I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel Pentium
733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the modern age. It
doesn't like playing H264 videos so I have to download Xvids or convert MP4s
to Xvid. However that takes ages. An hour or more to convert a 30 minute tv
program video file. I just looked its speed up on a cpu benchmark site.
Struth. It gets a speed of about 100 whereas even mid range modern pcs are
over 3000. A one hour file convert operation on this old thing would be 2
minutes or less on a modern pc and I wouldn't even need to do it in the
first place.

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc and
a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?
--
Dave Baker

On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 10:01:43 +0000, Dave Baker wrote:

I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel
Pentium 733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the modern
age. It doesn't like playing H264 videos so I have to download Xvids or
convert MP4s to Xvid. However that takes ages. An hour or more to
convert a 30 minute tv program video file. I just looked its speed up on
a cpu benchmark site. Struth. It gets a speed of about 100 whereas even
mid range modern pcs are over 3000. A one hour file convert operation on
this old thing would be 2 minutes or less on a modern pc and I wouldn't
even need to do it in the first place.

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc
and a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

Just put the old HDD in the new PC so that data is always available?

Not sure which programs you expect to move, but are you happy they will
run on a more modern OS?

More of a problem is likely to be any old hardware you have which needs
drivers.

Running your old OS (which is it?) in a VM on your new hardware might be
possible, but then again you might need drivers for some of the new
hardware bits?

Anyway, you will have to do it some time :-)

Cheers

Dave R

In article ,
Dave Baker wrote:
I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel
Pentium 733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the modern
age. It doesn't like playing H264 videos so I have to download Xvids or
convert MP4s to Xvid. However that takes ages. An hour or more to
convert a 30 minute tv program video file. I just looked its speed up
on a cpu benchmark site. Struth. It gets a speed of about 100 whereas
even mid range modern pcs are over 3000. A one hour file convert
operation on this old thing would be 2 minutes or less on a modern pc
and I wouldn't even need to do it in the first place.

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc
and a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

No reason why you can't transfer your existing HD to a new PC and add it
as an alternative OS? I have both Win7 and XP on this machine and get the
choice at boot. If your existing HD is IDE, you would have to make sure
your new machine has a port for that - or get an adaptor.

--
*When you've seen one shopping centre you've seen a mall*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 10:01:43 -0000
"Dave Baker" wrote:

I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel
Pentium 733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the
modern age. It doesn't like playing H264 videos so I have to download
Xvids or convert MP4s to Xvid. However that takes ages. An hour or
more to convert a 30 minute tv program video file. I just looked its
speed up on a cpu benchmark site. Struth. It gets a speed of about
100 whereas even mid range modern pcs are over 3000. A one hour file
convert operation on this old thing would be 2 minutes or less on a
modern pc and I wouldn't even need to do it in the first place.

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new
pc and a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

Sounds like my Windows Millenium Dell, that has long since been
relegated to Zoneminder duty. A modern PC will run rings around it
before it even finishes booting up, and that's with Ubuntu, which is
itself much faster starting than Windows. As mentioned by others, back
everything up to external HDDs (good practice anyway), and then all
subsequent upgrades are much easier (Never easy, just easier).
Personally, I back up all mail and documents every evening,
automatically.

--
Davey.

On 21 Feb 2014 10:59:18 GMT
Huge wrote:

On 2014-02-21, Dave Baker wrote:

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a
new pc and a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

*grin* Welcome to my world. I'm just setting up to move from Ubuntu
10.04 to 12.04. (Mostly because, increasingly, the latest versions of
applications will not run because their dependent libraries are too
old.) The first step was to move all my data onto a separate disk
from the O/S so I can upgrade the O/S by itself. That's now done and
working fine. So, what next?

Oh, the pain. Sigh.



Your experience may differ, and others here may have words of wisdom
for you, but in my case, that upgrade (in fact a fresh install) resulted
in a few problems. I needed to do it for the same reason as you.
Now, every time I boot, I get a couple of Error messages, both of which
are known bugs, and now I just Cancel them and move on; but they are
not fixable, they are just there, for ever, as far as I can see. The
other problem is that my laptop's Broadcomm Wireless card and 12.04LTS
have a problem with communicating, in that the correct drivers won't
activate. Another known bug, with no definitive and workable solution.
So I now need to use Win7 if I want to use WiFi. Oh well, but beware of
the change from 10.04 to 12.04.
--
Davey.

"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...

Having acquired my home PCs over the years, I have long since learned to
keep data on external USB drives, and the OS on a small internal drive.
Upgrading for me is either swapping or cloning the OS drive, and
reattaching the external drive(s).

Same here. Learned through (bitter) experience, always keep a folder on a
USB drive of all the original install files for the programs I use most, an
encrypted file of passwords, email account details etc., and a 2nd copy of
all "personal" files on the PC such as photos, music, important mails. I
suppose "the cloud" will become the USB external drive in the next few
years.

I try and work on the basis that if my PC or laptop becomes completely
unusable or stolen, I can carry on with 99% of what I had before.

On 21/02/14 10:01, Dave Baker wrote:
I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel
Pentium 733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the modern
age. It doesn't like playing H264 videos so I have to download Xvids or
convert MP4s to Xvid. However that takes ages. An hour or more to
convert a 30 minute tv program video file. I just looked its speed up on
a cpu benchmark site. Struth. It gets a speed of about 100 whereas even
mid range modern pcs are over 3000. A one hour file convert operation on
this old thing would be 2 minutes or less on a modern pc and I wouldn't
even need to do it in the first place.

