no. hd manurfacturers usually rate the life to be 3-5 years. but i have gone far beyond that with many drives. each of which have seen so many different operating systems. i used to test out a new one each week.
whereas mine crapped out at very barely over the 3 year mark.... mind you it was a laptop that I used for gaming a lot of the time :/
No limit. In my opinion you should re install every year. Takes about an hour once you get used to it.
one way to maximize HD life is to upgrade to more RAM. when the RAM is full, the operating system treats your HD the same as RAM. it constantly reads and writes to the disc putting wear on it. the less your hard drive has to work, the longer it will last. if you upgrade to Windows Vista, be prepared to replace your HD every year.
Because the product is arss on a stick. The only people that I know that have installed it have all rolled it back. It's about as useful as Win ME.
My friend did beta testing for Vista and has it ordered, it used a LOT less CPU than XP...much more stable and secure. DEFFINATELY better than the peice of rubbish they called ME, still, would rather have 98 if not for the limited gaming... Hmm, generally a laptop will last 5 years before failing, a PC will last longer...so far the HD on my old PC has been going 7 years and still working fine, with a LOT of usage.
OMG!!! thats wrong, very sry. Vista uses way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way MORE CPU power than XP. i dont care if he tested Vista on a dual core 3.6GHZ 3Gb RAM super duper megazord machine and compared it to a Pentium 3 with XP. Vista is extremely heavy on ALLLLLLLLL resources. let me clear this up. Vista = "waste of money + waste of resources" i know many ppl that have tested it. i mean people with doctorates in computer science.
Optimistic and rather lacking safety. I reinstall xp about once every 2 months and sometimes once a month. I do this because, for one thing it is so insecure that the only real way to garauntee its integrity is to reinstall. Also I do it because I after about 3 months it becomes unbearably slow and half the drivers corrupt. I use some of the best security hardware around and have had many years experience in the industry. My verdict on xp is way above anything I could write about vista. Vista is actually the worst operating system spec I have ever seen and will be greatly surprised if industry adopts it with the same willingness that saw xp welcomed in. Whoever that beta tester is they must be really using some advanced system or hopelessly lost as to the process by which we measure a computer for efficiency
Take it or leave it... A laptop is a PC (or can be). PC refers to a Microsoft based computer. An example of a non-PC would be a MAC. Around 90% of all home computers, both laptops and desktops are PC's. Now Vista is using 2-4 times more memory than XP does. So if it's using less CPU to run the same app (doubt it), then it's based soley on the crazy amount of memory that it sucks up. As for being stable and secure you cannot judge that until it is being used by millions of poeple. There is no telling the amount of bugs and security holes in the OS until everyone is using it. Hence the need for service packs, updates, etc. As for your guesses in regards to the life of a hard drive, sounds about right. Here's some more interesting stuff from a NAMED MS employee: A Tech Strategist within Microsoft, Nigel Page, has gone on record to discuss the hardware requirements for Windows Vista, due out next Christmas. What he's said is kind of shocking. System breakdown Graphics: Vista has changed from using the CPU to display bitmaps on the screen to using the GPU to render vectors. This means the entire display model in Vista has changed. To render the screen in the GPU requires an awful lot of memory to do optimally - 256MB is a happy medium, but you'll actually see benefit from more. Microsoft believes that you're going to see the amount of video memory being shipped on cards hurtle up when Vista ships. CPU: Threading is the main target for Vista. Currently, very little of Windows XP is threaded - the target is to make Vista perform far better on dual-core and multi-core processors. RAM: 2GB is the ideal configuration for 64-bit Vista, we're told. Vista 32-bit will work ideally at 1GB, and minimum 512. However, since 64-bit is handling data chunks that are double the size, you'll need double the memory, hence the 2GB. Nigel mentions DDR3 - which is a little odd, since the roadmap for DDR3, on Intel gear at least, doesn't really kick in until 2007. HDD: SATA is definitely the way forward for Vista, due, Microsoft tells us, to Native Command Queueing. NCQ allows for out of order completions - that is, if Vista needs tasks 1,2,3,4 and 5 done, it can do them in the order 2,5,3,4,1 if that's a more efficient route for the hard drive head to take over the disk. This leads to far faster completion times. NCQ is supported on SATA2 drives, so expect them to start becoming the standard sooner rather than later. Microsoft thinks that these features will provide SCSI-level