Wonder of Wonders
My tri-boot system is up and running again, but with some serious improvements! Previously I was using Windows 98SE, SUSE Linux 10.0, and Ubuntu Linux 5.10. I've kept Ubuntu as is, but did some major remodeling in Windows and SUSE, the most important change being...I finally have Windows XP! And you know what? I really like it!
So far I've been very impressed by XP's speed. Based on my experience working with and repairing other people's XP machines, I had assumed that XP would barely run on my old box (AMD Duron 800 MHz, 320 MB RAM). After all, if a factory restore on a 2+ GHz, 512 MB RAM PC runs only moderately fast, or even somewhat slow, what chance would I have with such a fossil? To my amazement, it actually runs pretty well. Some tasks are even faster in XP than in Linux! I guess the problem with those factory restores wasn't XP. Maybe it was the factory...
On the topic of speed, I noticed something rather interesting. Generally speaking, both SUSE and Ubuntu are somewhat sluggish on my machine, Ubuntu usually being the faster of the two. ("Sluggish" is a relative term: I like fast computers :-P) But they're both consistent. File browsing, web browsing, software installation, starting large programs (Open Office), all proceed at their own predictable speed.
Windows 98 was typically faster than Linux, but was never as predictable. After years of usage, I could usually guess what tasks would be faster than others, but I'd still be surprised on occassion when a seemingly simple task would bog down my system. If anything, Windows XP is much worse. It'll zip along for a while at a pace noticeably faster than what I'm used to in Linux. Then without warning, it'll slow down to the point of being unusable. Given a minute or so, it'll be back to normal. It's more of a slight annoyance than a serious problem, but hey, I'm picky. :-D It'd be nice to figure out what causes that.
So overall, I'm excited about entering the world of the modern MS operating system. But just in case you're wondering, I'm still in love with Linux. :-D
posted by Javert03 at 5:13 PM
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