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc
and a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

[Sorry - hit reply instead of followup - just switched to Thunderbird
for USENET, not used to knobs]

First, get organised - have all your "files" under one root directory,
akin to "home" on unix. Even better - on a separate partition.

Then at least that part becomes just a copy over (even if the copy takes
ages you don't need to think about it).

Programs - reinstall as you need - I often find that half the cruft I
installed I don't actually use!

HTH
Tim

In article , Huge wrote:
On 2014-02-21, Dave Baker wrote:

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc and
a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

*grin* Welcome to my world. I'm just setting up to move from Ubuntu 10.04 to
12.04. (Mostly because, increasingly, the latest versions of applications
will not run because their dependent libraries are too old.) The first
step was to move all my data onto a separate disk from the O/S so I can
upgrade the O/S by itself. That's now done and working fine. So, what
next?

Type "sudo do-release-upgrade". Terrible, isn't it :-).

(Yeah, I know it doesn't always work first time for everyone. I've only
done it on machines where everything was backed up elsewhere anyway and
a clean re-install (or creation of a replacement VM) wouldn't have lost
anything that mattered.)

Currently wondering whether the replacement for my aging Windows XP machine
will be a newer Windows machine, or a Linux machine with a Windows VM.

On 21/02/14 10:59, Huge wrote:
On 2014-02-21, Dave Baker wrote:

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc and
a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

*grin* Welcome to my world. I'm just setting up to move from Ubuntu 10.04 to
12.04. (Mostly because, increasingly, the latest versions of applications
will not run because their dependent libraries are too old.) The first
step was to move all my data onto a separate disk from the O/S so I can
upgrade the O/S by itself. That's now done and working fine. So, what
next?

Oh, the pain. Sigh.


Last time I did an upgrade, due to the fact that everything is indeed
backed up all the time, it took less than a day to get up and running -
yea even unto simply copying the old windows VM back to the new machine
and telling virtual box to use it.

Of course it was a great opportunity to not copy a lot of stuff back.

I left it for 6 month or so on the basis that if it was needed, I had
it, and if in 6 months it wasn't, then a good time to delete it anyway.


--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

In message , Dave Baker
writes

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new
pc and a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

I'm in the same position - see various other threads :-)

This time, I have just stuffed the old hard drive into the newer PC, and
copy stuff over when I think about it. Last time, I bought a KVM
thingy, which worked very well. It meant both boxes had to be running,
of course, but only one keyboard/monitor/mouse cluttering up the desk,
and again, I just did it over time.

That was data, of course. Regarding programs, I rarely copy from one
drive to another. These days it is just as easy to download again, or
install from the CD. The only 'settings' I copy over are Turnpike,
Firefox and desktop shortcuts to external links.

Regarding buying a new PC, last time I just bought whatever was on
special offer at Tesco. Probably not the very latest model, but a huge
improvement on the old one it replaced!
--
Graeme

On 21/02/2014 10:36, David.WE.Roberts wrote:
On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 10:01:43 +0000, Dave Baker wrote:

I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel
Pentium 733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the modern
age. It doesn't like playing H264 videos so I have to download Xvids or
convert MP4s to Xvid. However that takes ages. An hour or more to
convert a 30 minute tv program video file. I just looked its speed up on
a cpu benchmark site. Struth. It gets a speed of about 100 whereas even
mid range modern pcs are over 3000. A one hour file convert operation on
this old thing would be 2 minutes or less on a modern pc and I wouldn't
even need to do it in the first place.

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc
and a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

Just put the old HDD in the new PC so that data is always available?

Not sure which programs you expect to move, but are you happy they will
run on a more modern OS?

More of a problem is likely to be any old hardware you have which needs
drivers.

If you go to the microsoft site and download the Win 7 or Win 8
compatibility checker and run it on your machine. It will identify the
hardware and software that might have problems with your chosen OS.

Running your old OS (which is it?) in a VM on your new hardware might be
possible, but then again you might need drivers for some of the new
hardware bits?

There ought not be to much that can't be brought forward... old version
of MS office prior to 2002 can be difficult - but then any of the
compatible suites will replace those.



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Friday, February 21, 2014 10:01:43 AM UTC, Dave Baker wrote:
I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel Pentium
733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the modern age. It
doesn't like playing H264 videos so I have to download Xvids or convert MP4s
to Xvid. However that takes ages. An hour or more to convert a 30 minute tv
program video file. I just looked its speed up on a cpu benchmark site.
Struth. It gets a speed of about 100 whereas even mid range modern pcs are
over 3000. A one hour file convert operation on this old thing would be 2
minutes or less on a modern pc and I wouldn't even need to do it in the
first place.
Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc and
a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

P3 733, ouch. Win2k or 98 presumably. Most of this can be done in no time:
- buy a pc without OS (why pay £80/100 for a crap OS?)
- put linux mint or similar on it
- get a SATA/PATA adaptor and put your old HDD into the PC

Now, linux has almost every app you need already installed, your data's all there on the old hdd. You can even run many apps from the old disc under linux, but its better to use native linux apps. Desktop linuxes come with a vast repository of tested securely held apps you can install, dont go grab apps from the wild like you do with windows. Easy. Just one thing you need to know: in some versions of linux, to read a hdd you have to tell it to mount it first. These days you can sit a windows only user in front of linux and they can do almost everything with no training. Believe me, you wont look back.


