Windows 10

[Tetge]

I do not have any tablets or smart phones, so I am a legacy desktop user. I have been assembling and configuring my systems almost from the beginning, more as a hobby than for any valid reasons since it costs about the same to build a new system as it costs to buy one that comes with a warranty and support. But, in recent years, I have slowed down on hardware upgrades, although I did get a better video card for my main system in the past year, and I picked up a bunch of SSD's and moved the OS and my apps to the SSD in most of my computers. Switching to an SSD, and installing Linux Mint MATE, made my slower than anything ACER Netbook almost snappy. Now, if I could see the 10.1" display and if I could hit those miniature keyboard buttons, it could actually be used as a portable computer. But, the urge to build new systems and to push them to high performance levels by tweaking the BIOS and perhaps overclocking stuff, has evaporated over time, as the current hardware is fast enough so that I really do not suffer waiting for things to get processed.

As a side note, semi rant, looking back, I can remember when images were drawn on the display line by line. And, I had dial up, which was extremely slow. I also remember that with a DX33 chip, the old DOS version of Sim City would almost freeze up the computer if you created a new map and drew some terrain. I still can remember having contests over the phone with my friend to see who had the fastest computer running Sim City. I thought that I had got the upper hand, when I got a DX100 AMD chip, but, shortly after that, he got a Pentium 90, and, it was game over. Now, in DOS Box, I have to put the old DOS version of Sim City on Turtle speed, and it still is hauling along. But, I don't really play the game. I just wanted to install it and get it to work, which I did under both Windows and Linux. More of the hobby stuff, where I can spend way too much time, figuring out how to do things that are basically useless. I also have put the pedal to the metal and overclocked the hell out of my unlocked 8 core AMD chip and the memory and video card, but once I ran some benchmarks I put everything back to nice, safe, conservative, stock, timings (or, did I leave the CPU mildly overclocked, I can't remember now). Back in the day, overclocking made a significant difference in observable performance. For instance, I had a 450 Pentium overclocked to a 600 by increasing the front side bus 33% and I ran it for a long time, and then, I finally set it back to stock and gave it to my sister who used it for years until it was destroyed in a house fire. A 33% overclock of the entire system made a big difference. But, now, stock hardware, even on entry level e-machines, gives pretty good performance unless a person is a manic gamer or a person is into some serious applications that can utilize multi cores and fat pipes to their full extent. But, most of those programs are expensive to purchase and are not for the likes of me since about the only one that I might profit from, now and then, would be one that processed my GoPro videos faster. MS Movie Maker does not fully take advantage of all the cores of my CPU or of my fast memory, as it really loads almost nothing into memory. But, it works, given a bit of time, and I don't make videos that often, to worry about a lost minute or two.

[SonicVenum]

You tech heads might already know this, but I just saw a posting the other day saying W10 will be a free upgrade to anyone running W8/8.1, and W7 (for one year).

[Tetge]

You tech heads might already know this, but I just saw a posting the other day saying W10 will be a free upgrade to anyone running W8/8.1, and W7 (for one year).

Naturally we all knew this, although I did not pay any attention to the one year window to upgrade (Microsoft said that the free upgrade will be valid for the first year immediately after the release; if you upgrade during that time, you’ll get Windows 10 for free, for the “lifetime” of your device) as I intend to get the upgrade ASAP. To do this I will have to back up my trusty W7 and then restore the image that I saved of my legit, W8 (upgraded to W8.1) build. I will use W10 and see if I like it. If not, I will back it up and restore W7. I also have an unused, legit, W7 DVD sitting around, so, if I really like W10, I can do a fresh install of W7 and upgrade it immediately to W10 on my other high powered rig.

And yes, now that you ask, I have more than one computer within reach of my office chair, due to the fact that I had a lot of spare parts due to hardware churning caused primarily by my struggles with GoPro and processing HD video. It turned out that processing the HD from the first HD GoPro was not a hardware problem. But, I upgraded thinking that it must be my hardware that was at fault. So, I had a lot of high quality parts laying around and I made a second computer which I use as a test bed and emergency backup as it is almost as powerful as my main computer and since both computers use ASUS, AMD, MB's, and Nvidia video cards, what works on one will work on the other.

But, I am not a tech head. I just got hooked into building and configuring my own computers way back and old habits are hard to give up. I say this because a nice computer from Costco, all set and with double the warranty, would be easy to use and possibly cost less money than making one. But, of course, it would not be water cooled like mine. And it might not have 4 SSD's and two big old fashioned platters in the giant tower full of fans. In fact it might not even pull as much power as a window a/c, and, what fun would that be?

[SonicVenum]

Sorry if my wording was confusing, but yes, the way you described it is what I heard. If you have W8/8.1, you can upgrade to W10 for free, forever. If you have W7, you have a one-year window to make the upgrade for free. I'm guessing after that one-year window, you'll have to pay like the other common scum.

I can't really criticize your mound of computer parts. My office has one good computer, two not-so-good towers (one with a bad HD, and one requiring a PS-plug keyboard, which I don't have, to boot), and the empty case with leftover parts from my old rig. I love my new build, though W8.1's inability to update consistently is getting quite annoying. The W10 will be welcomed with open arms by me. My mom's old PC, the one with the bad HD, is old, and probably not worth replacing. She's doing fine with my Toshiba laptop that I let her "borrow." The other PC is an old company machine that has an older version of AutoCad on it. Though I couldn't boot it up, due to the lack of proper keyboard, I was able to remove the HD, connect it to my computer as a slave, and scavenge all valuable data off it.

I looked around at store-bought PCs, and I couldn't get close to the build I created with pieced together parts for the budget. I spent ~$600, but a store-bought version would have been 2-3 times as much for the same performance.

[Tetge]

Salvaging old hardware to create a new system is generally a lot cheaper than buying a complete one from some vendor. However, due to churning, sometimes old hardware is not supported by the newer, more cutting edge, hardware. So, at some point, that old HD or that old power supply will not work anymore. And, when you do have a nicely configured, relatively powerful computer, old computers can drive you crazy due to their extreme slowness, even though a few years previously they were amazingly fast.

Come to think of it, cars are sort of like that too, although with time you sort of forget what real performance felt like. My 5.0 feels pretty potent at times these days while, when I first got it, it felt like a gutless slug. And, my DR-Z is a virtual rocket ship, in my mind, if the opposition is a Smart Car. As a rule, one adapts, especially since I have not seen a Terminator of the street for a long time.

But, as usual, I have drifted off the subject. One can hope that W10 is better than W8/8.1 but, for a change, I have not bothered to get a evaluation copy of W10. I prefer to continue to use W7 and to continue to attempt to perfect a Linux install that can do everything that I need to do with a computer. Linux keeps edging closer and closer, but, thus far, it has not made the cut, for me, as a full featured desktop that can completely replace Windows. W10 will not be finalized and released, it is said, until Q3 of 2015, so there still is a long time to wait before it will be available as an upgrade. We shall have to wait and see.