systems bought now.

Re post 7722.

Just thought I'd update............

Computer back with me now,grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

The PS shot up to 16V on the 12V rail-lolz

The only visible sign apart from looking at voltages was the DVD drive didn't work,well lights up and opens but that's it.Working ok now with new PS.

A brand new Corsair HX620W PS now busted!

So,new PS now in along with new 320GB HD.........no hope of me building a new comp.up this year now :-(

Anyway,made the Primary partition 80GB with the rest as an Extended partition-any thoughts as in right or wrong way of doing it? Cheers

I've never been able to see the advantage of partitioning a hard drive.

There is no reliability advantage, as a physical failiure will effect both partitions and there will be a theoretical performance hit. Also, there are plenty of badly written programs that will insist in useing at least some of the C: drive, plus the fact that every program uses registry settings on C.

Use a partition manager to get rid of the 2nd partition.

The theory about partioning was that if you make the C drive as small as possible it will make Windows & other C based programs run faster as there is less disk to search. With mega fast CPU's now & better hard drive pick ups, partioning has become a thing of the past. On old machines it's still an advantage, imo.

Morning all,

My thinking was on the lines of HARRYCAT's along with cutting the time of disk maintenance eg defrag

morning all

If I run XP and Linux without partitioning are there any benefits??

Todays disks have larger sector sizes and often have so much free space that even fragmentation has a lesser effect although I would always recommend it.

If your serious about defragmentation, then buy Diskeeper which will run continuously during idle time.

Bob

Instaling XP and Linux on the same partition would be difficult/impossible as they use very different file systems. If your machine is powerful enough, you could run one as a VM on the other.

Thanks Optimist

Think I will stick with dual boot. Its just that on my laptop XP seems slower now, Linux ubuntu runs fine.

Think this explains quite well and confirms what has been said here:

http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=326

Not a problem but can anybody recommend a good cheap laptop PC ? (Not HP which I will never buy) Thanks. Budget around 400 - 500 GBP

A while ago I gave up using an old laptop which no longer did plug and play with USB devices. An interchange on this thread eventually forced me to think about re-installing the operating system.

I'd like to use this as a way of exploring Linux. However, I now find it comes in various guises other than Ubuntu - which I thought was the only one.

Before I start I thought I'd check if there were any other Linux enthusiasts around here and, if so, which variant of Linux do they use.

TP

TP

The list is almost endless. Try Googling 'linux distros'.

I have tried a few but prefer OpenSuSe because it is full featured and Windows like and Damn Small Linux because it is a 50 MB distro which will run from a USB drive in RAM on any computer.

The problem with Linux is that although you can do most things with it, many parts have rough edges compared with Windows and it is not as intuitative to use. You also have to to do a lot of configuration from the command prompt.

It's well worth looking at though especially for server applications.

Edit

You can also get Live versions of many distros. these tend to be a bit slow (apart from Damn Small Linux) but they will run from the CD or DVD without touching the hard drive. Very good for testing.

TP - I've used a number of Linux distros over the years, but I've settled on Ubuntu in the last couple of years, because it's arguably the most popular 'consumer Linux' there is, so I feel there are generally fewer compatibility issues, it has a decent repositories, and more support in places like http://ubuntuforums.org/. I've also run Damn Small Linux from a USB drive as a way of accessing the Internet more securely from public computers overseas.

The two main problems with various Linux distros as far as I'm concerned are support for certain hardware can be patchy, and installing certain applications (via 'packages') can sometimes turn into a geek nightmare. If you never run into these issues, all well and good, but if you do, they can be absolute show-stoppers. For example, around three years ago I installed Ubuntu 6 on a Dell Inspiron portable - it wouldn't recognise the built-in wireless and the only way to fix it was to 'recompile the Kernel' - which is about as scary as it sounds. Ubuntu has improved a lot since then, and with the community support there's a lot less chance of having to get your hands dirty when things go wrong, or running into an unfixable problem. For me, right now it comes closest to passing the 'it just works' test, although it different people may have different experiences depending on their equipment.

It's worth testing the CD-based Live versions of various distros. If you just want to see what they look and feel like (it won't guarantee hardware compatibility on a natively installed operating system), you could try a system such as the Mokafive Player, which has a number of distros available as virtual machines (http://lab.mokafive.com/List) (some of these are a bit old now though).

I think I mentioned a while ago that I had a problem with the hard driveon my laptop. It's finally failed this week but, although I can't boot from it, I'm pretty sure that I'll still be able to access it to check that I've not left anything that I need on there.

It's a 2.5" IDE/ATA drive and won't fit the cables on my other machines (so I'm told). There seem to be a variety of gizmos on eBay which act as a sort of adapter which will convert the pins so that they all line up. Some seem to be USB based and others seem to go inside the machine.

Could somebody give me a pointer on the best thing to get please?

Hil, I think you need a drive caddy, I'm busy at the moment but will respond in detail in a few mins.

Don't email me, Flossie, it'll be a few more days yet before I get to see my emails properly. I might even be missing the Viagra spam by then.

:o)

Anyway, I think I've even got it sussed. I've really pushed the boat out and bid on a green think for 99p delivered all the way from Hong Kong.

OK Hiltops, all that work I did for you over the last 30 seconds was in vain. 99p? You know how to push the boat don't you.

Assume it's an IDE drive, the caddy makes the drive behave like a slave. Enjoy :-)

I looked at those caddies after your post, Flossie. It looks like you can pick them up for around a fiver.

My only thought is that the adapter that I've bid on will connect via a cable inside the machine, whereas the caddies (and something else that I looked at too) ran through a USB port. I wasn't sure if the direct connection might be better than the USB connection.

hilary,

Just a word of warning.

I bought two PC's from those Computer Doctor chappies that Exec recommends. The machines were perfect.

Two months on I convinced myself I ought to have the drives mounted in caddies.

They sourced two caddies, put them in both machines and one drive got totally thrashed by the caddie.

CD's were suitably apologetic and I had an Acronis back up of the drive so nothing was lost.

But it shows what a caddy can do..........

No reflection on Com Docs - but there is something inherantly dangerous about caddies it seems.

TP