NT

On 21/02/2014 13:16, John Rumm wrote:
On 21/02/2014 10:36, David.WE.Roberts wrote:
On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 10:01:43 +0000, Dave Baker wrote:

I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel
Pentium 733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the modern
age. It doesn't like playing H264 videos so I have to download Xvids or
convert MP4s to Xvid. However that takes ages.
[snip]

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc
and a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

Just put the old HDD in the new PC so that data is always available?

But back it all up to a USB drive or external hard drive first.

I used to swap physical disks back in the days when new disks were not
so huge. These days I just put both on the network and copy over any
data I still want to have accessible on the newest machine. My oldest
Win98 machine is sulking at the moment I think its PSU has blown up.

I can't get rid because I do have a small number of exotic programs from
way back when that will only work on that or in raw DOS 6.xx. Mostly
EPROM programmers or ancient SCSI perhipherals of that era.

Not sure which programs you expect to move, but are you happy they will
run on a more modern OS?

A surprising number will although stuff that does direct peeky pokey IO
on printer ports for ancient legacy EPROM programmers are a PITA.

More of a problem is likely to be any old hardware you have which needs
drivers.

Especially HP they delight in not supporting Vista/Win7/Win8 on
excellent hardware of that vintage that would otherwise live forever.
You can usually find XP drivers for most of their old gear though.

If you go to the microsoft site and download the Win 7 or Win 8
compatibility checker and run it on your machine. It will identify the
hardware and software that might have problems with your chosen OS.

On 15 year old hardware you have to be kidding!

There probably isn't enough memory installed to run the compatibility
checker and AV at the same time never mind install a modern OS.

Running your old OS (which is it?) in a VM on your new hardware might be
possible, but then again you might need drivers for some of the new
hardware bits?

There ought not be to much that can't be brought forward... old version
of MS office prior to 2002 can be difficult - but then any of the
compatible suites will replace those.

I thought only the versions of Office that demanded ET phone home
validation (and ET still there) were a bother for legacy installations.

I confess it isn't a problem that has ever bothered me.

The tricky question these days is to decide whether to just have a
tablet, portable or a desktop machine. I honestly think the days of the
home desktop/floor standing PC are now seriously numbered.

Dabs has a reasonable spec 15" portable for about £300 and really good
ones can be had for around the £500 mark. My last portable was bought in
a hurry from CeX of all places because mine died badly (hardware failure
of keyboard, mouse and USB). I needed one that afternoon and I knew they
had one at a local store that would do the job Samsung RX711.

I reckon all other things being equal you should change PC at least
every 6 years or when speed is 3x faster whichever happens first.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 21/02/2014 13:56, Martin Brown wrote:
On 21/02/2014 13:16, John Rumm wrote:
On 21/02/2014 10:36, David.WE.Roberts wrote:
On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 10:01:43 +0000, Dave Baker wrote:

I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel
Pentium 733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the modern
age. It doesn't like playing H264 videos so I have to download Xvids or
convert MP4s to Xvid. However that takes ages.
[snip]

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a
new pc
and a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

Just put the old HDD in the new PC so that data is always available?

Especially HP they delight in not supporting Vista/Win7/Win8 on
excellent hardware of that vintage that would otherwise live forever.
You can usually find XP drivers for most of their old gear though.

If you go to the microsoft site and download the Win 7 or Win 8
compatibility checker and run it on your machine. It will identify the
hardware and software that might have problems with your chosen OS.

On 15 year old hardware you have to be kidding!

The age of the hardware is not really that relevant.

To be fair I am assuming he is running at least Win XP SP2 or later...
If that is the case the the upgrade advisor will work ok:

Win 7 version

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downl...ils.aspx?id=20

There probably isn't enough memory installed to run the compatibility
checker and AV at the same time never mind install a modern OS.

I think you are missing my point. I was not suggesting that he install a
new OS on the old machine, simply use the upgrade adviser to identify
any applications and peripherals that he has that are not supported on
the new machine.

Running your old OS (which is it?) in a VM on your new hardware might be
possible, but then again you might need drivers for some of the new
hardware bits?

There ought not be to much that can't be brought forward... old version
of MS office prior to 2002 can be difficult - but then any of the
compatible suites will replace those.

I thought only the versions of Office that demanded ET phone home
validation (and ET still there) were a bother for legacy installations.

Version 2002 (aka Office XP) or older did not follow Microsoft's own
developers guidelines, and hence won't work properly on the more
restrictive security model of later OSes. Office 2003 can be made to
work (you need to run it the first time with admin privs until it has
activated etc). Later ones are ok without any further hoops to jump
through.

Keys can be recovered for old software with Magical Jelly Bean and
similar applications.

I confess it isn't a problem that has ever bothered me.

The tricky question these days is to decide whether to just have a
tablet, portable or a desktop machine. I honestly think the days of the
home desktop/floor standing PC are now seriously numbered.

For casual use at home you are probably right. For people involved in
originating content of any sort, I can't see them giving up more fully
featured machines yet.

Dabs has a reasonable spec 15" portable for about £300 and really good
ones can be had for around the £500 mark. My last portable was bought in
a hurry from CeX of all places because mine died badly (hardware failure
of keyboard, mouse and USB). I needed one that afternoon and I knew they
had one at a local store that would do the job Samsung RX711.

Laptops etc are fine if you are content with the small keyboards and
displays. {Personally I don't find them very comfortable to use, so
don't unless the situation requires it)

I reckon all other things being equal you should change PC at least
every 6 years or when speed is 3x faster whichever happens first.

