XP Performance

[Charles Steinkuehler]

> Tech Report. These guys are owned by Ziff-Davis aren't they?
> Ziff-Davis, aren't those guys a M$ clone? Very biased report IMHO,
> and of course it just goes to show that hardware technology has
> surpassed software to the point that speed is now limited by hardware
> (especially bandwidth) and not how big and klumsy your software is.

Sorry, but I just have to jump in here...

I'm currently working on configuring a Cobalt Raq4 (a slim x86 based Sun
box) running linux with 64 Megs and a 500 MHz CPU.  While this is a bit
tight on RAM, the system is happily running linux, apache (two
versions...one for the 'main' website, and one for the administrative
configuration server), ftp, ssh, and various other services.  Sourcing lots
of bandwidth at our CoLo site.

With my NT4 system here (required for the hardware design SW I run), I was
unable to even BOOT with 64 Meg, which I found out the hard way after my
motherboard died, and the only on-hand spare didn't support my 256M DIMMs.
I was able to get the system to boot when I scraped together 96 Meg, but it
took about 7 minutes to come up (VERY heavy swap usage), and it seemed like
just moving the mouse caused the system to start paging (OK, it wasn't quite
that bad, but I quickly learned to NOT launch IE).  I don't even want to
think about trying to run 2K or XP with less than 512 Megs...

I'm continuously amazed by both how fast the new hardware is that's been
coming out the last couple of years, and how slow M$ can make these machines
feel...all so I can have those pretty gradient title bars and animated
menus, I guess.  Anyone know how to turn all that stuff off?

Charles Steinkuehler
charles at steinkuehler.net