A few computer ??'s for gurus

[imma honky]

Just bought a new 160 GB hard drive and was reading the requirements. I need at least server 2000 for the 137 GB barrier. Im currently running ME (i know "why ME", but I havent had any problems with it in 3 years). Anyways, im thinking of switching to XP. Should I go Pro or Home? Also, all current HD's are FAT32's and if I remember correctly, XP needs NTFS (?). Will I have to reformat all HD's to NTFS or can I leave them be? This new Drive will be my new C:. Also, Ive seen some people (i think RichP) talking about partitiong sizes and such. What app should I use to partition and what sizes should I do for max max performance (if that makes a difference). Ive been using Partition Maggic Pro for the last 3 years, so I am familiar with most of its stuff, but if there is something better, then let me know. It also comes with a formatting CD.
Heres another one.....With XP, from what I have seen on other peoples comps that have it, it has a nice funky ctrl alt del screen with lots of apps. I like running the bare min to operate (on ME I only run systray and Explorer) so I would need to know what all I could shut down and still maintain stability. Thanks!

 

[RichP]

Why not just split the drive, install ME on 80gig and Mandrake linux on the other half. The best of both worlds, you can then run linux and still get at your windows files The linux grub boot loader will take care of it all.
The only reason I still have windows at all is because of my business software, there is no small business suite software available for linux that I can find.
If you really want to stay with MS there is a package called 'microsoft action pack' that you can buy from microsoft that has server2003, XP Pro, XP office, visio, and a ton of other MS software for $300 and they are full licensed versions of their software, a very nice deal.

 

[imma honky]

So mandrake is nice huh? Never had the chance to mess with it. Im not fond of MS, but I like to Game occasionally.
So what your saying is that by splitting the partioning 1/2 linux, 1/2 ME, I can get around that 137 GB barrier and not have to switch to XP? Also, where can I read up on that MS package....Thanks.

 

[RichP]

YUP, can do

You first split the drive into two partitions then install your MS OS, once thats in then you install mandrake linux and it will ask if you want to delete windows or install it on another drive. You can download mandrake from http://www.mandrake.com go to downloads and look for iso images, download the images and burn the to a cd. The first disc 1 image is bootable.
The install is dead simple. Drivers are pretty up to date, I installed it on a new Asus p4p800 w/a GeForce FX5700, 2 sata drives and an external boxhill scsi array with a boxhill controller and 24 scsi drives, not even a hiccup. What I would do is leave windows on your current drive and iinstall linux on the new drive. It comes with openoffice which will read/edit/write/save any of your current MS offfice docs, spreads, ppt stuff with no problem. It also has one heck of a good graphics program, all included FREE, the equivalent windows products to these cost over $900. When the system boots you will be given a choice of which OS you want to boot, I have one box here with 8 OS's on it though nt3.51 server was a bit twitchy on the same drive as nt3.51 workstation till I gave it it's own physical drive, spare 4gb scsi, then it settled down. I have all this stuff cause I do it for a living, when a new virus or bug hits it's always the MS boxes that have to be patched, I very rarely touch the *nix boxes. The MAP is nice because it gives me an affordable method of getting the newest stuff from MS so I can keep up to date on their products. I am gradually moving my customers over to linux and so far out of about 22 conversions only 3 wanted to go back to windows.
Here is the link to the map
http://members.microsoft.com/partner/salesmarketing/partnermarket/actionpack/actionpackus.aspx

 

[Kejtar]

Rich... I can't believe you'd recommend anyone to install ME.... ME stands for "Miserable Existance" in my book....

My recommendation would be to install XP Pro (you get couple cool tools in Pro that you don't get in Home... see MS site for more details on comparison ) and don't install Linux...

I have linux but I rarely use it. Yes Linux got easier (and if anything I'd recommend Red Hat) then it used to be, but it's still a PITA and unless you need it or got time to play around with it.... I don't recommend it.... and then again for playing it'd be good to have it on a separate machine or on a removable tray drive so that you'd swap the drives out in order not to mess anything up (when you play with things... things have a tendency of going bad....

In regards to XP... leave what starts up be... when you install it, the only thing I recommend turning off from system is the remote assistance and the error reporting... everything else is mostly good and it doesn't hurt. Then make sure to run all the patches and updates and you will be well on your way

One of my home machines only gets rebooted when I install enough updates... sometimes I leave it running for about a month if not longer and it doesn't crash, doesn't slow down, doesn't leak memory.... and it's a out of hte box XP install XP actually even defrags on it's own ) )

Kejtar

 

[RichP]

Linux vs Windows

There is no comparison, I have a mandrake linux server here at home thats been uptime 9 months seems everytime I turn around my win2003 server requires a reboot after it auto updates every couple of days. The mandrake version of linux is much easier to install than any other version out there, it's basiically a 'forehead install', stick the cd in, don't even have to reboot if windows is running as it autostarts the installer, drop your forehead on the keyboard and away it goes . the only thing you have to tell it is what you want installed, servers, scientific workstation, multimeadia workstation, network server, etc. Take the defaults and thats it, oh if you have a wheel mouse it wants you to rotate the wheel so it can do the 3rd button emulation. No keys or activation. For dialups I have not seen it misconfigure a modem yet.
Administration, sheesh, webmin takes care of that if you want a web interface, me, I just vi the files as needed.
He seems to be happy with WinME and far be it for me to detract from ME, even though it was basically recalled once XP home came out, we had to ship several cases back to MS like 2 days after the XP shipments came in, could not sell it after that per the agreement with MS, terrible OS in my book.
The main thing missing from XP home is the real networking. One school bought a bunch of HP PC's after I got done building 3 Intel dual processor servers for them, setup the domain on two of them and a linux server for smtp/imap/pop/webmail and www/ftp services/samba plus their broadband connection thru a pix, they saved $190 per machine vs my cost, then they had to turn around and by 150 copies of pro and then pay me to upgrade them all, go figure.
I will admit, I'm a unix bigot, I think unix of any flavor is so far superior to any windows OS it's not funny All these 'security impovements' that the others like novell and MS come out with has bascically been in place on *nix boxes for years. I will admit it took a while to master unix acl's but once I did it made security easier.
I also have a CD from MS on MS vs linux that gives all the arguments and to those who do not know unix OS's those arguments make sense, don't ever challenge a knowledgable unix guru with them though.
Like I said the only reason I use this win2kpro box here is because it has my business apps on it, my most comfortable highback chair in front of it on a nice wheeled Leda workstation and my work stuff around it which is where I spend most of my time when I'm not out on calls. Actually what I need to do is pickup another KVMS switch and pull one of my linux boxes over here and stick it on the sidecar