Moore's law ought to make that every 4.5 years then ;-)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

Well you could upgrade to a not so old one I suppose.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Dave Baker" wrote in message
...
I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel
Pentium 733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the modern
age. It doesn't like playing H264 videos so I have to download Xvids or
convert MP4s to Xvid. However that takes ages. An hour or more to convert
a 30 minute tv program video file. I just looked its speed up on a cpu
benchmark site. Struth. It gets a speed of about 100 whereas even mid
range modern pcs are over 3000. A one hour file convert operation on this
old thing would be 2 minutes or less on a modern pc and I wouldn't even
need to do it in the first place.

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc
and a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?
--
Dave Baker

The problem is that all windows software needs to be reinstalled, though a
surprising number can now be used portably I notice.

Yes keeping data anywhere is not the issue as its easy to copy, its the
programs that nono longer exist, or work and the change in interface etc
that really sucks. Its often worse for me as I have to configure them as
many do not work for the blind as out of the box.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 10:01:43 +0000, Dave Baker wrote:

I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel
Pentium 733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the modern
age. It doesn't like playing H264 videos so I have to download Xvids or
convert MP4s to Xvid. However that takes ages. An hour or more to
convert a 30 minute tv program video file. I just looked its speed up on
a cpu benchmark site. Struth. It gets a speed of about 100 whereas even
mid range modern pcs are over 3000. A one hour file convert operation on
this old thing would be 2 minutes or less on a modern pc and I wouldn't
even need to do it in the first place.

Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc
and a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

Having acquired my home PCs over the years, I have long since learned to
keep data on external USB drives, and the OS on a small internal drive.
Upgrading for me is either swapping or cloning the OS drive, and
reattaching the external drive(s).

But that's Linux ...

In message ,
writes
On Friday, February 21, 2014 10:01:43 AM UTC, Dave Baker wrote:
I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel Pentium
733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the modern age. It
doesn't like playing H264 videos so I have to download Xvids or convert MP4s
to Xvid. However that takes ages. An hour or more to convert a 30 minute tv
program video file. I just looked its speed up on a cpu benchmark site.
Struth. It gets a speed of about 100 whereas even mid range modern pcs are
over 3000. A one hour file convert operation on this old thing would be 2
minutes or less on a modern pc and I wouldn't even need to do it in the
first place.
Oh but what a ****ing pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc and
a new operating system. Days of work. Can I be arsed?

P3 733, ouch. Win2k or 98 presumably. Most of this can be done in no time:
- buy a pc without OS (why pay £80/100 for a crap OS?)
- put linux mint or similar on it
- get a SATA/PATA adaptor and put your old HDD into the PC

How many places can you save 80/100 by buying machine without Windows
(as opposed to building your own).?

Given that volume licensing costs are nothing like that much for system
builders.

--
Chris French

"Dave Baker" wrote in message
...

I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel
Pentium 733 mHz that refuses to die .....

I don't feckin believe it. The more or less exact second I post how it's
worked faultlessly for 14 years I fire up VLC media player to watch a tv
prog I'd downloaded and there's no frigging sound. The pc is hooked up to my
trusty NAD 3020 amp which is heading for 40 years old and thence to the KEF
Celeste IV speakers bought at the same time. Beautiful sound quality and I
don't even have a hifi as such anymore. I just use Winamp to play my record
collection of mp3s from the pc hard disc.

Anyhoo, tit about cluelessly for half an hour wiggling the phono lead from
the pc to the amp, jiggling the volume control knob on the amp, opening up
the pc, gagging at the amount of stinky brown fluff and crap that's
accumulated in there in the 2 years since I moved house, brush most of that
out with a toothbrush which at least has probably helped the almost totally
blocked power supply and cpu fans to cool things properly, tapping the
various electrickery things inside the pc with the end of the toothbrush
which is my go-to solution for all electronic problems as I have no feckin
idea how any of them work. All I succeed in doing is finding the mouse
pointer has now frozen so I reboot the pc which was probably a good idea
anyway as it just stays on for weeks at a time but still no feckin sound.

Need to establish whether it's the pc motherboard sound card or the amp, or
maybe even just the phono lead. Scratch head, rack brains, there's my old
hifi cassette player somewhere but god knows where and even less chance of
finding any leads for it. Hmmmm, idea. If I fire up the old laptop which I
haven't used for 18 months since the screen stopped working I can plug the
amp into the speaker socket of that, use the desktop monitor as a screen via
the external monitor port on the laptop and see if that will play music or
video. That will at least establish if it's the pc motherboard or not. Scrat
around to eventually find the laptop tucked away in one of the spare
bedrooms. Bring it back to the kitchen. ********, need the power supply
charger thingy. Where the feck's that? Another 30 minutes to find that. More
********. I forgot it has a two pin continental type plug and there's an
adaptor that goes into the wall socket first. Another 30 minutes and that
finally turns up in yet another room.

Get the whole shebang fired up with the amp plugged into the laptop and
fecking arse tits bollockery buggery still no bloody sound!

Very ****ed off now, especially as looks like my gorgeous NAD 3020 is the
thing that's kapput. Decide to at least tidy up the kitchen where the pc is
as I've spent so much time moving piles of paperwork, books, deodorant, nail
clippers and all the other crap I just fill the worktops with rather than
store them somewhere sensible while trying to find the continental plug
adaptor and other things. Shift loads of old paperwork to a spare room, move
the floor broom, the handle of which is leaning against the amp front panel
because my pet ferret Brutus knocked it over when he was having a belt round
the place this morning after being let out of his cage. Idly wonder what all
those buttons on the panel do that say aux, tuner, phono, tape because it's
been so many years since I touched any of them.

