funny beginner's xp checklist

[angryhomer17]

So, I was at an ASQ (American Society for Quality) meeting the other night and the Dayton Microcomputer Association (dma.org) had a table there. Anyway I picked up one of their newsletters (from July '05) which has an article of tips and tricks for xp.

Some of these were pretty funny (mostly because they are pathetically awful and should be unnecessary).

From the article:
"Recently I have been asked by a couple of friends 'how can I keep my computer running in its most optimal manner...without having to take it in to a repair shop?'"

Here are a few of the funnier/pathetic/stupid suggestions:
(These are copied word for word, which includes lots of grammar errors)

9. Reboot often, more or less (after running a given program, even if it doesn't tell you to, for example. As a general rule, if your rebooting, say, about once every half-hour, I can hardly think that is excessive, even today, with our 'new and improved.')

Ha, please, rebooting once every half hour ok? I'm pissed when I receive a kernel upgrade and have to reboot after 10-15 days uptime. If I had to reboot even daily, I would drop Ubuntu.

23. Consider upgrading to at least 256 RAM

Good suggestion, but seriously, was 256 megs of ram standard in '05? I got a laptop in '04 for under 1k and it had 512 of ram.

27. Searching the Internet? Stick with Google, still best search engine.

So MS is in cohoots with Google? I don't think so. While google is good (I prefer it) there are still other good search engines out there. And why the hell would a different search engine screw up XP?

29. Delete old pictures, music, and video files you don't need. Get a DVD/ CD-RW (rewritable) to avoid having all that stuff accumulate.

So I shouldn't use my computer to store information?

32. Print hard copies - off your printer - of whatever you are typing into your Word program,,,drives can always fail. (This saves one the agony of losing the material should your computer act up, power outages or whatever cause disconnect/freeze-ups)

So, my drives are really that awful, and my computer could seize up at any moment? And I should print off everything I write because I am so fearful that my computer will crash at any moment? How about saving every so often and/or backing up to a flash drive?

36. Try to avoid running two or more programs at once. With more ram, or perhaps an extra hard disc, you may get away with it better than low ram and a 1 gig. hard disc drive.

Remember this is 2005, but it isn't 1990. Who sold computers in 05 with less than 20 gig drives (well except for high-speed scsi). And is everyone still running DOS? Can we not multi-task? Does running two progs really use up that many resources in XP?


That was just a sampling of the many "tips" Bob Kwater gave. It's articles like this that makes me glad I discovered Linux.

[Fixman]

Lol, love them.

[Dr Small]

haha.

[zmjjmz]

Wow. It's not even XP's fault, this guy is just an idiot.

[LaRoza]

32. Print hard copies - off your printer - of whatever you are typing into your Word program,,,drives can always fail. (This saves one the agony of losing the material should your computer act up, power outages or whatever cause disconnect/freeze-ups)

That is great...

So, I print out my book-in-progress and wipe my drive. I am still up a creek without a paddle...

Whatever happened to making digital backups?

If I printed every time I made a document, I'd be in debt for ink. If I printed every time I saved or made a back up copy...

[MaxIBoy]

A couple of these would actually be useful, given the type of computer they seem to be suggesting.


I wouldn't dare multitask under XP with 256 megabytes of RAM. I got an XP box in '04 with 384 megabytes of RAM (my first one,) that just barely managed to run multiple programs at once.

Moving your stuff off the hard drive is advisable if you're using NTFS. NTFS fragments easily, but this can be minimized by keeping the drive below 50% full.




The rest of them are hogwash. Especially the one about rebooting so often. That old computer took about 5 minutes to boot up, then another ten minutes after that before it was actually usable.

[cardinals_fan]

That is great...

So, I print out my book-in-progress and wipe my drive. I am still up a creek without a paddle...

Yeah. After all, what are you going to do with the hard copy? Retype it? Write the rest by hand?

[LaRoza]

Yeah. After all, what are you going to do with the hard copy? Retype it? Write the rest by hand?

Well, scan it with ORC software, but that is certainly the hard way to go about it.

[beercz]

32. Print hard copies - off your printer .....

Erm, where else would one print hard copies?

[Circus-Killer]

Erm, where else would one print hard copies?

Place monitor face down on scanner/copier bed, push copy.