[FONT="]Greetings:
I've been a long time lurker. This site (among several) has helped me research a variety of issues and questions about Windows 7. Not new to Windows or PC's. Been building my own desktops since the mid-1980's starting with IBM PC clones using Intel 8088 processors and Hercules graphics. I've been through just about every O/S MS has released starting with PC-DOS, with the notable exceptions of MS-DOS 4, Windows Millennium, and Vista (their three most abhorred and universally rejected O/S). The original Windoze 1 wasn't much to write home about, but was OK by the time they got to Windoze 3.1. Also built Motorola 6809 machines using Microware OS-9, the equivalent of Unix running on an 8-bit micro. For a while I also had a Xerox 820-II (Zilog Z-80 uP) running CP/M alongside the 8088 PC clone running PC-DOS. It had a pair of full height 8" floppy drives, and the bearing in the the primary one (Drive 0) sounded like a coffee grinder. I've used WordStar, Visicalc and dBase.
Been through a mountain of hardware and motherboards over the years, but pretty much abandoned Intel uProcessors starting with an AMD 80386 and a Cyrix 486, with the exception of one Pentium motherboard which was quickly abandoned for an AMD K5. I've used AMD architecture since then. Favored the Via chipset and nVidia graphics up through the PCI and AGP slot motherboards. Switched to AMD chipsets and Radeon graphics when the AM2 socket motherboards came out with PCIe slots. Everything now is AM3 or AM3+, having just retired an AM2+ motherboard (790FX/SB600) with DDR2 RAM, Phenom II X4 955 and a Radeon 5770. I try to "future proof" by buying up toward the leading edge to the point of diminishing returns, and that's been successful.
With so many machines, two laptops and three custom desktops, it was challenging filling in my profile:[/FONT]
- [FONT="]HP 6515b: Win7 Ultimate /x64; Turion X2 TL-60; 4GB RAM (maxed out); Radeon X1250[/FONT]
- [FONT="]HP 6455b: Win7 Pro /x64; Phenom II X2 N620; 8GB RAM (maxed out); Radeon 4250[/FONT]
- [FONT="]Desktop #3: Win7 Pro /x64; M4A79T Deluxe; Phenom II X6 1100T; 8GB RAM; Radeon 6870[/FONT]
- [FONT="]Desktop #2: Win7 Pro /x64; 890FX Deluxe4; FX 8150, 8GB RAM; Radeon 7870[/FONT]
- [FONT="]Desktop #1: Win7 Ultimate /x64; 990FXA-UD3; FX 8350; 8GB RAM; Radeon R9 270X[/FONT]
[FONT="]Partial to Western Digital drives, either the RE or the Black, the laptops have 7200 rpm 500GB drives and the desktops have 7200 rpm 1TB drives. Not partial to a single motherboard manufacturer, having found all the major players have their good ones and less than stellar performers. The current fleet include ASUS, Asrock and Gigabyte. Just retired a MSI.
Used the Internet when it was called ARPANET and MILNET (the US military network), before it was called the Internet, with ARCHIE, VERONICA, Telnet, FTP, USENET and Gopher servers, before World Wide Web servers overwhelmed all other protocols. Initially used Mosaic for WWW and switched to Netscape. I recall the Graphics Holy Wars during the very early days of the WWW. The fastest dial-ups were 2400 bps and the network backbones were 9600 bps. BMP images, even a few small ones, embedded in HTML pages were going to cripple bandwidth. Then there were the Netscape Navigator vs Internet Explorer Holy Wars (started in earnest with IE 4) as Microsoft attempted to seize control of the Internet by pushing very hard with proprietary standards for all manner of things. Microsoft hasn't let up on other browsers since then. They've tried all manner of tricks to make the Internet's World Wide Web incompatible with anything but Internet Explorer, to include a 2001 block of all browsers from msn.com except IE, and creating deliberate incompatibilities on msn.com with Opera browsers a few years later (notably with hotmail access). Their past web development tools have also violated certain specific W3C requirements to make sites created with them incompatible with other browsers. Netscape Navigator was killed off by Microsoft shortly after America Online bought them (which did not help Netscape's survival). The remnants of Netscape were open-sourced and handed to the Mozilla foundation. Together, Opera and Mozilla formed a working group to submit open standards to W3C, to preclude Microsoft from doing so exclusively with proprietary standards (for which MS owned all the intellectual properties). Thank Mozilla and Opera for helping prevent Microsoft from taking over the Internet's World Wide Web. I've no sympathy for Microsoft with any problems they might be currently experiencing at the hands of Google and others, or with their drastic loss of IE market share.
I'm here because Microsoft Windows is the only practical O/S for general use, and Windows 7 is currently the best of their O/S (Window 8 belongs in the dust bin with Vista, Millennium and MS-DOS 4). Yes, there is Linux in a variety of flavors, and Apple's OS-X, but the overwhelming majority of software is developed for Windows with near zero porting to any other O/S. Ran the wheels off of Win XP Pro /x64 and probably will do the same with Win 7, unless Microsoft shifts back to an evolution of the Win 7 style O/S and user interface for PCs, and drops the Window 8 one-size-fits-all from phone to PC O/S user interface.
John
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