Press a couple at random just for ****s and giggles. Suddenly realise, hang
on a sec, which one needs to be pressed in for the pc sound to work? Must be
the aux one. Why was the phono one the one that was in? Press the aux one in
which pops the phono one back out, fire up a video in vlc - ahaaaa, sound

Bloody ferret! He's knocked the broom handle into the amp, switched the
buttons from aux to phono and caused me several hours of pointless
buggeration and hair pulling.

The ironic thing is the only reason I'm using such an old pc in the first
place is because my previous ferret Verity broke my last proper pc which was
an AMD 1400 or summat when I had the case open for something and she climbed
up to have a look round and tipped a can of coke into it. Fried the bugger
completely. I borrowed the old slow pentium from a mate as a stopgap and am
still using it 8 years later.

So apparently the entirety of my computer problems for basically the last
decade have been ferret related rather than hardware related. Not quite sure
what to make of that as a moral for life.

Brutus, if I didn't love you more than just about anything in the world I'd
spank your hairy little arse but then you have no idea what you did and
never meant any of it anyway.
--
Dave Baker

On 21/02/2014 19:49, Brian Gaff wrote:
Yes keeping data anywhere is not the issue as its easy to copy, its the
programs that nono longer exist, or work and the change in interface etc
that really sucks. Its often worse for me as I have to configure them as
many do not work for the blind as out of the box.
Brian

Wondering if you have tried the new Marks & Spencer website?

Aside from the phenomenally insulting "You are in a queue" message that
so many people got when trying to get onto the site, I immediately
thought it looked awful for anyone with vision issues.

Or is there a special version of the site for those who experience
difficulties? Haven't looked yet.


["Style & Living - Marks & Spencer
www.marksandspencer.com/s/style-and-living€Ž
Please bear with us. We are experiencing a higher than usual number of
customers. You're put in a queue. Please don't close this window. It
will refresh ..."]

--
Rod

On Friday, February 21, 2014 9:02:58 PM UTC, chris French wrote:
In message ,
writes

- P3 733, ouch. Win2k or 98 presumably. Most of this can be done in no time:
- buy a pc without OS (why pay £80/100 for a crap OS?)
- put linux mint or similar on it
- get a SATA/PATA adaptor and put your old HDD into the PC

How many places can you save 80/100 by buying machine without Windows
(as opposed to building your own).?
Given that volume licensing costs are nothing like that much for system
builders.

I forget who the last one was from, but there are various companies that'll make you a pc. Argos do a good deal on an OSless system. It simply doesnt make sense to buy windows now, especially with all the idiocy of win8.


NT

On 21/02/14 21:20, Dave Baker wrote:

"Dave Baker" wrote in message
...

I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel
Pentium 733 mHz that refuses to die .....

I don't feckin believe it. The more or less exact second I post how it's
worked faultlessly for 14 years I fire up VLC media player to watch a tv
prog I'd downloaded and there's no frigging sound. The pc is hooked up
to my trusty NAD 3020 amp which is heading for 40 years old and thence
to the KEF Celeste IV speakers bought at the same time. Beautiful sound
quality and I don't even have a hifi as such anymore. I just use Winamp
to play my record collection of mp3s from the pc hard disc.

Anyhoo, tit about cluelessly for half an hour wiggling the phono lead
from the pc to the amp, jiggling the volume control knob on the amp,
opening up the pc, gagging at the amount of stinky brown fluff and crap
that's accumulated in there in the 2 years since I moved house, brush
most of that out with a toothbrush which at least has probably helped
the almost totally blocked power supply and cpu fans to cool things
properly, tapping the various electrickery things inside the pc with the
end of the toothbrush which is my go-to solution for all electronic
problems as I have no feckin idea how any of them work. All I succeed in
doing is finding the mouse pointer has now frozen so I reboot the pc
which was probably a good idea anyway as it just stays on for weeks at a
time but still no feckin sound.

Need to establish whether it's the pc motherboard sound card or the amp,
or maybe even just the phono lead. Scratch head, rack brains, there's my
old hifi cassette player somewhere but god knows where and even less
chance of finding any leads for it. Hmmmm, idea. If I fire up the old
laptop which I haven't used for 18 months since the screen stopped
working I can plug the amp into the speaker socket of that, use the
desktop monitor as a screen via the external monitor port on the laptop
and see if that will play music or video. That will at least establish
if it's the pc motherboard or not. Scrat around to eventually find the
laptop tucked away in one of the spare bedrooms. Bring it back to the
kitchen. ********, need the power supply charger thingy. Where the
feck's that? Another 30 minutes to find that. More ********. I forgot it
has a two pin continental type plug and there's an adaptor that goes
into the wall socket first. Another 30 minutes and that finally turns up
in yet another room.

Get the whole shebang fired up with the amp plugged into the laptop and
fecking arse tits bollockery buggery still no bloody sound!

Very ****ed off now, especially as looks like my gorgeous NAD 3020 is
the thing that's kapput. Decide to at least tidy up the kitchen where
the pc is as I've spent so much time moving piles of paperwork, books,
deodorant, nail clippers and all the other crap I just fill the worktops
with rather than store them somewhere sensible while trying to find the
continental plug adaptor and other things. Shift loads of old paperwork
to a spare room, move the floor broom, the handle of which is leaning
against the amp front panel because my pet ferret Brutus knocked it over
when he was having a belt round the place this morning after being let
out of his cage. Idly wonder what all those buttons on the panel do that
say aux, tuner, phono, tape because it's been so many years since I
touched any of them.

