Posted on 11/30/2012 8:52:10 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Software won’t run on a newer machine. We tried a 386 in it once and it could not run properly, we even turned off the turbo.
Who ever wrote the software counted on the CPU running at the speed of snot. No faster.
It is not just a PC you can buy at tiger direct. It’s a huge metal fabrication machine that happens to have a 286 in it to run it. It also uses the old AT keyboard plug, 4 serial ports and the printer port. Something none of the new 200 dollar machines have any more.
It’s not unusual to run in to a 200,000 dollar machine that for obvious reasons a shop does not want to replace just because of failed power supply. It still does the job just fine.
It seems to boot faster but it was a fresh install and I added 4 gigs of ram. Windows 7 had been running on it a long time and thus was slower just due to the amount of crud loaded on it.
I don’t play games so I can’t really comment on that.
The biggest issues I found with it so far is it’s even harder now to shut the thing down from the desktop (of course you can just use the power button) and finding things in the “metro” interface can sometimes prove to be a task.
I’m going to kick the machine over to the kids who can break almost anything and see if they can screw it up. Since I fix computers for a living I am going to have to learn the ins and outs of windows 8.
Attention Microsoft. I got an inexpensive laptop this fall for a class. The instant you drop support for Win 7, I’ll simply boot the darn thing in UBUNTU (the first thing I added to the machine < evil grin >) every time I use it.
There is no other option that does what we need to do as well as the legacy software that we have. Investment in training time as well as money make it an untenable proposition to “upgrade” lol to anything else.
For the apparent many on FR who make their livings via tinkering with and building Windows boxes, there's a big opportunity out there, that we know from experience is grossly underserved, and that would be serving industrial markets that have been effectively orphaned.
I can only imagine the difficulty securing computer hardware as old as what you need. We have a hard time getting XP boxes with an internal floppy drive and parallel port. Tried external floppy, software doesn't recognize it. Install disks are floppies, doesn't recognize CD or thumb drive.
It's a strange situation when a growing, innovative company is one that depends upon novel use of twenty year old machinery and software that is almost as old, but it's so. We identified a niche to survive offshoring then the niche exploded and is becoming mainstream. Expertise is hard to come by, it's on the job training with one of the few companies in the segment.
>Question: Will my current router running off of my Windows machine work with a MAC? Or do I have to get another router?<
Any computer with wi-fi capability should easily be able to find and use your router signal. What you probably will not be able to do from your new iMac, will be to communicate directly with the router to make changes to the router settings (you’ve already got it set up, so that’s a moot point) from the iMac, unless you purchased something like the model Netgear makes specifically for that purpose:
http://www.netgear.com/home/products/wirelessrouters/high-performance/WNDRMAC.aspx#
Ballmer will never go as long as Bill Gates has anything to say about it.
I think we basically agree - I could quibble on a few points but I think we see things much the same way. Full disclosure - I’m a linux guy.
Bought a little netbook 4 years ago for under $200, just installed the latest version of Linux Mint on it, and it still rocks. Does everything I need for basic Internet.
I don't think I've ever really "adopted" an OS. I've been an "IBM" guy, a "Novell" guy, and a "Microsoft", and have dealt with some variety of different *nix flavors and deriviatives, as the situation requires.
The common denominator has always been IBM S/3 or mainframe systems on the back end. Back in the 80's when IBM and MS were working to get PC's to talk to the corporate mainframe Apple seemed disinterested in working in that arena, if not downright hostile to the idea. And they've pretty much stayed that way so I never really had much use for it.
I’d rather sell them outdated computer parts at huge markups because I have the parts and no one else does.
Should I run out, we’ll see if the geeks can do anything with the software.
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