performance. Bus: AGP is 'not optimal' for Vista. Because of the fact that graphics cards may have to utilise main system memory for some rendering tasks, a fast, bi-direction bus is needed - that's PCI express. Display: Prepare to feel the red mist of rage - no current TFT monitor out there is going to support high definition playback in Vista. You may already have heard rumblings about this, but here it is. To play HD-DVD or Blu-Ray content you need a HDCP compatible monitor. Why? Because these formats use HDCP to encrypt a video signal as it travels along a digital connection to an output device, to prevent people copying it. If you have just standard DVI or even an analogue output, you're going to see HD scaled down to a far-less-than-HD resolution for viewing - which sucks. This isn't really Microsoft's fault - HDCP is something that content makers, in their eternal wisdom, have decided is necessary to stop us all watching pirated movies. Yay. Thoughts Amusingly, Page admits that there are no monitors out there that will do HDCP, and that this is a problem. Frankly, it's the consumer's problem, however, according to him. "It's up to you [the users] to say, 'Where's my HDCP?'" I'm more inclined to say to Hollywood 'Hey, STFU' to be honest. One of the major problems is that Hollywood knows that Microsoft dominates the operating system sphere, and so it can arm-wrestle MS into working with it. If there was more competition, Hollywood would have to be a little more cautious about what it tries to get away with. We come back to the age-old problem. Content is being forced onto us that is, to all extents and purposes, crippled. It's not like any of this stuff is actually going to make any difference - we're still going to have dodgy films on the net, probably in no less quantity than we have now - so why would be pay to be screwed, when we can just get an uncrippled version for free? But, that's a little off topic. In terms of the hardware stuff, it seems obvious that hardware makers are rubbing their hands in glee. It's been hard to persuade people to upgrade their WinXP boxes, since they can handle pretty much anything thrown at them, unless you're a gamer. Graphics companies are going to be selling a bucket-load more GPUs, since now practically every system sold for Vista is going to need one. It's no coincidence that Nvidia is re-introducing onboard graphics for its motherboards very soon. 2GB of RAM for high-end systems is pretty chunky, and it could be that we start to see RAM prices go up as suddenly, a big percentage of systems are being built with 4 times the current requirement. If you thought SATA2 had been slow to take off, expect every new enthusiast chipset to have it built in next year, and for drive makers to start shifting over to it quick - if they're not building a huge number of NCQ drives by the middle of next year, they risk missing out on loads of orders come Vista. That from: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/09/07/vista_hardware_reqs/
salmon4me that was one heck of a page of info - absolutely great reading it really was ! Thanks, I hope you'll have more from your news sources on a variety of topics for us in the future - That site link is stunning thanks again !
thanks for the minumum requirments for Vista. i already knew them but its good for others that didnt. its true that around 90% of all home computers are PC's, or somewhere around there. The new MACs are PC's too. the only difference is the Mac authenticity chip, and the bootloader. the new Macs can run windows XP. that doesnt change the fact that a PC refers to a Microsoft based computer. A PC actually refers to what is known as a compatible computer. Microsoft only runs on compatibles but other operating systems run on them too. MacOSX has been run on a Dell, and i am running Linux right now on my 2 PC's: a Compaq and a custom whitebox with Asus mbrd and Intel Pentium 4 processor. ^ that is false. i am not trying to insult you but i wanted to let other people know that windows does not make a PC. you probably already know this. *ouch, my toes hurt.*
Two definitions / explanations: PC- personal computer, usually referring to a Windows-compatible computer. The term "PC" is also commonly used to describe an "IBM-compatible" personal computer in contrast to an <non intel-based> Apple Macintosh computer. Yes indeed, MAC is using an intel chip now-a-days. So any intel chip based MAC is also a PC. My point in regards to the whole PC / laptop thing was to clarify the quote below from Ghost-in-the-snow "a laptop will last 5 years before failing, a PC will last longer" So MAC is using an intel-chip. Other than that PC does in fact STILL refer to a Microsoft compatible computer. (rolls eyes) *I am running core 5 on a Dell*
one day i want a dual core Sparc. then i will be rockin the in-compatibility world. when you said PC, i actually thought you meant it had to have Windows on it, not Windows-compatible. yeah, we are pretty much saying the same thing. and core 5 is awsome. whenever i get to it i will run core 6. what is your opinion on core 6?