Press a couple at random just for ****s and giggles. Suddenly realise,
hang on a sec, which one needs to be pressed in for the pc sound to
work? Must be the aux one. Why was the phono one the one that was in?
Press the aux one in which pops the phono one back out, fire up a video
in vlc - ahaaaa, sound

Bloody ferret! He's knocked the broom handle into the amp, switched the
buttons from aux to phono and caused me several hours of pointless
buggeration and hair pulling.

The ironic thing is the only reason I'm using such an old pc in the
first place is because my previous ferret Verity broke my last proper pc
which was an AMD 1400 or summat when I had the case open for something
and she climbed up to have a look round and tipped a can of coke into
it. Fried the bugger completely. I borrowed the old slow pentium from a
mate as a stopgap and am still using it 8 years later.

So apparently the entirety of my computer problems for basically the
last decade have been ferret related rather than hardware related. Not
quite sure what to make of that as a moral for life.

Brutus, if I didn't love you more than just about anything in the world
I'd spank your hairy little arse but then you have no idea what you did
and never meant any of it anyway.
whole afternoon yestrday trying to work out why a program that encrypts
could decrypt, and another one also could do that, but using the SAME
library routines they could not encode on one and decode the other..

Note to self. Encoding with a null key because your little program didnt
call the setup routine to get the key from a Very Secret Place is not
that helpful...

--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

In message ,
writes
On Friday, February 21, 2014 9:02:58 PM UTC, chris French wrote:
In message ,
writes

- P3 733, ouch. Win2k or 98 presumably. Most of this can be done in no time:
- buy a pc without OS (why pay £80/100 for a crap OS?)
- put linux mint or similar on it
- get a SATA/PATA adaptor and put your old HDD into the PC

How many places can you save 80/100 by buying machine without Windows
(as opposed to building your own).?
Given that volume licensing costs are nothing like that much for system
builders.

I forget who the last one was from, but there are various companies
that'll make you a pc. Argos do a good deal on an OSless system. It
simply doesnt make sense to buy windows now, especially with all the
idiocy of win8.


I don't doubt you can get them, just that you will save that much
money
--
Chris French

There ought not be to much that can't be brought forward... old version
of MS office prior to 2002 can be difficult - but then any of the
compatible suites will replace those.

I thought only the versions of Office that demanded ET phone home
validation (and ET still there) were a bother for legacy installations.



Give Kingsoft free office a try, about the same as M$ orifice;!..

http://www.kingsoftstore.co.uk/




I confess it isn't a problem that has ever bothered me.

The tricky question these days is to decide whether to just have a
tablet, portable or a desktop machine. I honestly think the days of the
home desktop/floor standing PC are now seriously numbered.

Sod that!, much prefer the proper keyboard for my xxx size mitts and
decent controllable mouse and the nice large screen

And no batteries to run down.

CAT 5 cable connected no interfered with wireless etc;!...

--
Tony Sayer

On 21/02/2014 10:59, Huge wrote:
*grin* Welcome to my world. I'm just setting up to move from Ubuntu 10.04 to
12.04. (Mostly because, increasingly, the latest versions of applications
will not run because their dependent libraries are too old.) The first
step was to move all my data onto a separate disk from the O/S so I can
upgrade the O/S by itself. That's now done and working fine. So, what
next?

Oh, the pain. Sigh.

fx looks up at Jethro's post

So it's just as bad. I thought so. Certainly the impression I've gained
from 6 months of using Linux professionally for the first time.

BTW I upgraded my machine with new HW, Win7 not XP, and an SSD. The old
OS disc is still bootable - but is now a secondary to the SSD.

Andy

On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 10:01:43 +0000, Dave Baker wrote:

I've managed for years now with a 14 year old, 2000 year model Intel
Pentium 733 mHz that refuses to die but is just too slow for the modern
age.

My 1982 HP 286 is still going fine. With a decent operating system, it
can be faster for some tasks than your fancy modern PCs.
The main problem is that I can transfer files only via floppy disks, so I
have to keep a more modern machine that has a floppy drive.

Martin Brown wrote:

I honestly think the days of the
home desktop/floor standing PC are now seriously numbered.

As do I up to a point .

There is a need for 'desktops' as 'content creators' (say a tenth of
what are used now) whilst a tablet/netbook are all that is required in
90% of cases as most people consume content (Netflix, YouTube etc) or do
very minimal creation such as Facebook, Twitter etc.

So gone are the days of every second house having a desktop but they
are still required in some cases just no-where near the amount there is
now.

On Friday, February 21, 2014 10:47:05 PM UTC, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 21/02/2014 10:59, Huge wrote:

BTW I upgraded my machine with new HW, Win7 not XP, and an SSD. The old
OS disc is still bootable - but is now a secondary to the SSD.
Andy

An SSD is a great performance booster, but they have major file corruption problems, so are best only used for the OS. Read up about that first.


NT

On 22/02/14 09:33, wrote:
On Friday, February 21, 2014 10:47:05 PM UTC, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 21/02/2014 10:59, Huge wrote:

BTW I upgraded my machine with new HW, Win7 not XP, and an SSD. The old
OS disc is still bootable - but is now a secondary to the SSD.
Andy

An SSD is a great performance booster, but they have major file corruption problems, so are best only used for the OS. Read up about that first.

