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angryhomer17
October 1st, 2008, 01:18 AM
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
October 1st, 2008, 01:26 AM
Lol, love them.

Dr Small
October 1st, 2008, 01:29 AM
haha.

zmjjmz
October 1st, 2008, 01:36 AM
Wow. It's not even XP's fault, this guy is just an idiot.

LaRoza
October 1st, 2008, 01:38 AM
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
October 1st, 2008, 01:40 AM
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
October 1st, 2008, 01:49 AM
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
October 1st, 2008, 02:49 AM
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
October 1st, 2008, 10:27 AM
32. Print hard copies - off your printer .....
Erm, where else would one print hard copies?

Circus-Killer
October 1st, 2008, 10:39 AM
Erm, where else would one print hard copies?

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

lisati
October 1st, 2008, 10:50 AM
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.



The laptop I purchased in '06 came with XP preloaded and 256 Mb of RAM - it barely copes with capturing video from a camera using firewire and Windows Moviemaker (what I bought it for in the first place before a trip to Australia, should have done more homework and/or spent more money on a feistier model)

These days I use it mainly for basic surfing and email - and it's running Ubuntu (of course!)

Chilli Bob
October 1st, 2008, 11:18 AM
I don't see why people have so much trouble running multiple programs in XP. Prior to this January my work PC was an ancient PIII 900Mhz with 128Mb ram. It would run Word, Excel, Outlook, Firefox, Windows media player and at least three separate MYOB files concurrently without any slowdown. Sure, I wouldn't have wanted to be ripping DVDs or rendering Blender, but it wasn't so bad.

lisati
October 1st, 2008, 11:35 AM
shall we start using our cd trays as coffee cup holders? Lol :guitar:

:)

billgoldberg
October 1st, 2008, 01:01 PM
I don't see why people have so much trouble running multiple programs in XP. Prior to this January my work PC was an ancient PIII 900Mhz with 128Mb ram. It would run Word, Excel, Outlook, Firefox, Windows media player and at least three separate MYOB files concurrently without any slowdown. Sure, I wouldn't have wanted to be ripping DVDs or rendering Blender, but it wasn't so bad.

I don't believe that at all.

Or maybe the OS was already that slow that you couldn't tell the difference when it crippled under some heavy word/excel documents, while having firefox using 300mb or ram and WMP streaming music off the internet.
--

Ontopic;

These are the sort of things you get when you let someone give advice who thinks they know a lot of pc's, but in reality only know the bare basics.

His suggestions make no sense.

Rebooting every half hour?

renzokuken
October 1st, 2008, 01:12 PM
what a .......................

[long pause]

.......................... moron

sorry, half hour was up in the middle of my typing so had to reboot

beercz
October 1st, 2008, 01:28 PM
Place monitor face down on scanner/copier bed, push copy. :popcorn:
What? You mean like this? I must try it sometime!

renzokuken
October 1st, 2008, 01:32 PM
What? You mean like this? I must try it sometime!

aaaahhhahaha, genius. does that work? i'm guessing not.

beercz
October 1st, 2008, 01:35 PM
aaaahhhahaha, genius. does that work? i'm guessing not.
I have no idea! I bet someone has tried it though!

angryhomer17
October 1st, 2008, 05:03 PM
Here's a few more of Bob Kwater's tips and tricks for xp noobs.

1. ...avoid installing too many 3rd party free and shareware progs, XP doesn't really like it.
In Soviet Russia 3rd party progs install you.

17. Download and run (Lavasoft) Adaware 6, if necessary, if you play with third party software downloads off the internet.
But I thought you said XP doesn't like 3rd party apps. And is playing with 3rd party apps akin to playing baseball with nitroglycerin?

30. Get a good computer guru. An experienced one. Or a few experienced ones.
Sounds more like he wants a threesome or something.

34. Acrobat reader freeware can be useful for reading off the internet. (PDF files or what-not.)
Again, suggesting the freeware. Oh Bob, you are so confused. To install or to not install? FYI, there are these things, sheets of paper with letters on them, and they are bound together and have covers on them. Hey Bob, ever read a book? Great now, everyone knows that they can view pdf's offline.

35. Don't go relocating your music, pictures, or video files all over the place. It's so dangerously simple to move files, once you learn how! However, it can make them a lot harder to find and/or access.
Oh noes, kittykat.jpeg, doez not exisits! While this might be good for some people, wouldn't it be better to teach them how to set up folders so they can organize their stuff better?

Well, although Bob has some strange tips and tricks he actually does have a few smarter ones. Here are a few so Bob doesn't look like a complete idiot.

2. Run chkdsk
4. Delete temp Internet files
8. Uncheck uneeded services in msconfig.
11. Remove old programs you no longer use.
28. Don't bother downloading screen savers and "desktop themes". They are too risky.