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suggestions on upgrading to a new pc
"Fotoguy" wrote in message ... I have a friend (He uses a Mark II, also, and works with full res RAW files) who is looking to upgrade because his 2 year old system has become too slow, too, and it's a 2.8 GHz Intel Dual Core, 4 MB RAM, and a couple fast SATA drives running 32-bit Vista (Pro or Ultimate??, but definitely not a Home version). The display is a wide format 24" LG 1920 x 1200 flat panel. He custom built the system, and all components are Vista compliant. Oh, and in case you're wondering why 32-bit Vista instead of 64? At the time he built it, there were few, if any, 64-bit drivers, plugins, applications, etc. available. It's a little better, now, but not much. We have done everything to optimize the system for speed. He's even done a complete reinstall of the OS (and all apps) three times over two years when the system just became too slow and nothing else helped. Well, after a lot of research, he's finally decided on the new system: A Mac; specifically, a 15" Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard. (He wants to be portable instead of tied to a desktop.) He said he did actual timed tests with his own files on a new Macbook Pro with 4GB RAM and a 2.8 GHZ CPU, but running Leopard, and it ran rings around his current PC and not by a little, but by a lot. He said he was amazed at the speed. Everything happened almost instantaneously. Snow Leopard is purported to be even faster. Food for thought. If the system was fine before then all of a sudden "became too slow and nothing else helped", there most certainly is something that is being overlooked. |
#3
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suggestions on upgrading to a new pc
On Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:33:22 -0500, Mark wrote:
"Fotoguy" wrote in message ... I have a friend (He uses a Mark II, also, and works with full res RAW files) who is looking to upgrade because his 2 year old system has become too slow, too, and it's a 2.8 GHz Intel Dual Core, 4 MB RAM, and a couple fast SATA drives running 32-bit Vista (Pro or Ultimate??, but definitely not a Home version). The display is a wide format 24" LG 1920 x 1200 flat panel. He custom built the system, and all components are Vista compliant. Oh, and in case you're wondering why 32-bit Vista instead of 64? At the time he built it, there were few, if any, 64-bit drivers, plugins, applications, etc. available. It's a little better, now, but not much. We have done everything to optimize the system for speed. He's even done a complete reinstall of the OS (and all apps) three times over two years when the system just became too slow and nothing else helped. Well, after a lot of research, he's finally decided on the new system: A Mac; specifically, a 15" Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard. (He wants to be portable instead of tied to a desktop.) He said he did actual timed tests with his own files on a new Macbook Pro with 4GB RAM and a 2.8 GHZ CPU, but running Leopard, and it ran rings around his current PC and not by a little, but by a lot. He said he was amazed at the speed. Everything happened almost instantaneously. Snow Leopard is purported to be even faster. Food for thought. If the system was fine before then all of a sudden "became too slow and nothing else helped", there most certainly is something that is being overlooked. It didn't happen "...all of a sudden." It repeatedly happened slowly over periods of 6 months or so until the degradation was readily apparent. Microsoft tech support was contacted, and they weren't able to offer any suggestion that hadn't already been tried. They had no idea what was causing the slowdown. (I do. It was Windows behaving normally just like it has for 20 years.) So, the system now is about 2.5 years old with 3 complete, clean system and application installs under its belt--the last just a month or so ago-- and is running nominally, again, but is still dog slow compared to the performance of an equivalently configured Macbook Pro. At least, according to my friend, and I don't doubt his evaluation. Perhaps Windows 7 will be the OS that Vista was suppose to be, but I doubt it. Windows has always been a resource hog. In any case, my friend is fed up, and it seems that Microsoft has lost another loyal Windows user. -- Fotoguy BestInClass.com "Personalized digital camera recommendations" http://www.bestinclass.com/digital-cameras |
#4
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suggestions on upgrading to a new pc
"Fotoguy" wrote in message ... It didn't happen "...all of a sudden." It repeatedly happened slowly over periods of 6 months or so until the degradation was readily apparent. Microsoft tech support was contacted, and they weren't able to offer any suggestion that hadn't already been tried. They had no idea what was causing the slowdown. (I do. It was Windows behaving normally just like it has for 20 years.) So, the system now is about 2.5 years old with 3 complete, clean system and application installs under its belt--the last just a month or so ago-- and is running nominally, again, but is still dog slow compared to the performance of an equivalently configured Macbook Pro. At least, according to my friend, and I don't doubt his evaluation. Perhaps Windows 7 will be the OS that Vista was suppose to be, but I doubt it. Windows has always been a resource hog. In any case, my friend is fed up, and it seems that Microsoft has lost another loyal Windows user. This is most probably not an OS issue, there is something else bogging down the system. Run MS's free Process Explorer to see what is using up the pc's resources and cpu cycles. Your statement "It was Windows behaving normally..." is totally ridiculous. We still have 5 XP machines each running over 5 years with no reinstalls doing video editing with Sony Vegas and CyberLink PowerDirector, plus photo editing/management with Photoshop CS3 and ACDSee Pro 2.5 plus run a multitude of other apps. That said, there have been issues with hard drives requiring their replacement and full image restore from backups. And, the native Windows defrag is not very good so we use Ultimate Defrag to speed up the disk accesses which is especially problematic after writing/modifying 10 to 200GB+ file sizes. Plus, some 3rd party apps have caused performance issues. I can certainly see why some ppl would prefer to use Macs and I do recommend same to some that have no PC/Win experience nor have a need to run the rich set of available PC apps - and indeed troubleshooting problems on a PC/Win platform can be difficult so the Mac may win there, too. Both the PC and Mac platforms are reasonably solid as can be considering all that which users try to put them through. |
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