If you buy a crap one (like I did first time around).

However, a decent one such as the SanDisk SDSSDXP1 and SanDisk SDSSDXP2
(I have one in my server and one in my laptop) have both been faultless
for 6 months.

They also (unlike a lot of others) sport a SMART wear indicator that
gives a graceful warning if they are approaching expiry (in terms of
block erase cycles).

Highly recommended.

Tim

In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:
The tricky question these days is to decide whether to just have a
tablet, portable or a desktop machine. I honestly think the days of the
home desktop/floor standing PC are now seriously numbered.

Depends on what you do, I suppose. I just love the 24" monitor on this one
and the proper keyboard and mouse. By the time you've added those to a
laptop you might as well still have a desktop. And keep the laptop etc for
where you really need a portable machine.

--
*Prepositions are not words to end sentences with *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Depends on what you do, I suppose. I just love the 24" monitor on this one
and the proper keyboard and mouse. By the time you've added those to a
laptop you might as well still have a desktop. And keep the laptop etc for
where you really need a portable machine.

Absolutely. And then once you have worked with twin screens for a
while (1), you really don't want to go back.

(1) A lot more practical nowadays than when I first did it with
CRTs

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK


Plant amazing Acers.

On Friday, 21 February 2014 10:36:13 UTC, David.WE.Roberts wrote:
On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 10:01:43 +0000, Dave Baker wrote:

14 year old, Intel Pentium III I have to download Xvids or
convert MP4s to Xvid. However that takes ages.
Oh but what a pain moving all the files and programs to a new pc
and a new operating system. Days of work.

Just put the old HDD in the new PC so that data is always available?
Not sure which programs you expect to move, but are you happy they will
run on a more modern OS?

Running your old OS (which is it?) in a VM on your new hardware might be
possible, but then again you might need drivers for some of the new
hardware bits.

Put a modern Linux OS on a partition. That will find the stuff you want. Save it to a modern flash drive get one larger than your files they are very cheap these days and you can just plug that in whatever computer you use.

Buy a new computer with as much RAM as you can afford as it is going to be used for video so get one with a suitable video card, though you probably won't need one -but it would be an idea once you have maxed-out on the RAM.

I presume you will want Windows. It does do video better than Linux because the hardware manufacturers are in bed with Microsoft. You'll get Windows with the machine anyway.

Put a popular Linux OS on it as well and use that exclusively for surfing online, then you will save yourself hours and hours not bothering about security and updates.

Use those saved 2 to 4 hours every week to copy your files. You should be able to transfer a lot of stuff with a modern Linux OS provided you get advice about the most suitable version.

What you could do is look on your local Freecycle for someone throwing away a perfectly good computer running XP or Vista, get some RAM for that if you can and put your old hard drive in that. It will make copying a comparative pleasure. Again I'd put a Linux version on that, Ubuntu 10 if you can find it.

Ubuntu 10 or 10.1 will have all the drivers for that machine and you won't have to bother about internet software; it will sort that at install.

You probably won't be able to swap the hard drive from that to the new machine you ought to buy as the data ribbon with be completely different. But you might be so happy with a P4 running Ubuntu, that you won't shift from there for years.

In which case, you won't even have to shell out on a USB drive, you tight wad.

Chris J Dixon wrote
Dave Plowman (News) wrote

Depends on what you do, I suppose. I just love the 24" monitor on
this one and the proper keyboard and mouse. By the time you've
added those to a laptop you might as well still have a desktop.
And keep the laptop etc for where you really need a portable machine.

Absolutely. And then once you have worked with twin
screens for a while (1), you really don't want to go back.

Yeah, not argument there. And when the machine is also the
PVR, a desktop has a lot of advantages over a laptop too.

(1) A lot more practical nowadays than when I first did it with CRTs

On Saturday, February 22, 2014 10:23:42 AM UTC, Tim Watts wrote:
On 22/02/14 09:33, wrote:
On Friday, February 21, 2014 10:47:05 PM UTC, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 21/02/2014 10:59, Huge wrote:

BTW I upgraded my machine with new HW, Win7 not XP, and an SSD. The old
OS disc is still bootable - but is now a secondary to the SSD.
Andy

An SSD is a great performance booster, but they have major file corruption problems, so are best only used for the OS. Read up about that first.
If you buy a crap one (like I did first time around).
However, a decent one such as the SanDisk SDSSDXP1 and SanDisk SDSSDXP2
(I have one in my server and one in my laptop) have both been faultless
for 6 months.
They also (unlike a lot of others) sport a SMART wear indicator that
gives a graceful warning if they are approaching expiry (in terms of
block erase cycles).
Highly recommended.
Tim

IIRC Sandisk failed the tests, as did all brands but intel. The problem is if power goes off during a write, massive corruption is liable to result.


NT

On 22/02/14 15:40, Huge wrote:
On 2014-02-21, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 21/02/2014 10:59, Huge wrote:
*grin* Welcome to my world. I'm just setting up to move from Ubuntu 10.04 to
12.04. (Mostly because, increasingly, the latest versions of applications
will not run because their dependent libraries are too old.) The first
step was to move all my data onto a separate disk from the O/S so I can
upgrade the O/S by itself. That's now done and working fine. So, what
next?

Oh, the pain. Sigh.

fx looks up at Jethro's post

So it's just as bad. I thought so. Certainly the impression I've gained
from 6 months of using Linux professionally for the first time.

