IT BS thread

I'm posting this on a Win 10 machine. Ancient Dell Vostro 1500, came with Vista originally. 2gb of ram, nvidia 8300 integrated graphix

I'm surprised how responsive it is. The install itself took a long time as the thing has no horsepower, but now that it's been booted a couple times and things calmed down, it's actually impressively snappy. For an 8 year old C2D, anyways. Much more so than 8.x was anyhow

 

I haven't touched 10, barely touched 8.x and have been running Windows 7 since the RC was released way back in the day. There is nothing I like about 8.x.

 

Sounds like you're taking a step up! I hear you on wanting a more human job. I'd like the same. Then again, I'd also like to dumb it down. I miss my factory job days, but I don't miss the pay.

 

8.1 has some nice under-the-hood stuff. It's the UI that's so off-putting.

10 is similar. I'm a gamer, so the whole 'DirectX 12' thing didn't give me much choice on my main rig. Still, I'll give credit where it's due: 10 is decent so far....and I'm inclined to bash MS because I make a living fixing their stupid shit.

Example...right out of the box, if you are on the 'administrator' account for said machine, and try to open Store Apps, or even the new Edge browser, you can't. It's trivial for me to go edit group policy, hack a reg value and reboot to fix this.

But for a user? "Create a different account and log in to that"

Fucking REALLY, Microsoft?

 

Going excellent for me on my 8 year old system. No issues yet.

 

It's all about the UI to me. My bachelors is in Cognitive Science and HCI is a big thing for me, and exactly what so many companies fail at. If there were more research universities out in Colorado I thought about getting a Phd. in Cog Sci with a focus on brain-computer interfaces which I think will be the next big thing in computing but I don't want to live on the east or west coasts where the research money is.

But yeah shit like that drives me up the wall. I'm a gamer too though less so lately so I'll upgrade eventually.

Speaking of, anyone have a gaming laptop they recommend? I've been eying the Alienware 13 or 15's but have been looking at the Gigabyte P35X and Sager 15" machines as well.

 

The Alienwares have kinda gone to shit since Dell bought 'em. I've got an M11 at home and its frankly meh.

I'd avoid, personally. I like Dells but the price for the Alienwares just isn't worth it

 

Well said. They used to be amazing, the Dell took over and now they are poopie.

 

They do seem to have OK battery life compared to other gaming laptops. I find myself considering a Macbook Pro with the dedicated graphics even though the graphics chip is kind of dookie. Low power and it should be enough to run games. Most gaming laptops are almost as expensive as the MBP's anyway.

I had a MBP 7 years ago and it finally died last year; hard to argue with that; though I hate how integrated OSX is now with all their shit like the app store. I do not have other apple devices. I just like the quality and efficiency of their laptops and it's hard to argue with 6 years of abuse out of my last one.

 

So I'm banging around on Win 10, as upthread. I was curious as to how the new Edge would be compared to the old Internet Exploder. I kept hearing about how lean a program it was and how well it used memory. Turns out, that's not the whole story.

I configured Edge to open the very same pages I have in Chrome, with the usernames and passwords saved and everything, and did a side by side. Here's the memory footprint:


The memory use is hella light, unless you look down a ways at the processes being used. So much for that claim.

Next, look at the side by side:


All kinds of 'little things' missing from the Edge (right). For instance, Edge hates TCBob, as it won't display the little red update numbers he worked so hard on.

Lastly, one other thing to note: Edge has no add-ons, extensions, etc yet. Absolute deal-breaker to me....i won't browse the net without adblocks, ghostery, noscript, etc etc running and that's a full stop. No control over the browsing window and comms means I won't run it.

Now, rudimentary googling has led me to the fact that they're working on the extension support, but as of now there's no ETA.

FYI

 

I'm in Des Moines, Iowa. It's a pretty decent IT market with low cost of living. Des Moines had gotten a lot of press lately for being one of the best places to live in the US. Cheap cost of living, good schools, good economy. I would probably kill someone if I worked in IT on either of the coasts. I've had to work with some of them from time to time and they are real assholes.

 

But it's in des Moines Iowa...I hear it snows there.

 

LOL, what's wrong with snow? I worked in DM for 6 years & hated every minute of it.

 

This native Wisconsinite laughs.

 

I'll tell you what, there were times back in the day when I lived out in those boonies and had to get to the mill. I'd end up basically putting it in drive and crawling the back roads....taking 2, 3 hours to get there.

But I never once missed a shift for snow. Ever.

When I had my 6000SE, a four door no less, with the 2.8 in it....one year it there was a 3 hour one-way crawl. There were drifts taller than the hood in several places that literally took me four or five tries to bash through, then I'd have to get out and clear the radiator intake of packed snow so she could breathe.

If you're patient and smart, you can climb through an awful lot of crap.

 

I grew up in Michigan so snow means nothing. I come into work all the time here in Denver when other people "can't make it in". Before I was in an AWD Audi, though now it feels like cheating with the 4x4 taco with a set of blizzaks in the winter.

 

I used to live less than a mile from work. Some people I worked with also lived in my neighborhood. None of them would make it in.

 

I care not about getting to work. I can and do work from home when it snows. I prefer the warm weather.

 

ALERT NOTIFICATION
==========================================================

Any Device is offline > 10 minutes (Servers group)
Host1 (Central Server) has been offline for longer than 13 minutes

Host2 (Central Server) has been offline for longer than 13 minutes


This is how you know you're going to be having a bad vacation.