Is there a reason people assume Windows 7 is hardware-heavy?

[WolfSoul]

You mean PCI Express?

 

[Maguscreed]

I doubt they even make PCI videocards anymore...

Newegg.com - Computer Hardware,Video Cards & Video Devices,Desktop Graphics / Video Cards,PCI

yup they do...
in models that make absolutely no sense given the limited bandwidth of standard pci.

 

[logicearth]

So far it's ran great for me. It seams to suck more RAM everytime I upgrade my RAM for productivity software. I had 4GB of ram earlier and it took 1200MB of it to run just the OS. Now I have 6GB and it's takes 1500-1700MB's to run just the OS. Don't get it. and my OS is way watered down. With nothing eating the RAM except Windows OS software.

Why in the hell did you buy the RAM then? Did you not buy it to use it? Seriously, if you are so freakin concerned with RAM usage, take the extra sticks out and run with 2 gigs like I do. Then complain...

I swear the moment people get 4 GB or more they go into this mode that every bit of the RAM must be as free as possible. Just in case they may need it. WHY BUY IT IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO USE IT?!

Do you see me complaining about RAM usage? Even tho I run very heavy applications constantly like Vmware, and various Games. (I only have 2 GBs of RAM if you are too lazy to look.)

Now onto something completely different...Antivirus.

We all forget not everyone is a tech head when it comes to computers. My Mother and Grandmother sure are not, but both use computers. As long as people like that need to use the computer, it needs to have all the protection it can get. You must understand something, a virus or other malware is not exclusive to Windows. Malware is nothing more then an application, no different then say a web browser you install. There is no security an OS can provide the would stop malware other then not allowing the user to run applications AT ALL. Not very useful.

Most if not all malware these days utilize Social Engineering, exploit the human hardware where there is no computer security. This is where Antivirus software comes in. If every one went to Macs right now, every single average user, malware would follow and infest it. Because sadly, most people are too computer-literate to know this "cool-awesome-software-they-found" might have an adverse effect.

 

[WolfSoul]

180 is old and unsufficient.. and dunno if "old dell" helps to advice.. know model or motherboard by any chance?

 

[pantsaregood]

The point of the PCI video card isn't to be a "good" video card, or anything of the sort. It just happens that it would be extremely beneficial for the computer's overall performance to decrease the load on the CPU by use of a dedicated GPU. PCI GPUs suck, and have sucked horribly since AGP 4x became standard. That, however, is not relevant.

Pushing 1280x768 (or something similar) on an old IGP is fairly demanding. The monitor's native resolution is actually 1366x768, but the IGP is so old it doesn't even support it. 1280x768 is a high resolution for a 10 year old IGP, so just displaying that resolution makes the CPU work pretty hard.

There's an old PCI Geforce 2 on Newegg. I'm thinking one of those may work on that low PSU. Replacing it isn't realistically an option, considering Dells (from that period, at least) used proprietary PSUs and the motherboard power connectors had some swapped pins.

 

[KazeNoKoe23]

i agree that windows 7 is a much better os than any of the previous version of windows otherwise i would have traded the new compaq for a used mac already.... but windows still has alot of advancement to do to make it as good as os x windows 7 is almost there, but the need for av protection and constant updates from ms is the real issue now, not constant crashing like before

You're saying it like getting updates is a bad thing. Besides, it's once a month.

 

[Maguscreed]

If the updates bother you that much, you can disable the update feature easy enough.

Also macs are no more secure from viruses than pc's.
No one bothers writing viruses that will affect only 10% or less of the market.
If mac fans have their way and they become much more popular you will all the sudden see that imagined security superiority disappear in a hurry.

 

[WolfSoul]

Well if you can find one that runs on 180 W.. slim chance tho

 

[Wishmaster]

WHY BUY IT IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO USE IT?!

I do not understand this either.

Im just the opposite.
I know my machine usually uses around 2GB at idle, sometimes more.
If it's below that, I would be wondering whats wrong.



And perhaps it's just me .. but It seems as if, too much tweaking (disabling services etc) actually hinders performance rather than help.
Mine seems to do much better if just left alone.

 

[pparks1]

So far it's ran great for me. It seams to suck more RAM everytime I upgrade my RAM for productivity software. I had 4GB of ram earlier and it took 1200MB of it to run just the OS. Now I have 6GB and it's takes 1500-1700MB's to run just the OS. Don't get it. and my OS is way watered down. With nothing eating the RAM except Windows OS software.

The OS will try to make use of the RAM if you have it available. It will preload apps into RAM so that they launch faster the next time you run them. However, the RAM is marked as AVAILABLE, so it will be used in the event that you run something that needs the RAM. This is the way that many other operating systems have worked in the past. Now Windows is following suit and doing it the same way.

I want as much of my RAM in use as possible. It's so much faster than a hard drive.