W-e-e-e-e-e-e-llll. I *have* been running this Linux for 4 years without
upgrading and probably could keep going for some time, but I have a specific
requirement for some recent software which whinges about out of date
libraries.

And in that its no different - in fact its worse - on say MAC OSX or
Windows.

Wife runs a G5 power PC. Not Intel. Because old programs that cost a LOT
of money are on it.

Guess what cant get latest firefox for it, safari is bug ridden and
there is no way to upgrade it beyond leopard.


And sites that ONLY WORK on latest browsers don't work..Its stuck with
an ages old version of word, because newer versions don't run on power PC.

Got a new printer 'mac compatible'

Was it F***k

Drivers said 'upgrade to later OS or f*** off'.

Got it working with free code. Its now running libre office as well.

Got old hardware? latest windows wont support it. Got New hardware?
wont run on older windows.

Linux has support for floppy disks still..

The point is that maintaining backwards compatibility is hell for any
OS, but its *better* with linux than anything else.

You don't have to buy new hardware and anew licensed copy of
windows/OS-X every couple of years to keep up with the new .docx format.

Microsoft and Mac want you to buy new kit, Linux doesn't., its kept on
supporting old kit because the codes been written and wont be REMOVED
any time soon.

I've got drivers for a 10 year plus old Nvidia GPU that works perfectly
well.

Yes, it takes about 2 years for linux to catch up with the latest
bleeding edge hardware, but so what? don't buy bleeding edge hardware.

Upgrading the distro is something you do once a year once every 2 years
once every 5 years. Whatever. Driven by the need to get access to new
software that will only run on later libraries.

Or the need to get better hardware going.

It's not hard to upgrade. Hive off the home directory somewhere, and any
other useful stuff in /var or /etc. wipe and do a clean reinstall, copy
home dir back and chances are everything will just 'work'

Heck its often possible to upgrade without backing up. For minor
releases anyway.

And the final thing is that the support IS THERE.

I've cut and pasted stuff on the web more than once straight into the
command line and 'fixed' some issue.

Impossible to find any support for Macs. Even Apples own support pages
for 10.4 have been removed.

And the usual advice for Windows is 'reinstall'

Nope. Give me linux.



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On 22/02/14 19:36, wrote:
On Saturday, February 22, 2014 10:23:42 AM UTC, Tim Watts wrote:
On 22/02/14 09:33, wrote:
On Friday, February 21, 2014 10:47:05 PM UTC, Vir Campestris wrote:
On 21/02/2014 10:59, Huge wrote:

BTW I upgraded my machine with new HW, Win7 not XP, and an SSD. The old
OS disc is still bootable - but is now a secondary to the SSD.
Andy

An SSD is a great performance booster, but they have major file corruption problems, so are best only used for the OS. Read up about that first.
If you buy a crap one (like I did first time around).
However, a decent one such as the SanDisk SDSSDXP1 and SanDisk SDSSDXP2
(I have one in my server and one in my laptop) have both been faultless
for 6 months.
They also (unlike a lot of others) sport a SMART wear indicator that
gives a graceful warning if they are approaching expiry (in terms of
block erase cycles).
Highly recommended.
Tim

IIRC Sandisk failed the tests, as did all brands but intel. The problem is if power goes off during a write, massive corruption is liable to result.


To be fair that's the case with any disk

Its just that some NVRAM has bigger 'sectors'



NT



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

Chris J Dixon wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Depends on what you do, I suppose. I just love the 24" monitor on this one
and the proper keyboard and mouse. By the time you've added those to a
laptop you might as well still have a desktop. And keep the laptop etc for
where you really need a portable machine.

Absolutely. And then once you have worked with twin screens for a
while (1), you really don't want to go back.

When I use the laptop I feel I'm riding a bike. When I use my desktop
machines with twin screens I feel I'm back in the car.

When I use my phone for the internet or email I feel like I'm on foot
with a ball and chain.

Bill

wrote:

IIRC Sandisk failed the tests, as did all brands but intel. The
problem is if power goes off during a write, massive corruption is
liable to result.

I've not looked for 2-3 years, but some SSD drives have an
ultra-capacitor which provides juice long enough for the controller to
flush the write buffers.

On 23/02/14 04:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Wife runs a G5 power PC. Not Intel. Because old programs that cost a LOT
of money are on it.

Guess what cant get latest firefox for it, safari is bug ridden and
there is no way to upgrade it beyond leopard.

I have concluded that Apple are *******s.

I have a 4.5 year old iPhone that still works perfectly as a piece of
hardware.

However it is effectively dead as almost no apps are installable and the
App Store is too stupid to either offer older compatible versions or at
least just show me the apps that ARE installable.

After a lot of click, OK, ERROR I got fed up...

On 23/02/14 09:37, Huge wrote:
On 2014-02-23, Tim Watts wrote:
On 23/02/14 04:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Wife runs a G5 power PC. Not Intel. Because old programs that cost a LOT
of money are on it.

Guess what cant get latest firefox for it, safari is bug ridden and
there is no way to upgrade it beyond leopard.

I have concluded that Apple are *******s.

Took you a while. )



I always knew, in my heart.

Now I have material evidence to slap the next fan-boi in the face with

On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 04:15:54 +0000
Bill Wright wrote:

When I use my phone for the internet or email I feel like I'm on foot
with a ball and chain.

I use my 'phone as a 'phone. Only. That's what it's for, the PC is for
computing.

--
Davey.