 

[imma honky]

Those are some very good points guys. Like Rich said, the only reason I have stuck with ME this long is because I havent had any problems like most people say. I leave my machine on for about 3 weeks before a reboot is needed. Only have to defrag about once a month.
I would love to learn linux Rich, plus I already have them (but I think they are old versions), but like Kej says, If you don't have the time (which I don't anymore), its not worth it. Ive been talking to a few friends who made the "XP switch" within the last year and they seem happy with it, so I think I will follow that route.
Just a little recap to make sure were on the same page:
I should go XP Pro for the better utilities. And I don't have to shut down anything in ctrl alt del? The main reason for asking about that is from past experience with XP and being a resource hog when it came to trying to play high end games or watching movies and such.
Rich: If I get the money, I plan on building another machine and making it a linux machine with maybe a windows shell.
Thanks guys!

 

[Kejtar]

XP is actually running lean when installed... the only time that you get crap loaded is if you buy a new comp from a store and they have it preinstalled... they also "give you" a few goodies of their own... and that's the stuff that bogs you down...

Kejtar

 

[xj92]

Windows XP can read FAT32 or NTFS, it doesn't matter. You don't have to convert over to NTFS. If you're not on a domain and don't need remote administration capability, save the money and get XP Home. Use the partitioning utility that is built right into the Windows XP install program, then you don't have to worry about weird issues down the road because you used a third-party program. I agree with the comment above, leave the startup stuff in there (at least the default startup stuff there right after installing). I play around with Linux, but that's all. It's cool, but the GUI's that they've incorporated into them (GMOME & KDE) aren't much more stable than Windows in my experience. The learning curve is steep and the program support isn't as good as what's available for Windows. If it's a home PC, I wouldn't bother with Linux.

 

[Kejtar]

hmmm I definately would reccomend swithing to ntfs as
a. it performs better
b. if comp crashes ntfs survives it better......
c. NTFS can handle large partitions better then fat32
d. is more secure

In regards to the home vs pro.... I still would recommend pro because if you have cable or dsl or ever will get it... you will one of these days discover the wonders of rdp connectivity and will kick yourself if you don't have it

Kejtar

 

[xj92]

By the way, to get XP to run "leaner", you can right-click My Computer, go to Properties, then Advanced tab, then Performance I believe, and you can set it to best performance and get rid of some of the extra visual effects and speed it up a little. If you have enough memory (512mb min) you can disable the page file too, which will make a noticeable difference.

 

[imma honky]

Yeah, I got DSL and will never go back to dial-up so pro sounds like a must. Im gonna make it an NTFS b/c I know thats what XP was meant for. The HD came with some software for partinioning so I may just use that. I personally don't ever like using windows partinioning b/c I never seem to get as much space after it is done as when I use a third party utility (did that make sense?). Well, I guess it's settled then....Thanks for the input.

 

[Glenn B]

Cool, NTFS will serve you well.

Rich... a linux box up *that* long? Must have a pretty out dated kernel. Linux is capable of very good uptime indeed, however security is important too.
Glenn

 

[RichP]

Yea, I generally don't pop a new kernel unless I have a reason to. I had Sun's at lucent running sunOS that had uptimes of 3+ years They were afraid to shut them down for fear the drives would never spin back up again AND THEY WERE RIGHT. I shut one down to add a new nic for the backup network I had just built, turned it back on for a reconfig reboot and that was all she wrote, ATT was NOT happy, it was one of their legacy billing systems Had to pre heat the drive a heat gun and cycle the HD's power plug a few times, finally came up. Good old quantums Run forever but don't ever turn them off...

 

[RichP]

One more thing, if you are going the XP pro route then buy the Microsoft action pack, it comes with XP Pro [10 licenses], New version of office [10 licenses], Visio with again 10 licenses, you get the idea, basically for $299 you get XP Pro, Office and Visio plus alot of other stuff, you can't beat that with a big stick or a penguin

 

[imma honky]

All I can say is wow....I now realize I know jack about computers (but I still know more than most people ). What do you mean each comes with 10 licenses? I can legally put them on 10 diff machines?

 

[RichP]

In a word, yes you could. The MAP or Microsoft action pack is for business's that sell or market MS products. They sell the pack with 10 licenses so that you, the business, can run your operation on it. In my case I can have customers here and show them the products, how they work and what they do. When you normally buy a copy of XP pro, Office, etc it comes with ONE users license. Then when you install it you have to register it with microsoft. The excpetion to that is XP corporate edition which does not have that activation 'feature' With that it is more of an honor system and you buy additional licenses as you need them and they are stored on a microsoft server in microsoft land
Microsoft licenseing is whole nother world. You are allowed one MAP per business site, if you have offices in 5 different cities you can buy one for each office, neat huh. Keep in mind they fall in to the category of NFR or Not For Resale so you can't build 10 computers, install the softeware and sell them, thats a no--no.